35174	----	Studies in the Poetry of Italy I. ROMAN BY FRANK JUSTUS MILLER _The University of Chicago_ Chautauqua Press CHAUTAUQUA, NEW YORK MCMXIII COPYRIGHT, 1901, BY FRANK JUSTUS MILLER Third Edition, 1913 The Chautauqua Print Shop Chautauqua, New York PREFACE The accumulated literature of centuries of ancient Roman life, even after the loss of more works than have survived, is still so large that, were we to attempt to cover the whole field, the space allotted to this volume would suffice for only the most superficial mention of the extant authors. The writer has therefore chosen to present to his readers the field of poetry only, and to narrow the scope of his work still further by the selection of certain important and representative phases of poetry, namely, the dramatic, satiric, and epic. These different phases of the Roman poetic product will be presented in the order named, although it is by no means certain which class of poetry was first developed at Rome. It is more than likely that satire and comedy had a common origin in the rude and unrecorded literary product of ancient Italy. Ennius, indeed, prior to whose time the extant fragments are exceedingly meager, produced both drama, satire, and epic. And the same is true, though to a more limited extent, of other writers of the same early period. Each of these phases of poetry is treated separately in this volume, according to its chronological development. We shall, therefore, traverse the field three times by three parallel paths: from Andronicus to Seneca, from Ennius to Juvenal, and from Nævius to Vergil. F. J. Miller Chicago. CONTENTS BOOK I. ROMAN PART I. THE DRAMA PAGE 1. THE BEGINNINGS OF ROMAN LITERATURE AND OLD ROMAN TRAGEDY 1 2. LATER ROMAN TRAGEDY AND SENECA 8 3. ROMAN COMEDY 38 PART II. SATIRE 1. INTRODUCTION AND EARLY SATIRE 70 2. QUINTUS HORATIUS FLACCUS 80 3. AULUS PERSIUS FLACCUS 99 4. DECIMUS JUNIUS JUVENALIS 105 PART III. EPIC POETRY 1. CN. NÆVIUS.--THE FIRST NATIONAL ROMAN EPIC 119 2. QUINTUS ENNIUS 121 3. PUBLIUS VERGILIUS MARO 128 STUDIES IN THE POETRY OF ITALY PART I THE DRAMA "Whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own features, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure." 1. THE BEGINNINGS OF ROMAN LITERATURE AND OLD ROMAN TRAGEDY When Greece was at the height of her glory, and Greek literature was in its flower; when Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, all within two brilliant generations, were holding the polite world under the magic spell of their dramatic art, their rough and almost unknown Roman neighbors were just emerging from tradition into history. There the atmosphere was altogether one of struggle. The king-ruled Romans, long oppressed, had at last swept away that crumbling kingdom, and established upon its ruins the young republic; the unconsidered masses, still oppressed, were just heaving themselves up into legal recognition, and had already obtained their tribunes, and a little later the boon of a published law--the famous Law of the Twelve Tables, the first Roman code. Three years before this, and in preparation for it, a committee of three Roman statesmen, the so-called triumvirs, had gone to Athens to study the laws of Solon. This visit was made in 454 B. C. Æschylus had died two years before; Sophocles had become famous, and Euripides had just brought out his first play. As those three Romans sat in the theater at Athens, beneath the open sky, surrounded by the cultured and pleasure-loving Greeks, as they listened to the impassioned lines of the popular favorite, unable to understand except for the actor's art--what a contrast was presented between these two nations which had as yet never crossed each other's paths, but which were destined to come together at last in mutual conquest. The grounds and prophecy of this conquest were even now present. The Roman triumvirs came to learn Greek law, and they learned it so well that they became lawgivers not alone for Greece but for all the world; the triumvirs felt that day the charm of Greek art, and this was but a premonition of that charm which fell more masterfully upon Rome in later years, and took her literature and all kindred arts completely captive. Still from that day, for centuries to come, the Romans had sterner business than the cultivation of the arts of peace. They had themselves and Italy to conquer; they had a still unshaped state to establish; they had their ambitions, growing as their power increased, to gratify; they had jealous neighbors in Greece, Africa, and Gaul to curb. In such rough, troubled soil as this, literature could not take root and flourish. They were not, it is true, without the beginnings of native literature. Their religious worship inspired rude hymns to their gods; their generals, coming home, inscribed the records of their victory in rough Saturnian verse on commemorative tablets; there were ballads at banquets, and dirges at funerals. Also the natural mimicry of the Italian peasantry had no doubt for ages indulged itself in uncouth performances of a dramatic nature, which developed later into those mimes and farces, the forerunners of native Roman comedy and the old Medley-Satura. Yet in these centuries Rome knew no letters worthy of the name save the laws on which she built her state; no arts save the arts of war. But in her course of Italian conquest, she had finally come into conflict with those Greek colonists who had long since been taking peaceful possession of Italy along the southeastern border. These Græco-Roman struggles in Italy, which arose in consequence, culminated in the fall of Tarentum, B. C. 272; and with this victory the conquest of the Italian peninsula was complete. This event meant much for the development of Italian literature; it meant new impulse and opportunity--the impulse of close and quickening contact with Greek thought, and the opportunity afforded by the internal calm consequent upon the completed subjugation of Italy. Joined with these two influences was a third which came with the end of the first Punic War, a generation afterward. Rome has now taken her first fateful step toward world empire; she has leaped across Sicily and set victorious foot in Africa; has successfully met her first great foreign enemy. The national pride and exaltation consequent upon this triumph gave favorable atmosphere and encouragement for those impulses which had already been stirred. The first Punic War was ended in 241 B. C. In the following year the first effects of the Hellenic influence upon Roman literature were witnessed, and the first literary work in the Latin language of which we have definite record was produced at Rome. This was by Livius Andronicus, a Greek from Tarentum, who was brought to Rome as a captive upon the fall of that city. He came as the slave of M. Livius Salinator, who employed him as a tutor for his sons in Latin and Greek, and afterward set him free to follow the same profession independently. That he might have a Latin text from which to teach that language, he himself translated into the Roman tongue the _Odyssey_ of Homer and some plays of the Greek tragedians--the first professor of Latin on record! These same translations, strangely enough, remained school text-books in Rome for centuries. His first public work, to which we have referred above, was the production of a play; but whether tragedy or comedy we do not know. It was at any rate, without doubt, a translation into the crude, unpolished, and heavy Latin of his time, from some Greek original. His tragedies, of which only forty-one lines of fragments, representing nine plays, have come down to us, are all on Greek subjects, and are probably only translations or bald imitations of the Greek originals. The example set by Andronicus was followed by four Romans of marked ability, whose life and work form a continuous chain of literary activity from Nævius, who was but a little younger than Andronicus, and who brought out his first play in 235 B. C.; through Ennius, who first established tragedy upon a firm foundation in Rome; through Pacuvius, the nephew of Ennius and his worthy successor, to the death of Accius in (about) 94 B. C., who was the last and greatest of the old Roman tragedians. As to the themes of these early tragedies, a few of them were upon subjects taken from Roman history. Tragedies of this class were called _fabulæ prætextæ_, because the actors wore the native Roman dress. When we think of the great value which these plays would have to-day, not only from a literary but also from a historical point of view, we cannot but regret keenly their almost utter loss. In the vast majority of cases, however, the old Roman tragedy was upon subjects taken from the traditional Greek cycles of stories, and was closely modeled after the Greek tragedies themselves. Æschylus and Sophocles were imitated to some extent, but Euripides was the favorite. While these tragedies were Greek in subject and form, it is not at all necessary to suppose that they were servile imitations or translations merely of the Greek originals. The Romans did undoubtedly impress their national spirit upon that which they borrowed, in tragedy just as in all things else. Indeed, the great genius of Rome consisted partly in this--her wonderful power to absorb and assimilate material from every nation with which she came in contact. Rome might borrow, but what she had borrowed she made her own completely, for better or for worse. The resulting differences between Greek literature and a Hellenized Roman literature would naturally be the differences between the Greek and Roman type of mind. Where the Greek was naturally religious and contemplative, the Roman was practical and didactic. He was grave and intense, fond of exalted ethical effects, appeals to national pride; and above all, insisted that nothing should offend that exaggerated sense of both personal and national dignity which characterized the Roman everywhere. All these characteristics made the Romanized Greek tragedies immensely popular; but, strangely enough, this did not develop a truly national Roman tragedy, as was the case, for instance, with epic and lyric literature. We have already seen how meager was the production of the _fabulæ prætextæ_. With the rich national traditions and history to inspire this, we can account for the failure to develop a native Roman tragedy only upon the assumption that the Roman lacked the gift of dramatic invention, at least to the extent of originating and developing great dramatic plots and characters, which form the essential elements of tragic drama. We shall not weary the reader with quotations from the extant fragments of old Roman tragedy, fragments which, isolated as they are, can prove next to nothing as to the development of the plot or the other essential characteristics of a drama. A play is not like an animal: it cannot be reconstructed from a single fragment. It will be profitable, however, to dwell upon a few of these fragments, in order to get some idea of the nature and contents of all that is left of an extensive literature. There is a very dramatic fragment of the _Alexander_ or _Paris_ of Ennius. It represents Cassandra, in prophetic raving, predicting the destruction which her brother Paris is to bring upon his fatherland. It is said that Hecuba, queen of Troy, before the birth of Paris, dreamed that she had brought forth a firebrand. Remembering this, Cassandra cries out at sight of her brother: Here it is; here, the torch, wrapped in fire and blood. Many years it hath lain hid; help, citizens, and extinguish it. For now, on the great sea, a swift fleet is gathering. It hurries along a host of calamities. They come: a fierce host lines the shores with sail-winged ships. Sellar. Several of the fragments show a certain measure of descriptive power and poetic imagination in these early tragedians. The following passage from the _Argonautæ_ of Accius shows this to a marked degree. It is a description of the first ship, _Argo_, as she goes plowing through the sea. It is supposed to be spoken by a rustic who from the shore is watching the vessel's progress. It should be remembered that the great boat is as strange a sight to him as were the ships of Columbus to the natives of newly discovered America. Hence the strange and seemingly strained metaphors. The mighty mass glides on, Like some loud-panting monster of the deep; Back roll the waves, in eddying masses whirled. It rushes on, besprinkling all the sea With flying spray like backward streaming breath; As when one sees the cloud-rack whirled along, Or some huge mass of rock reft off and driven By furious winds, or seething whirlpools, high Upbeaten by the ever-rushing waves; Or else when Ocean crashes on the shore, Or Triton, from the caverns of the sea, Far down beneath the swelling waters' depths, A rocky mass to upper heaven uprears. Miller. Sellar, in speaking of the feeling for natural beauty, says of Accius: "The fragments of Accius afford the first hint of that enjoyment of natural beauty which enters largely into a later age"; and quotes the following passage from the _Oenomaus_ as "perhaps the first instance in Latin poetry of a descriptive passage which gives any hint of the pleasure derived from contemplating the common aspects of nature": By chance before the dawn, harbinger of burning rays, when the husbandmen bring forth the oxen from their rest into the fields, that they may break the red, dew-sprinkled soil with the plough, and turn up the clods from the soft soil. When we read this delightful passage, and then turn to the exquisite and fuller pictures of natural beauty which Lucretius and Vergil have left us, we shall agree that Accius was himself indeed the "harbinger of burning rays." 2. LATER ROMAN TRAGEDY AND SENECA Tragedy long continued to flourish after Accius, but its vitality was gone. Such men as Pollio, Varius, and Ovid in the Augustan period, and Maternus, Pomponius Secundus, and Lucan in the first century A. D., amused themselves by writing tragedies, and even produced some commendable work. Varius, who was the personal friend of Vergil and Horace, was perhaps the most gifted of these. He wrote a tragedy on _Thyestes_ which was presented as part of the public rejoicings after the battle of Actium. Of this play Quintilian said that it would stand comparison with any Greek tragedy. Ovid also wrote a tragedy on _Medea_, which was highly praised by Roman critics. Maternus wrote tragedies on _Medea_ and _Thyestes_, as well as _prætextæ_ on _Domitius_ and _Cato_. Of all these nothing remains but the barest fragments. But it is certain that the efforts of these later tragedians were for the most part of a dilettante sort, and that their plays were purely literary (see, however, the case of Varius), intended for dramatic reading and declamation, rather than for presentation upon the stage. Of this sort also were the ten tragedies commonly attributed to L. Annæus Seneca, the philosopher, who is better known as the author of numerous philosophical essays. He lived in the time of Nero, and was, indeed, the tutor of that emperor. Of these ten plays, nine are modeled after the Greek, and one, the _Octavia_, which is undoubtedly not Seneca's, is a _prætexta_, in which Seneca himself appears. These plays are of especial interest to us, aside from their intrinsic value, for the triple reason that they are the sole representatives of Roman tragedy preserved entire, that they reflect the literary complexion of the artificial age in which they were produced, and that they had so large an influence in shaping the early English drama. They are, in fact, the stepping-stone between ancient and modern, Greek and English, drama. As to their style, even a cursory reading reveals their extreme declamatory nature, the delight of the author in the horrible and weird, the pains he has taken to select from the Greek sources the most harrowing of all the tales as the foundation of his tragedies, the boldness with which he has broken over the time-honored rule that deeds of blood should not be done upon the stage, and his fondness for abstruse mythological allusions. Add to these features the dreary prolixity with which the author spoils many of his descriptive passages, protracting them often into veritable catalogues of places and things, also his frequent exaggerations and repetitions, and we have the chief defects of these tragedies. And yet they have equally marked excellences. They abound in brilliant epigrams, graphic descriptions, touching pathos, magnificent passion, subtile analysis of character and motive. But when all is said, it must be admitted that the plays, faults and virtues included, are highly rhetorical and artificial, such alone as that artificial age would be expected to produce. Such as they were, and perhaps because they were what they were, the tragedies of Seneca, rather than the Greek plays, were the model for Italian, French, and early English tragedy. The first and obvious reason for this no doubt is the fact that the Middle Age of Europe was an age of Latin rather than of Greek scholarship, so far as popular scholarship was concerned. And this made Seneca rather than Euripides available. But it is also probable that his style and spirit appealed strongly to those later-day imitators. So great, indeed, was the popularity of Seneca's tragedies in the early Elizabethan age, that he might be said to have monopolized the attention of writers of that time. He was a favorite with the schools as a classical text-book, as old Roger Ascham testifies; and his works were translated entire into English then for the first time by five English scholars, and collected into a single volume in 1581 by Thomas Newton, one of the translators. In addition to the version of 1581, the tragedies of Seneca were again translated into English by Glover in 1761. Since that date no English version was attempted until the present writer a few years ago undertook the task again, and produced a metrical version of three of these plays. We have selected the tragedy of _Medea_ for presentation to the readers of this volume as an illustration of the Senecan tragedy, and (alas for the fate of so many noble works!) of the entire field of Roman tragedy. It follows Euripides in general development of the plot; but if the reader will take the trouble to compare the two plays, he will find that the imitation is by no means close. Although the play is confined in time to the final day of catastrophe at Corinth, the background is the whole romantic story of the Argonauts: how Jason and his hero-comrades, at the instigation of Pelias, the usurping king of Thessalian Iolchos, undertook the first voyage in quest of the golden fleece; how after many adventures these first sailors reached the kingdom of Æëtes, who jealously guarded the fleece, since upon its possession depended his own kingship; how the three deadly labors were imposed upon Jason before the fleece could be won; how, smitten by love of him, the beautiful, barbaric Medea, daughter of the king, by the help of her magic, aided Jason in all his labors and accompanied him in his flight; how, to retard her father's pursuit, she slew her brother and scattered his mangled remains in the path as she fled; how again, for love of Jason, she restored his father to youth, and tricked Pelias' own daughters into slaying their aged sire; how, for this act, Medea and her husband were exiled from Thessaly and went and dwelt in Corinth; how, for ten happy years, she lived with her husband and two sons in this alien land, her wild past almost forgotten, her magic untouched. But now Jason has been gradually won away from his wife, and is about to wed Creüsa, the daughter of Creon, king of Corinth. The wedding festivities have already begun, when the play opens and reveals Medea invoking all the powers of heaven and hell in punishment of her false lord. Into her frenzied and dreadful imprecations breaks the sound of sweet voices from without of a chorus of Corinthian women, chanting the epithalamium for the nuptials of Jason and Creüsa. Hearing this cruel song in praise of her rival and of her false husband, Medea goes into a wilder passion of rage. Medea's old nurse tries to soothe her mistress and recall her to her right mind by wise saws and prudent philosophy. But the flood of passion will not be checked. _Nurse._ Be silent now, I pray thee, and thy plaints confine To secret woe. The man who heavy blows can bear In silence, biding still his time with patient soul, Full oft his vengeance gains. 'Tis hidden wrath that harms; But hate proclaimed oft loses half its power to harm. _Medea._ But small the grief is that can counsel take and hide Its head; great ills lie not in hiding, but must rush Abroad and work their will. _Nurse._ O cease this mad complaint, My mistress; scarce can friendly silence help thee now. _Medea._ But Fortune fears the brave, the faint of heart o'erwhelms. _Nurse._ Then valor be approved, if for it still there's room. _Medea._ But it must always be that valor finds its place. _Nurse._ No star of hope points out the way from these our woes. _Medea._ The man who hopes for naught at least has naught to fear. _Nurse._ The Colchians are thy foes; thy husband's vows have failed; Of all thy vast possessions not a jot is left. _Medea._ Yet I am left. There's left both sea and land and fire And sword and gods and hurtling thunderbolts. _Nurse._ The king must be revered. _Medea._ My father was a king. _Nurse._ Dost thou not fear? _Medea._ Not though the earth produced the foe. _Nurse._ Thou'lt perish. _Medea._ So I wish it. _Nurse._ Flee! _Medea._ I'm done with flight. Why should Medea flee? _Nurse._ Thy children! _Medea._ Whose, thou know'st. _Nurse._ And dost thou still delay? _Medea._ I go, but vengeance first. _Nurse._ Th' avenger will pursue. _Medea._ Perchance I'll stop his course. _Nurse._ Nay, hold thy words and cease thy threats, O foolish one. Thy temper curb; 'tis well to yield to fate's decrees. _Medea._ Though fate may strip me of my all, myself am left. But who flings wide the royal palace doors? Behold, 'Tis Creon's self, exalted high in Grecian sway. [_Medea retires to the back of the stage._ _Creon._ [_As he enters._] Medea, baleful daughter of the Colchian king, Has not yet taken her hateful presence from our realm. On mischief is she bent; well known her treacherous power. For who escapes her? Who may pass his days in peace? This cursed pestilence at once would I have stayed By force of arms: but Jason's prayers prevailed. She still May live, but let her free my borders from the fear Her presence genders, and her safety gain by flight. [_He sees Medea approaching._] But lo, she comes with fierce and threatening mien to seek An audience with us. Slaves! defend us from her touch And pestilential presence! Bid her silence keep, And learn at length obedience to the king's Commands. [_To Medea._] Go, speed thy flight, thou thing of evil, fell And monstrous! _Medea._ What the crime, my lord, or what the guilt That merits exile? _Creon._ Let the guiltless question thus. _Medea._ If now thou judgest, hear me; if thou reign'st, command. _Creon._ The king's command thou must obey, nor question aught. _Medea._ Unrighteous kingdoms never long endure. _Creon._ Go, bear Thy plaints to Colchis. _Medea._ Yea, but let him take me hence Who brought me to thy shores. _Creon._ Too late thy prayer, for fixed Is my decree. _Medea._ Who sits in judgment and denies His ear to either suitor, though his judgment right Appear, is still himself unrighteous. _Creon._ Didst _thou_ lend Thine ear to Pelias, ere thou judgedst him to death?-- But come, I'll give thee grace to plead thy goodly cause. _Medea._ How hard the task to turn the soul from wrath, when once To wrath inclined; how 'tis the creed of sceptered kings To swerve not from the proposed course they once have taken, Full well I know, for I have tasted royalty. For, though by present storms of ill I'm overwhelmed, An exile, suppliant, lone, forsaken, all undone, I once in happier times a royal princess shone, And traced my proud descent from heavenly Phoebus' self. Then princes humbly sought my hand in wedlock, mine, Who now must sue.-- O changeful Fortune, thou my throne Hast reft away, and given me exile in its stead. Trust not in kingly realms, since fickle chance may strew Their treasures to the winds. Lo _this_ is regal, this The work of kings, which time nor change cannot undo: To succor the afflicted, to provide at need A trusty refuge for the suppliant. This alone I brought of all my Colchian treasure, this renown, This very flower of fame,--that by my arts I saved The bulwark of the Greeks, the offspring of the gods. My princely gift to Greece is Orpheus, that sweet bard, Who can the trees in willing bondage draw, and melt The crag's hard heart. Mine too are Boreas' winged sons, And Leda's heaven-born progeny, and Lynceus, he Whose glance can pierce the distant view; yea, all the Greeks, Save Jason; for I mention not the king of kings, The leader of the leaders: he is mine alone, My labor's recompense. The rest I give to you. Nay, come, O king, arraign me, and rehearse my crimes. But stay! for I'll confess them all. The only crime Of which I stand accused is this--the _Argo_ saved. Suppose my maiden scruples had opposed the deed; Suppose my filial piety had stayed my hand: Then had the mighty chieftains fall'n, and in their fate All Greece had been o'erwhelmed; then this thy son-in-law Had felt the bull's consuming breath, and perished there. Nay, nay, let Fortune when she will my doom decree; I glory still that kings have owed their lives to me. But what reward I reap for all my glorious deeds Is in thy hands. Convict me, if thou wilt, of sin, But give him back for whom I sinned. O Creon, see, I own that I am guilty. This much thou didst know, When first I clasped thy knees, a humble suppliant, And sought the shelter of thy royal clemency. Some little corner of thy kingdom now I ask In which to hide my grief. If I must flee again, O let some nook remote within thy broad domain Be found for me! Creon claims to have been merciful in having shielded Jason and Medea all these years from the just resentment of the king of Thessaly. Jason's cause would be easy enough to defend, for he has been innocent of guilt; but it is impossible longer to shield Medea, who has committed so many bloody deeds in the past, and is capable of doing the like again. _Creon._ Then go thou hence and purge our kingdom of its stain; Bear with thee in thy flight thy fatal poisons; free The state from fear; abiding in some other land, Outwear the patience of the gods. _Medea._ Thou bidst me flee? Then give me back my bark in which to flee. Restore The partner of my flight. Why should I flee alone? I came not thus. Or if avenging war thou fear'st, Then banish both the culprits; why distinguish me From Jason? 'Twas for him old Pelias was o'ercome; For him the flight, the plunder of my father's realm, My sire forsaken and my infant brother slain, And all the guilt that love suggests; 'twas all for him. Deep-dyed in sin am I, but on my guilty soul The sin of profit lieth not. _Creon._ Why seek delay By speech? Too long thou tarriest. _Medea._ I go, but grant This last request: let not the mother's fall o'erwhelm her hapless babes. _Creon._ Then go in peace; for I to them A father's place will fill, and take them to my breast. _Medea._ Now by the fair hopes born upon this wedding day, And by thy hopes of lasting sovereignty secure From changeful fate's assault, I pray thee grant from flight A respite brief, while I upon my children's lips A mother's kiss imprint, perchance the last. _Creon._ A time Thou seek'st for treachery. _Medea._ What fraud can be devised In one short hour? _Creon._ To those on mischief bent, be sure, The briefest time is fraught with mischief's fatal power. _Medea._ Dost thou refuse me, then, one little space for tears? _Creon._ Though deep-ingrafted fear would fain resist thy plea, A single day I'll give thee ere my sentence holds. _Medea._ Too gracious thou. But let my respite further shrink, And I'll depart content. _Creon._ Thy life shall surely pay The forfeit if to-morrow's sun beholds thee still In Corinth. But the voice of Hymen calls away To solemnize the rites of this his festal day. Creon goes out toward his palace. Medea remains gazing darkly after him for a few moments, and then takes her way in the opposite direction. The chorus sings in reminiscent strain of the old days before the _Argo's_ voyage, the simple innocent life of the golden age when each man was content to dwell within the horizon of his birth; the impious rash voyage of the Argonauts, their dreadful experiences in consequence, their wild adventure's prize of fatal gold and more fatal Colchian sorceress; their dark forebodings of the consequences in after years, when the sea shall be a highway, and all hidden places of the world laid bare. Medea comes rushing in bent upon using for vengeance the day which Creon has granted her. The nurse tries in vain to restrain her. _Nurse._ My foster daughter, whither speedest thou abroad? O stay, I pray thee, and restrain thy passion's force. But Medea hastens by without answering or noticing her. The nurse, looking after her, reflects in deep distress: As some wild bacchanal, whose fury's raging fire The god inflames, now roams distraught on Pindus' snows, And now on lofty Nysa's rugged slopes; so she Now here, now there, with frenzied step is hurried on, Her face revealing every mark of stricken woe, With flushing cheek and sighs deep drawn, wild cries and tears, And laughter worse than tears. In her a medley strange Of doubts and fears is seen, and overtopping wrath, Bewailings, bitter groans of anguish.--Whither tends This overburdened soul? What mean her frenzied threats? When will the foaming wave of fury spend itself? No common crime, I fear, no easy deed of ill She meditates. Herself she will outvie. For well I recognize the wonted marks of rage. Some deed Is threatening, wild, profane and hideous. Behold, Her face betrays her madness. O ye gods, may these Our fears prove vain forebodings! Our own imaginations and our fears keep pace with those of the devoted nurse, and we listen in fearful silence while Medea, communing with her tortured soul, reveals the depth of suffering and hate into which she has been plunged. _Medea._ For thy hate, poor soul, Dost thou a measure seek? Let it be deep as love. And shall I tamely view the wedding torches' glare? And shall this day go uneventful by, this day So hardly won, so grudgingly bestowed? Nay, nay; While, poised upon her heights, the central earth shall bear The heavens up; while seasons run their endless round, And sands unnumbered lie; while days and nights and sun And stars in due procession pass; while round the pole The ocean-fearing bears revolve, and tumbling streams Flow downward to the sea: my grief shall never cease To seek revenge, and shall forever grow. What rage Of savage beast can equal mine? What Scylla famed? What sea-engulfing pool? What burning Ætna placed On impious Titan's heaving breast? No torrent stream, Nor storm-tossed sea, nor breath of flame fanned by the gale, Can check or equal my wild storm of rage. My will Is set on limitless revenge! But this wild rage can lead nowhere. She struggles to calm her terrible passion to still more terrible reason and resolve. Will Jason say He feared the power of Creon and Acastus' wrath?-- True love is proof against the fear of man. But grant He was compelled to yield, and pledged his hand in fear: He might at least have sought his wife with one last word Of comfort and farewell. But this, though brave in heart, He feared to do. The cruel terms of banishment Could Creon's son-in-law not soften? No. One day Alone was given for last farewell to both my babes. But time's short space I'll not bewail; though brief in hours, In consequence it stretches out eternally. This day shall see a deed that ne'er shall be forgot.-- But now I'll go and pray the gods, and move high heaven But I shall work my will! As Medea hastens from the scene, Jason himself enters; and now we hear from his own lips the fatal dilemma in which he finds himself. Regard for his marriage vows, love for his children, and fear of death at the hands of Creon--all are at variance and must be faced. It is the usual tragedy of fate. _Jason._ O heartless fate, if frowns or smiles bedeck thy brow! How often are thy cures far worse than the disease They seek to cure! If, now, I wish to keep the troth I plighted to my lawful bride, my life must pay The forfeit; if I shrink from death, my guilty soul Must perjured be. I fear no power that man can wield, But in my heart paternal love unmans me quite; For well I know that in my death my children's fate Is sealed. O sacred Justice, if in heaven thou dwell'st, Be witness now that for my children's sake I act. Nay, sure am I that even she, Medea's self, Though fierce she is of soul, and brooking no restraint, Will see her children's good outweighing all her wrongs. With this good argument my purpose now is fixed, In humble wise to brave her wrath. [_Re-enter Medea._] But lo! at sight Of me her fury flames anew! Hate, like a shield, She bears, and in her face is pictured all her woe. But Medea's passion has for the moment spent itself. She is now no sorceress, no mad woman breathing out dreadful threatenings; but only the forsaken wife, indignant, indeed, but pathetic in her appeals for sympathy and help from him for whose sake she had given up all her maiden glory, and broken every tie that held her to the past. Her quiet self-control is in marked contrast to her recent ravings. _Medea._ Thou seest, Jason, that we flee. 'Tis no new thing To suffer exile; but the cause of flight is strange; For with thee I was wont to flee, not from thee. Yes, I go; but whither dost thou send me whom thou driv'st From out thy home? Shall I the Colchians seek again, My royal father's realm whose soil is steeped in blood My brother shed? What country dost thou bid me seek? What way by sea is open? Shall I fare again Where once I saved the noble kings of Greece and thee, Thou wanton, through the threatening jaws of Pontus' strait, The blue Symplegades? Or shall I hie me back To fair Thessalia's realms? Lo, all the doors which I, For thee, have opened wide, I've closed upon myself. But whither dost thou send me now? Thou bidd'st me flee, But show'st no way or means of flight. [_In bitter sarcasm._] But 'tis enough: The king's own son-in-law commands, and I obey. Come, heap thy torments on me; I deserve them all. Let royal wrath oppress me, wanton that I am, With cruel hand, and load my guilty limbs with chains; And let me be immured in dungeons black as night: Still will my punishment be less than my offense.-- O ingrate! Hast thou then forgot the brazen bull, And his consuming breath? the fear that smote thee, when, Upon the field of Mars, the earth-born brood stood forth To meet thy single sword? 'Twas by my arts that they, The monsters, fell by mutual blows. Remember, too, The long-sought fleece of gold I won for thee, whose guard, The dragon huge, was lulled to rest at my command; My brother slain for thee. For thee old Pelias fell, When, taken by my guile, his daughters slew their sire, Whose life could not return. All this I did for thee. In quest of thine advantage have I quite forgot Mine own. And now, by all thy fond paternal hopes, By thine established house, by all the monsters slain For thee, by these my hands which I have ever held To work thy will, by all the perils past, by heaven, And sea that witnessed at my wedlock--pity me! Since thou art blessed, restore me what I lost for thee: That countless treasure plundered from the swarthy tribes Of India, which filled our goodly vaults with wealth, And decked our very trees with gold. This costly store I left for thee, my native land, my brother, sire, My reputation--all; and with this dower I came. If now to homeless exile thou dost send me forth, Give back the countless treasures which I left for thee. And now again we have a situation which only the quick, sharp flashes, the clash of words like steel on steel, can relieve. Here is no chance for long periods, nor flights of oratory; but sentences as short and sharp as swords, flashes of feeling, stinging epigrams. _Jason._ Though Creon, in a vengeful mood, would have thy life, I moved him by my tears to grant thee flight instead. _Medea._ I thought my exile punishment; 'tis now, I see, A gracious boon! _Jason._ O flee, while still the respite holds. Provoke him not, for deadly is the wrath of kings. _Medea._ Not so. 'Tis for Creüsa's love thou sayest this; Thou wouldst remove the hated wanton once thy wife. _Jason._ Dost thou reproach me with a guilty love? _Medea._ Yea, that, And murder too, and treachery. _Jason._ But name me now, If so thou canst, the crimes that I have done. _Medea._ Thy crimes-- Whatever I have done. _Jason._ Why then, in truth, thy guilt Must all be mine, if all thy crimes are mine. _Medea._ They are, They are all thine: for who by sin advantage gains Commits the sin. All men proclaim thy wife defiled; Do thou thyself protect her and condone her sins. Let her be guiltless in thine eyes who for thy gain Has sinned. _Jason._ But gifts which sin has brought 'twere shame to take. _Medea._ Why keep'st thou then the gifts which it were shame to take? _Jason._ Nay, curb thy fiery soul! Thy children--for their sake Be calm. _Medea._ My children! Them I do refuse, reject, Renounce! Shall then Creüsa brothers bear to these My children? _Jason._ But the queen can aid thy wretched sons. _Medea._ May that day never dawn, that day of shame and woe, When in one house are joined the low-born and the high, The sons of that foul robber Sisyphus, and these The sons of Phoebus. _Jason._ Wretched one, and wilt thou, then Involve me also in thy fall? Begone, I pray. _Medea._ The king hath yielded to my prayer. _Jason._ What wouldst thou then? _Medea._ Of thee? I'd have thee dare the law. _Jason._ The royal power Doth compass me. _Medea._ A greater than the king is here: Medea. Set us front to front, and let us strive; And of this royal strife let Jason be the prize. _Jason._ Outwearied by my woes I yield. But be thou ware, Medea, lest too often thou shouldst tempt thy fate. _Medea._ Yet Fortune's mistress have I ever been. _Jason._ But see With hostile front Acastus comes, on vengeance bent, While Creon threatens instant death. _Medea._ Then flee them both. I ask thee not to draw thy sword against the king, Nor yet to stain thy pious hands with kindred blood. Come, flee with me. _Jason._ But what resistance can we make, If war with double visage rear his horrid front,-- If Creon and Acastus join in common cause? _Medea._ Add, too, the Colchian armies with my father's self To lead them; join the Scythian and Pelasgian hordes. In one deep grief of ruin will I whelm them all. _Jason._ Yet on the scepter do I look with fear. _Medea._ Beware, Lest not the fear, but lust of power prevail with thee. _Jason._ Too long we strive: have done, lest we suspicion breed. _Medea._ Now Jove, throughout thy heavens let the thunders roll! Thy mighty arm make bare! Thy darting flames Of vengeance loose, and shake the lofty firmament With rending storms! At random hurl thy vengeful bolts, Selecting neither me nor Jason with thy aim, That thus whoever falls may perish with the brand Of guilt upon him. For thy hurtling darts can take No erring flight. _Jason._ Recall thee and in calmness speak With words of peace and reason. Then if any gift From Creon's royal house can compensate thy woes, Take that as solace of thy flight. _Medea._ My soul doth scorn The wealth of kings. But let me have my little ones As comrades of my flight, that in their childish breasts Their mother's tears may flow. New sons await thy home. _Jason._ My heart inclines to yield to thee, but love forbids. For these my sons shall never from my arms be reft, Though Creon's self demand. My very spring of life, My sore heart's comfort and my joy are these my sons; And sooner could I part with limbs or vital breath, Or light of life. _Medea._ [_Aside._] Doth he thus love his sons? 'Tis well; Then is he bound, and in his armored strength this flaw Reveals the place to strike. Here, apparently, is the first suggestion to Medea of the most terrible part of the revenge which she was to take upon Jason. The obvious revenge upon Creon and his daughter, as well as upon her husband, Medea had already foreshadowed in her opening words; but her deadly passion had not yet been aimed at her children. It is true that twice she had bitterly renounced them, once to the nurse, and again but now to Jason himself, since they were Jason's also, and were likely now to be brothers to the sons of her hated rival; nevertheless her mother-love still is strong. But now, by Jason's unfortunate emphasis upon the love he bears his sons, she sees a chance to obtain that measure of revenge which in her heart she has already resolved to find. And yet this thought is so terrible to her that, even though we see her shape her present course in reference to it, it is evident that she gives it no more than a subconscious existence. But now she resolves to conceal her purposes of revenge and overcome Jason with guile, and thus addresses him: At least ere I depart Grant me this last request: let me once more embrace My sons. E'en that small boon will comfort my sad heart. And this my latest prayer to thee: if, in my grief, My tongue was over-bold, let not my words remain To rankle in thy heart. Remember happier things Of me, and let my bitter words be straight forgot. Jason is completely deceived, as Creon had been, by Medea's seeming humility, as if, indeed, a passionate nature like hers, inflamed by wrongs like hers, could be restrained and tamed by a few calm words of advice! He says: Not one shall linger in my soul; and curb, I pray, Thy too impetuous heart, and gently yield to fate. For resignation ever soothes the woful soul. [_Exit Jason._ As Jason leaves her, calmly satisfied with this disposition of affairs, with no recognition of his wife's great sufferings, the thought of this adds fresh fuel to her passion. He's gone! And can it be? And shall he thus depart, Forgetting me and all my service? Must I drop, Like some discarded toy, out of his faithless heart? It shall not be. Up then, and summon all thy strength And all thy skill! And this, the fruit of former crime, Count nothing criminal that works thy will! But lo, We're hedged about; scant room is left for our designs. Now must the attack be made where least suspicion makes The least resistance. Now Medea, on! And do, And dare thine utmost, yea, beyond thy utmost power! [_To the Nurse._] Do thou, my faithful nurse, the comrade of my grief, And all the devious wanderings of my checkered course, Assist me now in these my plans. There is a robe, The glory of our Colchian realm, the precious gift Of Phoebus' self to King Æëtes as a proof Of fatherhood; a gleaming circlet, too, all wrought With threads of gold, the yellow gold bespangled o'er With gems, a fitting crown to deck a princess' head. These treasures let Medea's children bear as gifts To Jason's bride. But first imbue them with the power Of magic, and invoke the aid of Hecate; The woe-producing sacrifices then prepare, And let the sacred flames through all our courts resound. The chorus, which is supposed to be present throughout the play, an interested though inactive witness of all that passes, has already been seen to be a partisan of Jason, and hostile to Medea. It now sings a choral interlude opening on the text "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned," and continuing with a prayer for Jason's safety. It then recounts the individual history of Jason's companions subsequent to the Argonautic expedition, showing how almost all came to an untimely end. These might indeed be said to have deserved their fate, for they volunteered to assist in that first impious voyage in quest of the golden fleece; but Jason should be spared the general doom, for the task had been imposed upon him by his usurping uncle, Pelias. As the next scene opens, the old nurse voices the feeling that we all have upon the eve of some expected but unknown horror. My spirit trembles, for I feel the near approach Of some unseen disaster. Swiftly grows her grief, Its own fires kindling; and again her passion's force Hath leaped to life. I oft have seen her, with the fit Of inspiration in her soul, confront the gods, And force the very heavens to her will. But now, A monstrous deed of greater moment far than these Medea is preparing. For, but now, did she With step of frenzy hurry off until she reached Her stricken home. There, in her chamber, all her stores Of magic wonders are revealed; once more she views The things herself hath held in fear these many years, Unloosing one by one her ministers of ill, Occult, unspeakable, and wrapt in mystery. We omit the remainder of the nurse's speech out of regard for Seneca's reputation as an artist, for in a long passage of sixty lines he proceeds to scour heaven, earth, and the waters under the earth, for every form of venomous serpent, noxious herb, and dread, uncanny thing that the mind of man can conceive; and by the time he has his full array of horrors marshaled before us, we have grown so familiar with the gruesome things that we cease to shiver at them. But at last the ingredients for the hell-broth are ready. These deadly, potent herbs she takes and sprinkles o'er With serpent venom, mixing all; and in the broth She mingles unclean birds, a wailing screech-owl's heart, A ghastly vampire's vitals torn from living flesh. Her magic poisons all she ranges for her use: The ravening power of hidden fire is held in these, While deep in others lurks the numbing chill of frost. Now magic runes she adds, more potent far. But lo! Her voice resounds, and as with maddened step she comes She chants her charms, while heaven and earth convulsive rock. Medea now enters, chanting her incantations. Madness has done fearful work with her in the last few hours. We see at a glance that she has indeed, as the nurse has told us, gone back to The things herself hath held in fear these many years, and has been changed from a true wife and loving mother to a wild and murderous witch once more. She calls upon the gods of the underworld, the silent throng from the dark world of spirits, the tormented shades, all to come to her present aid. She recounts her miraculous powers over nature which she has used aforetime, and which are still in her grasp. Thou radiant moon, Night's glorious orb, my supplications hear and come To aid; put on thy sternest guise, thou goddess dread Of triple form! Full oft have I with flowing locks, And feet unsandaled, wandered through thy darkling groves, And by thy inspiration summoned forth the rain From cloudless skies; the heaving seas have I subdued, And sent the vanquished waves to ocean's lowest depths. At my command the sun and stars together shine, The heavenly law reversed; while in the Arctic Sea The Bears have plunged. The seasons, too, obey my will: I've made the burning summer blossom as the spring, And hoary winter autumn's golden harvests bear. The Phasis sends his swirling waves to seek their source; And Ister, flowing to the sea with many mouths, His eager water checks and sluggish rolls along. The billows roar, the mad sea rages, though the winds All silent lie. At my command primeval groves Have lost their leafy shade, and Phoebus, wrapped in gloom, Has stood in middle heaven; while falling Hyades Attest my charms. Here again Seneca's love for the curious runs counter to his art; for he represents Medea as possessed of a veritable museum of curious charms which she has in some occult way gathered from various mythological and traditionary sources, and which she now takes occasion to recount. And it is to this catalogue that we are compelled to listen, though we are waiting in breathless suspense to know what is to come of all this preparation! After these and much more somewhat confused ravings, Medea at last says to her attendants: Take now Creüsa's bridal robe, and steep in these My potent drugs; and when she dons the clinging folds, Let subtle flames go stealing through her inmost heart. We are told that these magic flames are compounded of some of that fire which Prometheus stole from heaven; certain sulphurous fire which Vulcan had given her; a flame gained from the daring young Phaëthon, who had himself perished in flames because of his overweening folly; the fiery Chimera's breath, and some of "that fierce heat that parched the brazen bull of Colchis." The imagination flags before such an array of fires. The mystery of the burning robe and crown is no longer mysterious. Truly, he doth explain too much. But now, in more hurried strain, we hasten on the dénouement. Now, O Hecate, Give added force to these my deadly gifts, And strictly guard the hidden seeds of flame; Let them escape detection of the eye, But spring to instant life at human touch. Let burning streams run through her veins; In fervent heat consume her bones, And let her blazing locks outshine Her marriage torches!--Lo, my prayer Is heard: thrice have replied the hounds, The baying hounds of Hecate. Now all is ready: hither call My sons, and let them bear the gifts As costly presents to the bride. [_Enter sons._] Go, go, my sons, of hapless mother born, And win with gifts and many prayers The favor of the queen! Begone, but quick your way retrace, That I may fold you in a last embrace. [_Exit sons toward the palace, Medea in the opposite direction._] The chorus, which but dimly comprehends Medea's plans, briefly voices its dread of her unbridled passion. It knows that she has one day only before her banishment from Corinth, and prays that this day may soon be over. And now, as the chorus and the old nurse wait in trembling suspense for what is to follow, a messenger comes running breathless from the direction of the royal palace. All ears are strained to hear his words, for his face and manner betoken evil tidings. He gasps out his message: Lo, all is lost! The kingdom totters from its base! The daughter and the father lie in common dust! _Chorus._ By what snare taken? _Messenger._ By gifts, the common snare of kings. _Chorus._ What harm could lurk in them? _Messenger._ In equal doubt I stand; And, though my eyes proclaim the dreadful deed is done, I scarce can trust their witness. _Chorus._ What the mode of death? _Messenger._ Devouring flames consume the palace at the will Of her who sent them; there complete destruction reigns, While men do tremble for the very city's doom. _Chorus._ Let water quench the fire. _Messenger._ Nay, here is added wonder: The copious streams of water _feed_ the deadly flames; And opposition only fans their fiery rage To whiter heat. The very bulwarks feel their power. Medea has entered meanwhile, and has heard enough to be assured that her magic has been successful. The nurse, seeing her, and fearing for her mistress, exclaims: O haste thee, leave this land of Greece in headlong flight! _Medea._ Thou bidst me speed my flight? Nay, rather, had I fled, I should return for this. Strange bridal rites I see! But now, forgetful of all around her, she becomes absorbed in her own meditations. And here follows a masterful description of the struggle of conflicting passions in a human soul. The contending forces are mother-love and the passionate hate of an outraged wife. And when the mother-love is at last vanquished, we may be sure that all the woman is dead in her, and she becomes what the closing scene of the play portrays--an incarnate fury. _Medea._ Why dost thou falter, O my soul? 'Tis well begun; But still how small a portion of thy just revenge Is that which gives thee present joy? Not yet has love Been banished from thy maddened heart if 'tis enough That Jason widowed be. Pursue thy vengeful quest To acts as yet unknown, and steel thyself for these. Away with every thought and fear of God and man; Too lightly falls the rod that pious hands upbear. Give passion fullest sway; exhaust thy ancient powers; And let the worst thou yet hast done be innocent Beside thy present deeds. Come, let them know how slight Were those thy crimes already done; mere training they For greater deeds. For what could hands untrained in crime Accomplish? Or what mattered maiden rage? But now, I am Medea; in the bitter school of woe My powers have ripened. This mood culminates in an ecstasy of madness as she dwells upon her former successful deeds of blood. O the bliss of memory! My infant brother slain, his limbs asunder rent, My royal father spoiled of his ancestral realm, And Pelias' guiltless daughters lured to slay their sire! But here I must not rest; no untrained hand I bring To execute my deeds. But now, by what approach, Or by what weapon wilt thou threat the treacherous foe? Deep hidden in my secret heart have I conceived A purpose which I dare not utter. O I fear That in my foolish madness I have gone too far.-- I would that children had been born to him of this My hated rival. Still, since she hath gained his heart, His children too are hers.-- That punishment would be most fitting and deserved. Yes, now I see the final deed of crime, and thou, My soul, must face it. You, who once were called my sons, Must pay the penalty of these your father's crimes.-- My heart with horror melts, a numbing chill pervades My limbs, and all my soul is filled with sinking fear. Now wrath gives place, and, heedless of my husband's sins, The tender mother-instinct quite possesses me. And could I shed my helpless children's blood? Not so, O say not so, my maddened heart! Far from my hand And thought be that unnamable and hideous deed! What sin have they that shedding of their wretched blood Would wash away? Their sin--that Jason is their sire, And, deeper guilt, that I have borne them. Let them die; They are not mine.--Nay, nay, they are my own, my sons, And with no spot of guilt.--Full innocent they are, 'Tis true: my brother too was innocent. O soul, Why dost thou hesitate? Why flow these streaming tears While with contending thoughts my wavering heart is torn? As when conflicting winds contend in stubborn strife, And waves, to stormy waves opposed, the sea invade, And to their lowest sands the briny waters boil: With such a storm my heart is tossed. Hate conquers love, And love puts impious hate to flight. O yield thee, grief, To love! Then come, my sons, sole comfort of my heart, Come cling within thy mother's close embrace. Unharmed Your sire may keep you, while your mother holds you too. But she remembers, even as she embraces her children, that this is her last embrace. But flight and exile drive me forth! And even now My children must be torn away with tears and cries.-- Then let them die to Jason since they're lost to me. Once more has hate resumed her sway, and passion's fire Is hot within my soul. Now fury, as of yore, Reseeks her own. Lead on, I follow to the end! I would that I had borne twice seven sons, the boast Of Niobe! But all too barren have I been. Still will my two sufficient be to satisfy My brother and my sire. She suddenly falls distraught, as one who sees a dreadful vision. But whither hastes that throng Of furies? What their quest? What mean their brandished fires? Whom threats this hellish host with horrid, bloody brands? I hear the writhing lash of serpents huge resound. Whom seeks Magæra with her deadly torch?--Whose shade Comes gibbering there with scattered limbs?--It is my brother! Revenge he seeks; and we will grant his quest. Then come, Within my heart plunge all your torches--rend me--burn! For lo, my bosom open to your fury's stroke. O brother, bid those vengeful goddesses depart And go in peace down to the lowest shades of Hell. And do thou leave me to myself, and let this hand That slew thee with the sword now offer sacrifice Unto thy shade. Roused to the point of action by this vision, and still at the very pitch of frenzy, she plunges her dagger into the first of her sons. (The poet thus violates the canons of the classical drama in representing deeds of blood upon the stage.) But now hoarse shouts and the quick tramping of many feet are heard; and well does Medea know their meaning. What sudden uproar meets my ear? 'Tis Corinth's citizens on my destruction bent. Unto the palace roof I'll mount, and there complete This bloody sacrifice. [_To her other son._] Do thou come hence with me; But thee, poor senseless corse, within mine arms I'll bear. Now gird thyself, my heart, with strength. Nor must this deed Lose all its just renown because in secret done; But to the public eye my hand must be approved. Medea disappears within, leading one son, terrified and reluctant, and bearing the body of her other child in her arms. Jason and a crowd of Corinthian citizens rush upon the stage. Stopping in front of his own palace, he shouts: Ho, all ye loyal sons who mourn the death of kings! Come, let us seize the worker of this hideous crime. Now ply your arms and raze her palace to the ground. At this moment, though as yet unseen by those below, Medea emerges upon the palace roof. _Medea._ Now, now have I regained my regal power, my sire, My brother! Once again the Colchians hold the spoil Of precious gold, and by the magic of this hour I am a maid once more! O heavenly powers appeased At length! O festal hour! O nuptial day! On! on! Accomplished is the guilt, but not the recompense. Complete the task while yet thy hands are strong to act. Why dost thou linger still? Why dost thou hesitate Upon the threshold of the deed? Thou canst perform it. Now wrath has died within me, and my soul is filled With shame and deep remorse. Ah me, what have I done, Wretch that I am? Wretch that thou art, well mayest thou mourn, For thou hast done it!--At that thought delirious joy O'ermasters me and fills my heart which fain would grieve. And yet, methinks, the act was almost meaningless, Since Jason saw it not; for naught has been performed If to his grief be added not the woe of sight. _Jason._ [_discovering her._] Lo, there she stands upon the lofty battlements! Bring torches! Fire the house! That she may fall ensnared By those devices she herself hath planned. _Medea._ [_derisively._] Not so; But rather build a lofty pyre for these thy sons; Their funeral rites prepare. Already for thy bride And father have I done the service due the dead; For in their ruined palace have I buried them. One son of thine has met his doom; and this shall die Before his father's face.-- _Jason._ By all the gods, and by the perils of our flight, And by our marriage bond which I have ne'er betrayed, I pray thee spare the boy, for he is innocent. If aught of sin there be, 'tis mine. Myself I give To be the victim. Take my guilty soul for his. _Medea._ 'Tis for thy prayers and tears I draw, not sheathe the sword. Go now, and take thee maids for wives, thou faithless one; Abandon and betray the mother of thy sons. _Jason._ And yet, I pray thee, let one sacrifice atone. _Medea._ If in the blood of one my passion could be quenched, No vengeance had it sought. Though both my sons I slay, The number still is all too small to satisfy My boundless grief. _Jason._ Then finish what thou hast begun-- I ask no more--and grant at least that no delay Prolong my helpless agony. _Medea._ Now hasten not, Relentless passion, but enjoy a slow revenge. This day is in thy hands; its fertile hours employ. _Jason._ O take my life, thou heartless one. _Medea._ Thou bidst me pity-- Well--[_She slays the second child_]--'Tis done! No more atonement, passion, can I offer thee. Now hither lift thy tearful eyes, ungrateful one. Dost recognize thy wife? 'Twas thus of old I fled. The heavens themselves provide me with a safe retreat. Twin serpents bow their heads submissive to the yoke. For there suddenly appears in the air a chariot drawn by dragons. Now, father, take thy sons; while I, upon my car, With winged speed am borne aloft through realms of air. _Jason._ [_calling after as she vanishes_]. Speed on through realms of air that mortals never see: But heaven bear witness, whither thou art gone, no gods can be. 3. ROMAN COMEDY We have already said that the natural mimicry of the Italian peasantry no doubt for ages indulged itself in uncouth performances of a dramatic nature, which developed later into those mimes and farces, the forerunners of Roman comedy and the old Medley-Satura. We have also shown how powerfully Rome came under the influence of Greek literature and Greek art; and how the first actual invasion of Rome by Greek literature was made under Livius Andronicus, who, in 240 B. C., produced the first play before a Roman audience translated from the Greek into the Roman tongue. What the history of native comedy would have been, had it been allowed to develop entirely apart from Greek influence, we shall never know, since it did come powerfully under this influence, and retained permanently the form and character which it then acquired. When Rome turned to Greece for comedy, there were three models from which to choose: the Old Athenian Comedy of Eupolis, Cratinus, and Aristophanes, full of criticism boldly aimed at public men and policies, breathing the most independent republican spirit; the Middle Comedy, which was still critical, directed, however, more at classes of men and schools of thought than at individuals; and New Comedy, the product of the political decadence of Greece, written during a period (340-260 B. C.) when the independence which had made the trenchant satire of the Old Comedy possible had gone out of Greece. These plays aimed at amusement and not at reform. Every vestige of politics was squeezed out of them, and they were merely society plays, supposed to reflect the amusing and entertaining incidents of the social life of Athens. The best known writers of New Comedy were Philemon, Apollodorus, and Menander, only fragments of whose works have come down to us. Which of these models did the Romans follow? There is some evidence in the fragments of the plays of Nævius, a younger contemporary of Andronicus, and who produced his first play in 235 B. C., that he wrote in the bold spirit of the Old Comedy, and criticized the party policies and leaders of his time. But he soon discovered that the stern Roman character was quite incapable of appreciating a joke, especially when its point was directed against that ineffably sacred thing, the Roman dignity. For presuming to voice his criticisms from the stage the poet was imprisoned and afterward banished from Rome. Perhaps warned by the experience of Nævius, Roman comic poets turned to the perfectly colorless and safe society plays of the New Comedy for translation and imitation. They not only kept within the limitations of these plays as to spirit and plot, but even confined the scene itself and characters to some foreign city, generally Athens, and for the most part were careful to exclude everything Roman or suggestive of Rome from their plays. Judging from the remaining fragments, there must have been many writers of comedy during this period of first impulse; but of all these, the works of only two are preserved to us. These are Titus Maccius Plautus, who died in 184 B. C., and Publius Terentius Afer, commonly known as Terence, who was born in 195 B. C., and died in 159 B. C. These two writers have much in common, but there are also many important points of difference. Plautus displays a rougher, more vigorous strength and a broader humor; and, within the necessary limitations of which we have spoken, he is more national in his spirit, more popular in his appeal. Terence, on the other hand, no doubt because he was privileged to associate with the select and literary circle of which Scipio and Lælius were the center, was more polished and correct in style and diction. But while he thus gains in elegance as compared with Plautus, he loses the breezy vigor of the older poet. As an illustration of the society play of the New Comedy, we are giving with some abridgment the _Phormio_ of Terence, which we have taken the liberty of translating into somewhat free modern vernacular. This is perhaps the best of the six plays of Terence which we have, and was modeled by him after a Greek play of Apollodorus. It is named _Phormio_ from the saucy parasite who takes the principal rôle. The other characters are two older men, brothers, Demipho and Chremes; two young men, sons of these, Antipho and Phædria; a smart slave, Geta; a villainous slave-driver, Dorio; Nausistrata, wife of Chremes, and Sophrona, an old nurse. The scene, which does not change throughout the play, is laid in Athens. As for the plot, it will develop itself as we read. A shock-headed slave comes lounging in from the direction of the Forum and stops in front of Demipho's house. He carries in his hand a purse of money which, it appears, he has brought in payment of a debt: Friend Geta paid me a call yesterday; I've been owing him a beggarly balance on a little account some time back, and he wanted me to pay it. So I've got it here. It seems that his young master has gone and got married; and this money, I'm thinking, is being scraped together as a present for the bride. Things have come to a pretty pass, to be sure, when the poor must all the time be handing over to the rich. What my poor gossip has saved up out of his allowance, a penny at a time, almost starving himself to do it, this precious bride will gobble up at one fell swoop, little thinking how hard Geta had to work to get it. Pretty soon he will be struck for another present when a child is born; for another when its birthday comes around, and so on, and so on. The mother will get it all; the child will be only an excuse. But here comes Geta himself. The private marriage of the young man Antipho, mentioned in this slave's soliloquy, is one of the important issues of the play. The real situation is revealed in the following conversation between the two slaves. After the payment of the money and an interchange of civilities, says the friend: _Davus._ But what's the matter with you? _Geta._ Me? Oh, you don't know in what a fix we are. _Da._ How's that? _Ge._ Well, I'll tell you if you won't say anything about it. _Da._ O, come off, you dunce, you have just trusted money with me; are you afraid to lend me words? Besides, what good would it do me to give you away? _Ge._ Well, listen then. You know our old man's brother Chremes? _Da._ Well, I should say. _Ge._ And his son Phædria? _Da._ As well as I do you. _Ge._ Both the old men went away, Chremes to Lemnos, and his brother to Cilicia, and left me here to take care of their two sons. My guardian spirit must have had it in for me. At first I began to oppose the boys; but there--my faithfulness to the old men I paid for with my bones. Then I just gave it up and let them do as they pleased. At first, my young master Antipho was all right; but his cousin Phædria lost no time in getting into trouble. He fell in love with a little lute-player--desperately in love. She was a slave, and owned by a most villainous fellow. Phædria had no money to buy her freedom with--his father had looked out for that; so the poor boy could only feast his eyes upon her, tag her around and walk back and forth to school with her. Antipho and I had nothing else to do, so we watched Phædria. Well, one day when we were all sitting in the barber-shop across the street from the little slave-girl's schoolhouse, a fellow came in crying like a baby. When we asked him what the trouble was, he said: "Poverty never seemed to me so dreadful before. Just now I saw a poor girl here in the neighborhood crying over her dead mother. And there wasn't a single soul around, not an acquaintance or a relative or any one at all to help at the funeral, except one little old woman, her nurse. I did feel sorry for the girl. She was a beauty, too." Well, he stirred us all up. Then Antipho speaks up and says: "Let's go and see her; you lead the way." So we went and saw her. She _was_ a beauty. And she wasn't fixed up a bit either: her hair was all hanging loose, she was bare-footed, unkempt, eyes red with weeping, dress travel-stained. So she must have been an all-round beauty, or she couldn't have seemed so then. Phædria says: "She'll do pretty well." But Antipho-- _Da._ O yes, I know, he fell in love with her. _Ge._ But do you know how much? Wait and see how it came out. Next day he went straight to the nurse and begged her to let him see the girl; but the old woman wouldn't allow it. She said he wasn't acting on the square; that the girl was a well-born citizen of Athens, and that if he wanted to marry her he might do so in the legal way. If he had any other object it was no use. Our young man didn't know what to do. He wanted to marry her fast enough, but he was afraid of his absent father. _Da._ Why, wouldn't his father have forgiven him when he came back? _Ge._ What, he allow his son to marry a poor girl that nobody knew anything about? Not much! _Da._ Well, what came next? _Ge._ What next? There is a certain parasite named Phormio, a bold fellow--curse his impudence! _Da._ What did he do? _Ge._ He gave this precious piece of advice. Says he: "There is a law in Athens that orphan girls shall marry their next of kin, and the same law requires the next of kin to marry them. Now I'll say that you are related to this girl, and will bring suit against you to compel you to marry her. I'll pretend that I am her guardian. We'll go before the judges; who her father was, who her mother, how she is related to you--all this I'll make up on the spur of the moment. You won't attempt any defense and of course I shall win the suit. I'll be in for a row when your father gets back, but what of that? You will be safely married to the girl by that time." _Da._ Well, that _was_ a jolly bluff. _Ge._ So the youth was persuaded, the thing was done, they went to court, our side lost the suit, and Antipho married the girl. _Da._ What's that? _Ge._ Just what I say. _Da._ O Geta, what will become of you? _Ge._ I'll be blessed if I know. I'm sure of one thing, though: whatever happens, I'll bear it with equanimity. _Da._ That's the talk! You've got the spirit of a man! But what about the pedagogue, the little lute-player's young man? How is he getting on? _Ge._ Only so so. _Da._ He hasn't much to pay for her, I suppose? _Ge._ Not a red; only his hopes. _Da._ Has Antipho's father come back yet? _Ge._ No. _Da._ When do you expect him? _Ge._ I'm not sure, but I have just heard that a letter has been received from him down at the custom-house, and I'm going for it now. _Da._ Well, Geta, can I do anything more for you? _Ge._ No. Be good to yourself. Good-by. We see from the foregoing conversation what the situation is at the opening of the play, and can guess at the problems to be solved by the development of the action: How shall Phædria obtain the money with which to buy his sweetheart? and how shall Antipho's father be reconciled to the marriage so that he may not annul it or disown both the young people upon his return? The two cousins Antipho and Phædria now appear, each envying the seemingly happy lot of the other, and deploring his own. Antipho has already repented of his hasty action, and is panic-stricken when he thinks of the wrath of his father. While Phædria can think only of his friend's good fortune in being married to the girl of his heart. Geta's sudden appearance from the direction of the harbor strikes terror into Antipho, and both the cousins retire to the back of the stage. The slave is evidently much disturbed, though the young men can catch only a word now and then. Desirous, yet fearful of knowing the worst, Antipho now calls out to his slave, who turns and comes up to him. _Antipho._ Come, give us your news, for goodness' sake, and be quick. _Ge._ All right, I will. _Ant._ Well, out with it, then. _Ge._ Just now at the harbor-- _Ant._ What, my-- _Ge._ That's right. _Ant._ I'm done for! Phædria has not Antipho's fear-sharpened imagination to get Geta's news from these fragmentary statements, and asks the slave to tell him what it is all about. _Geta._ I tell you that I have seen his father, your uncle. _Ant._ [_frantically_]. How shall I meet this sudden disaster? But if it has come to this, Phanium [_his wife_], that I am to be separated from you, then I don't want to live any longer. _Ge._ There, there, Antipho, in such a state of things you ought to be all the more on the watch. Fortune favors the brave, you know. _Ant._ [_with choking voice_]. I'm not myself to-day. _Ge._ But you must be, Antipho; for if your father sees that you are timid and meek about it, he'll think of course that you are in the wrong. _Ant._ But, I tell you, I can't do any different. _Ge._ What would you do if you had some harder job yet? _Ant._ Since I can't do this, I couldn't do that. _Ge._ Come, Phædria, there's no use fooling with this fellow; we're only wasting our time. Let's be off. _Phæd._ All right, come on. _Ant._ O say, hold on! What if I pretend to be bold. [_Strikes an attitude_]. Will that do? _Ge._ Stuff and nonsense. _Ant._ Well, how will this expression do? _Ge._ It won't do at all. _Ant._ How is this? _Ge._ That's more like it. _Ant._ Is this better? _Ge._ That's just right. Keep on looking that way. And remember to answer him word for word, tit for tat, and don't let the angry old man get the better of you. _Ant._ I--I--w-won't. _Ge._ Tell him you were forced to it against your will-- _Phæd._ By the law, by the court. _Ge._ Do you catch on?--But who is this old man I see coming up the street? Antipho casts one look of terror down the street, cries: "It's father himself, I just can't stay," and takes to his heels. _Phæd._ Now, Geta, what next? _Ge._ Well, you're in for a row; and I shall be hung up by the heels and flogged, unless I am much mistaken. But what we were advising Antipho to do just now, we must do ourselves. _Phæd._ O, come off with your "musts"! Tell me just what to do. _Ge._ Do you remember how you said when we were planning how to get out of blame for this business that "Phormio's suit was just dead easy, sure to win"? Well, that's the game we want to work now,--or a better one yet, if you can think of one. Now you go ahead and I'll wait here in ambush, in case you want any help. They retire to the back of the stage as Demipho enters from the direction of the harbor. The old man is in a towering rage, for he has heard the news, which by this time is all over town. After listening awhile to his angry soliloquy, and interjecting sneering comments _sotto voce_, Geta and Phædria conclude that it is time to act. So Phædria advances to his uncle with an effusive welcome: _Phæd._ My dear uncle, how do you do? _Demipho_ [_crustily_]. How are you? But where is Antipho? _Phæd._ I'm so glad to see-- _Dem._ Oh, no doubt; but answer my questions. _Phæd._ Oh, he's all right; he's here in the house. But, uncle, has anything gone wrong with you? _Dem._ Well, I should say so. _Phæd._ What do you mean? _Dem._ How can you ask, Phædria? This is a pretty marriage you have gotten up here in my absence. _Phæd._ Why, uncle, you aren't angry with him for that, are you? _Dem._ Not angry with him, indeed? I can hardly wait to see him and let him know how through his own fault his indulgent father has become most stern and angry with him. _Phæd._ Now, uncle, if Antipho has been at fault in that he wasn't careful enough of his purse or reputation, I haven't a word to say to shield him from blame. But if some one with malicious intent has laid a trap for him and got the best of him, is that our fault, or that of the judges, who often decide against the rich through envy, and in favor of the poor out of pity? _Dem._ But how is any judge to know the justice of your case, when you don't say a word in self-defense, as I understand he didn't? _Phæd._ Well, in that he acted like a well-bred young man; when he came before the judges, he couldn't remember a word of his speech that he had prepared; he was so bashful. Seeing that Phædria is getting along so well, Geta decides to come forward. _Ge._ Hail, master! I'm very glad to see you home safe again. _Dem._ [_with angry irony_]. Hail! A fine guardian you are! A regular pillar of the family! So you are the fellow that I left in charge of my son when I went away? Geta plays injured innocence, and wants to know what Demipho would have had him do. Being a slave, he could neither plead the young man's cause nor testify in his behalf. _Dem._ O, yes; I admit all that. But even if the girl was never so much related, he needn't have married her. Why didn't you take the other legal alternative, give her a dowry, and let her find another husband? Had he no more sense than to marry her himself? _Ge._ O, he had sense enough; it was the dollars he lacked. _Dem._ Well, he might have borrowed the money. _Ge._ Borrowed it? That's easier said than done. _Dem._ He might have gotten it from a usurer on a pinch. _Ge._ Well, I do like that! As if any one would lend him money in your lifetime! The old man, beaten to a standstill, can only fall back upon his obstinate determination, and vow that he won't have it. _Dem._ No, no; it shall not be, it cannot be! I won't permit this marriage to continue for a single day longer. Now, I want to see that other fellow, or at least find out where he lives. _Ge._ Do you mean Phormio? _Dem._ I mean that woman's guardian. _Ge._ I'll go get him for you. _Dem._ Where is Antipho now? _Ge._ O, he's out somewhere. _Dem._ Phædria, you go hunt him up and bring him to me. _Phæd._ Yes, sir; I'll go find him right away. _Ge._ [_leering at Phædria as the latter passes him_]. You mean you'll go to Pamphila [_Phædria's sweetheart_]. Demipho, left alone, announces that he will get some friends together to advise him in the business, and prepare him for his interview with Phormio. The act ends with the prospect pretty dark for Antipho, and with no plan of action formed in his behalf. We are now introduced, at the opening of the second act, to the actor of the title rôle, the keen-witted, reckless parasite, Phormio. He is accompanied upon the stage by Geta, who is telling him the situation. Geta beseeches Phormio to come to their aid, since he is, after all, entirely responsible for the trouble. Phormio remains buried in thought awhile, and then announces that he has his plans formed, and is ready to meet the old man. [_Enter Demipho and three friends from the other side of the stage. Demipho is talking to his friends._] _Dem._ Did you ever hear of any one suffering more outrageous treatment than I have? I beg you to help me. _Ge._ [_apart to Phormio_]. My, but he's mad! _Phor._ You just watch me now; I'll stir him up. [_Speaking in a loud enough tone to be overheard by Demipho_]. By all the powers! Does Demipho say that Phanium isn't related to him? Does Demipho say so? _Ge._ Yes, he does. Demipho is caught by this bait, as Phormio had intended, and says to his friends in an undertone: I believe this is the very fellow I was seeking. Let's go a little nearer. Phormio continues in a loud voice to berate Demipho for his neglect of the supposed relative, while Geta noisily takes his master's part. Demipho now interrupts this sham quarrel, and after snubbing Geta, he turns with mock politeness to Phormio. _Dem._ Young man, I beg your pardon, but will you be kind enough to tell me who that friend of yours was that you are talking about, and how he said I was related to him? _Phor._ O, you ask as if you didn't know. _Dem._ As if I didn't know? _Phor._ Yes. _Dem._ And I say that I _don't_ know. Now do you, who say that I do, refresh my memory. _Phor._ Didn't you know your own cousin? _Dem._ O, you make me tired. Tell me his name. _Phor._ The name? Why, certainly. But now the name by which he had heard Phanium speak of her father has slipped from his mind, and he is forced to awkward silence. Demipho is quick to see his embarrassment: Well, why don't you speak? _Phor._ [_aside_]. By George! I'm in a box! I have forgotten the name. _Dem._ What's that you say? _Phor._ [_aside in a whisper to Geta_]. Say, Geta, if you remember that name we heard the other day, tell it to me. [_Then determining to bluff it out, he turns to Demipho_]. No, I won't tell you the name. You are trying to pump me, as if you didn't know it already. _Dem._ [_angrily_]. I pump you? _Ge._ [_whispering_]. It's Stilpho. _Phor._ [_to Demipho_]. And yet what do I care? It's Stilpho. _Dem._ Who? _Phor._ [_shouting it at him_]. Stilpho, I say. Did you know him? _Dem._ No, I didn't, And I never had a relative of that name. _Phor._ No? Aren't you ashamed of yourself? Now if he had left a matter of ten talents-- _Dem._ Confound your impudence! _Phor._ You would be the first to come forward, with a very good memory, and trace your connection with him for generations back. _Dem._ Well, have it as you say. Then when I had come into court. I should have told just how she was related to me. Now you do the same. Come, how is she related to me? _Phor._ I have already explained that to those who had a right to ask--the judges. If my statement was false then, why didn't your son refute it? _Dem._ Don't mention my son to me! I can't possibly express my disgust at his folly. _Phor._ Then do you, who are so wise, go before the magistrates and ask them to reopen the case. [_This, according to the law of Athens, was impossible._] Demipho has twice been completely beaten in a war of words--once by Geta and now by Phormio. He chokes down his rage as best he can, and now makes a proposition to his enemy. He is still too angry to express himself very connectedly. _Dem._ Although I have been outraged in this business, still, rather than have a quarrel with such as you, just as if she were related to me, since the law bids to give her a dowry, take her away from here, and make it _fui minæ_. _Phor._ Ho! ho! ho! Well, you _are_ a cheerful idiot! _Dem._ What's the matter? Have I asked anything wrong? Or can't I get even what is my legal right? _Phor._ Well, really now, I should like to ask you, when you have once married a girl, does the law bid you then to give her some money and send her packing? On the contrary, it is for the very purpose that a citizen of Athens may not come to shame on account of her poverty, that her next of kin is bidden to take her to wife. And this purpose you are attempting to thwart. _Dem._ Yes, that's just it--"her next of kin." But where do I come in on that score? _Phor._ O pshaw! don't thresh over old straw. _Dem._ Sha'n't I? I vow I shall not stop until I have accomplished my ends. After further badgering and bear-baiting on the part of Phormio, Demipho finally falls back upon his dogged determination as before, and gives his ultimatum: See here, Phormio, we have said enough. Unless you take immediate steps to get that woman away, I'll throw her out of the house. I have spoken, Phormio. Phormio is not to be outdone in bluster, and adopting Demipho's formula, as well as his tone and gestures, he says: And if you touch that girl except as becomes a free-born citizen, I'll bring a cracking suit against you. I have spoken, Demipho. So saying, he turns and swaggers off the stage, much to the secret delight of Geta, the impotent rage of Demipho, and the open-mouthed amazement of the three friends. Demipho now appeals to his friends for advice as to how to proceed in this crisis; but they are so obsequious in their manner, and so contradictory in their advice, that Demipho is in greater perplexity than before, and decides to take no action at all until his brother Chremes comes home. He accordingly leaves the stage in the direction of the harbor, his three friends having already bowed themselves out. This temporary disposition of Antipho's case is fittingly followed by the appearance of the young man himself in self-reproachful soliloquy that he should have run away and left his young wife in the lurch. Geta appears, and tells Antipho all that has passed in his absence, much to Antipho's gratitude and relief, though he sorely dreads the return of his uncle, who, it seems, is to be the arbiter of his destiny. Phædria and his troubles now claim the center of the stage. As Antipho and Geta stand talking, they hear a pitiful outcry, and looking up, they see a black-browed, evil-faced, typical stage villain, who we presently discover is Dorio, the slave-driver who owns Phædria's sweetheart. Things have evidently come to a crisis with that young man. He is following Dorio, and imploring him to wait three days until he can get money enough to buy his sweetheart. But Dorio says he has a customer who offers cash down. After much entreaty, however, he tells Phædria that if the money is forthcoming before to-morrow morning he will consider the bargain closed. So there Phædria's business is brought to a head, and the attention of us all must be at once turned to what has suddenly become the paramount issue. What is to be done? Phædria is too hysterical to be of any help in the matter, and Antipho tells the faithful and resourceful Geta that he must get the money somehow. Geta says that this is liable to be a pretty difficult matter, and doesn't want to undertake it, but is finally persuaded by Phædria's pitiful despair to try. He asks Phædria how much money he needs. _Phæd._ Only six hundred dollars. _Ge._ Six hundred dollars! Whew! she's pretty dear, Phædria. _Phæd._ [_indignantly_]. It's no such thing! She's cheap at the price. _Ge._ Well, well! I'll get you the money somehow. The third act gives a picture of the situation from the point of view of the two old men, Demipho and Chremes, for the latter has just returned from Lemnos, and now comes upon the stage fresh from his travels, in company with his brother. We now discover for the first time what is probably the real reason for the opposition to Antipho's marriage to the orphan girl. _Dem._ Well, Chremes, did you bring your daughter with you, for whose sake you went to Lemnos? _Chr._ No, I didn't. _Dem._ Why not? _Chr._ When her mother saw that I was delaying my coming too long, and that my negligence was harming our daughter, who had now reached a marriageable age, she simply packed up her whole household, and came here to hunt me up--so they told me over there. And then I heard from the skipper who brought them that they reached Athens all right. _Dem._ Have you heard what has happened to my son while I was gone? _Chr._ Yes, and it's knocked all my plans into a cocked hat. For if I make a match for my daughter with some outsider, I'll have to tell him categorically just how she comes to be mine, and who her mother is. I was secure in our proposed match between her and Antipho, for I knew that my secret was as safe in your hands as in my own; whereas if an outsider comes into the family, he will keep the secret as long as we are on good terms; but if we ever quarrel, he will know more than is good for me [_looking around cautiously, and speaking with bated breath_]; and I'm dreadfully afraid that my wife will find it out in some way. And if she does, the only thing left for me to do is to take myself off and leave home; for my soul is the only thing I can call my own in this house. From this it develops that Chremes has had a wife and daughter in Lemnos, and now lives in wholesome fear of his too masterful Athenian spouse. Geta now comes upon the stage in fine spirits, loud in his praises of the shrewdness of Phormio, with whom he has just concluded a scheme for getting the money. He is in search of Demipho, and is surprised to find Chremes on hand as well. Meanwhile, Antipho has come cautiously upon the stage in search of Geta, just as the latter goes boldly up to the two old men. As yet unseen by any one, Antipho retires to the back of the stage, and overhears the following conversation: _Ge._ O, how do you do, good Chremes! _Chr._ [_crustily_]. How are you? _Ge._ How are things with you? _Chr._ One finds many changes on coming back, as is natural enough--very many. _Ge._ That's so. Have you heard about Antipho? _Chr._ The whole story. _Ge._ [_to Demipho_]. O, you've been telling him? [_To Chremes_]. It's a shame, Chremes, to be taken in that way! _Dem._ I have been discussing the situation with him. _Ge._ I've been thinking it over, too, and I think I have found a way out of it. _Chr._ How's that, Geta? _Dem._ A way out of it? _Ge._ [_in a confidential tone_]. Just now when I left you, I chanced to meet Phormio. _Chr._ Who's Phormio? _Ge._ That girl's-- _Chr._ O, I see. _Ge._ I thought I'd test the fellow, so I got him off alone, and said: "Now, Phormio, don't you see that it's better to settle this matter in a friendly way than to have a row about it? My master is a gentleman, and hates a fuss. If it wasn't for that he would have sent this girl packing, as all his friends advised him to do." _Ant._ [_aside_]. What in the world is this fellow getting at? _Ge._ "Do you say that the law will make him suffer for it if he casts her out? Oh, we've looked into that point. I tell you you'll sweat for it if you ever get into a law-suit with that man. He's a regular corker. But suppose you do win out; it's not a matter of life and death, but only of damages. Now here, just between ourselves, how much will you take, cash down, to take this girl away and make us no more trouble." _Ant._ [_aside_]. Good heavens, is the fellow crazy? _Ge._ "For I know that if you make any sort of an offer, my master is a good fellow, and will take you up in a minute." _Dem._ Who told you to say that? _Chr._ There, there, we couldn't have gained our point better. _Ant._ [_aside_]. I'm done for! _Dem._ Well, go on with your story. _Ge._ At first the fellow was wild. _Chr._ Come, come, tell us how much he wants. _Ge._ How much? Altogether too much. Said he: "Well, a matter of twelve hundred dollars would be about right." _Dem._ Confound his impudence! Has he no shame? _Ge._ That's just what I said. Said I: "What if he were marrying off an only daughter? Small gain it's been to him not to have raised a girl. One has been found to call for a dowry just the same." Well, to make a long story short, he finally said: "I've wanted from the first to marry the daughter of my old friend, as was right that I should; but, to tell you the honest truth, I've got to find a wife who will bring me in a little something, enough to pay my debts with. And even now, if Demipho is willing to pay me as much as I am getting from the other girl to whom I am engaged, I'd just as soon turn around and marry this girl of yours." _Dem._ What if he is over his head in debt? _Ge._ Says he: "I have a little farm mortgaged for two hundred dollars." _Dem._ Well, well! Let him marry her; I'll give him that much. _Ge._ "And then there's a bit of a house mortgaged for two hundred more." _Dem._ Ow! that's too much. _Chr._ No, that's all right. Let him have that two hundred from me. _Ge._ "Then I must buy a little maid for my wife," says he, "and I've got to have a little more furniture, and then there's all the wedding expenses. Put all that down at an even two hundred more." _Dem._ [_in a rage_]. Then let him bring as many suits as he wants to. I won't give a cent. What, is the dirty fellow making game of me? _Chr._ O, do please keep still! I only ask that you have your son marry that girl that we know of. This girl is being sent off for my sake; so it's only right that I should pay for it. _Ge._ Phormio says to let him know as soon as possible if you are going to give Phanium to him, in order that he may break his engagement with the other girl; for her people have promised the same dowry. _Chr._ Well, we will give it to him, so let him break his other engagement and marry the girl. _Dem._ And a plague on him into the bargain! _Chr._ [_to Demipho_]. Very fortunately, I have brought some money with me--the rent I have collected from my wife's Lemnian estate. I'll take it out of that, and tell her that you needed it. The two old men go into Chremes' house; and now Geta finds himself confronted by the indignant Antipho, who has hardly been able to contain himself during this (to him) inexplicable dialogue, in which his wife was being coolly bargained away. It is only with the greatest difficulty that Geta can make the angry bridegroom appreciate the ruse by which the money has been obtained for Phædria's use. In the end Antipho goes off to tell the news to Phædria. Demipho and Chremes now come out, the former with a bag of money in his hand. He wants it understood that no one can cheat him; he is going to be very business-like and have ample witness to the transactions. Chremes' only desire is that the business may be settled as soon as possible. Demipho now tells Geta to lead the way to Phormio, and they start toward the Forum. Chremes' troubles are only in part allayed. His Lemnian daughter's marriage with Antipho seems now safely provided for, but where _is_ his Lemnian daughter and her mother? That they are here in Athens fills him with terror. He paces back and forth in deep thought, muttering: Where _can_ I find those women now, I wonder? And just at this moment out from Demipho's house comes old Sophrona, Phanium's nurse, who also seems to be in great distress: O, what _shall_ I do? Where shall I find a friend in my distress, or to whom shall I go for advice? Where get help? For I'm afraid that my young mistress is going to get into trouble from this marriage that I persuaded her into. I hear that the young man's father is very much put out about it. _Chr._ [_aside_]. Who in the world is this old woman coming out of my brother's house? _So._ But want made me advise her as I did, though I knew that the marriage was a bit shaky, in order that for awhile at least we might be sure of our living. _Chr._ [_aside in great excitement_]. By Jove! unless I'm much mistaken, or my eyes don't see straight, that's my daughter's nurse! _So._ And I can't get any trace of the man who is her father. _Chr._ [_aside_]. Shall I go up to her, or shall I wait until I understand better what she's talking about? _So._ But if I could only find him now, I'd have nothing to fear. _Chr._ [_aside_]. It _is_ Sophrona; I'll speak to her. [_Calling softly_]. Sophrona! _So._ Who is this I hear calling my name? _Chr._ Look here, Sophrona. _So._ [_finally looking the right way_]. My goodness gracious! Is this Stilpho? _Chr._ No. _So._ No? _Chr._ [_drawing her cautiously away from the vicinity of his house_]. Say, Sophrona, come away a little from that door, will you? And don't you ever call me by that name again. _So._ O, my goodness, aren't you the man you always said you were? _Chr._ Sh! _So._ What makes you so afraid of that door? _Chr._ I've got a savage wife shut up there. I gave you the wrong name on purpose, that you might not thoughtlessly blurt it out in public sometime, and so let my wife here get wind of it. _So._ And so that's the reason why we poor women could never find you here. _Chr._ Tell me now what business you have with this household from which you have just come out. Where are those women? _So._ [_with a burst of tears_]. O dear me! _Chr._ How? What's that? Aren't they alive? _So._ Your daughter is. But the mother, sick at heart over this business, is dead. _Chr._ That's too bad! _So._ And then, considering that I was just a lonely old woman, in a strange city without a cent of money, I think I did pretty well for the girl, for I married her off to the young man the heir of this family here. _Chr._ What, Antipho? _So._ Why, yes! _Chr._ You don't mean to say he's got two wives? _So._ O gracious, no! This is the only one. _Chr._ But what about that other girl who is said to be related to him? _So._ Why, this is the one. _Chr._ [_beside himself with joy and wonder_]. You don't mean it! _So._ That was a cooked up scheme that her lover might marry her without a dowry. _Chr._ Thank heaven for that! How often things come about by mere chance that you wouldn't dare hope for! Here I find my daughter happily married to the very man I had picked out for her! What my brother and I were taking the greatest pains to bring about, here this old woman, without any help from us, all by herself, has done. _So._ But now, sir, we've got to bestir ourselves. The young man's father is back, and they say he's in a terrible stew about it. _Chr._ O, there's no danger on that score. But, for heaven's sake, don't let any one find out that she's my daughter. _So._ Well, no one shall find it out from me. _Chr._ Now you follow me, we'll talk about the rest inside. [_They go into Demipho's house._] Demipho and Geta appear in a brief scene, in which the former grumblingly comments upon the bargain which they have just made with Phormio. He disappears into his brother's house. Geta, left alone, soliloquizes upon the situation and sums it up so far as it is known to him. As he disappears into Demipho's house, the latter is seen coming out of his brother's house with his brother's wife, Nausistrata, whom in fulfilment of his promise he is taking in to see Phanium in order to reconcile the bride to the new arrangements that have been made for her. And just at this moment Chremes comes rushing out of his brother's house; he calls to Demipho, not seeing in his excitement that Nausistrata is also on the stage. _Chr._ Say, Demipho! Have you paid the money yet? _Dem._ Yes, I've tended to that. _Chr._ Well, I wish you hadn't. [_Aside as he sees his wife_]. Gracious! There's my wife! I almost said too much. _Dem._ Why do you wish it, Chremes? _Chr._ O, that's all right. _Dem._ What do you mean? Have you talked with the girl on whose account I'm taking Nausistrata in? _Chr._ Yes, I've had a talk with her. _Dem._ Well, what does she say? _Chr._ She can't be disturbed. _Dem._ Why can't she? _Chr._ O, because--they're so fond of each other. _Dem._ What difference does that make to us? _Chr._ A great deal. And besides, I've found that she's related to us, after all. _Dem._ What's that? You're off your base. _Chr._ No, I'm not. I know what I'm talking about. I remember all about it now. _Dem._ Surely, you _are_ crazy. _Naus._ I beg you won't do any harm to a relative. _Dem._ She's no relative. _Chr._ Don't say that. She gave the wrong name for her father. That's where you make your mistake. _Dem._ Nonsense! Didn't she know her own father? _Chr._ Yes, she knew him. _Dem._ Well, then, why didn't she tell his right name? _Chr._ [_apart to Demipho, in low, desperate tones_]. Won't you ever let up? Won't you understand? _Dem._ How can I, if you tell me nothing? _Chr._ O, you'll be the death of me. _Naus._ I wonder what it's all about. _Dem._ I'll be blest if I know. _Chr._ Do you want to know? I swear to you there's no one nearer to her than you and I. _Dem._ Good gracious! Let's go to her, then. Let's all together get to the bottom of this business. [_He starts toward his house with Nausistrata_]. _Chr._ I say, Demipho! _Dem._ Well, what now? _Chr._ [_angrily_]. Have you so little confidence in me as that? _Dem._ Do you want me to take your word for it? Do you want me to seek no further in the matter? All right, so be it. But what about the daughter of our friend? What's to become of her? _Chr._ She'll be all right. _Dem._ Are we to drop her, then? _Chr._ Why not? _Dem._ And is Phanium to remain? _Chr._ Just so. _Dem._ Well, Nausistrata, I guess we will excuse you. [_Exit Nausistrata into her own house_]. Now, Chremes, what in the world is all this about? _Chr._ Is that door tight shut? _Dem._ Yes. _Chr._ [_leading his brother well out of earshot of the house_]. O Jupiter! The gods are on our side. My daughter I have found--married--to your son! _Dem._ What? How can that be? _Chr._ It isn't safe to talk about it here. _Dem._ Well, go inside then. _Chr._ But see here, I don't want even our sons to find this out. [_They go into Demipho's house._] Antipho has seen Phædria's business happily settled, and now comes in, feeling very gloomy about his own affairs. His deep dejection serves as a happy contrast to the fortunate turn of his affairs which we have just witnessed. In his unsettled state he starts off to find the faithful Geta, when Phormio comes on the stage, in high spirits over his success in cheating the old men out of their money in behalf of Phædria. It is his own rôle now, he says, to keep well in the background. Now the door of Demipho's house opens and out rushes Geta, shouting and gesticulating: O luck! O great good luck! How suddenly have you heaped your choicest gifts on my master Antipho this day! _Ant._ [_apart_]. What can he mean? _Ge._ And freed us all from fear! But what am I stopping here for? I'll throw my cloak over my shoulder and hurry up and find the man, that he may know how things have turned out. _Ant._ [_aside_]. Do you know what this fellow is talking about? _Pho._ No, do you? _Ant._ No. _Pho._ No more do I. _Ge._ I'll run over to Dorio's house. They are there now. _Ant._ [_calling_]. Hello, Geta! _Ge._ [_without looking back_]. Hello yourself! That's an old trick, to call a fellow back when he's started to run. _Ant._ I say, Geta! _Ge._ Keep it up; you won't catch me with your mean trick. _Ant._ Won't you stop? _Ge._ You go hang. _Ant._ That's what will happen to you, you rogue, unless you hold on. _Ge._ This fellow must be one of the family by the way he threatens. But isn't it the man I'm after--the very man? Come here right off. _Ant._ What is it? _Ge._ O, of all men alive you are the luckiest! There's no doubt about it, Antipho, you are the pet child of heaven. _Ant._ I wish I were. But please tell me how I am to believe it. _Ge._ Isn't it enough if I say that you are fairly dripping with joy? _Ant._ You're just killing me. _Pho._ [_coming forward_]. Why don't you quit your big talk, Geta, and tell us your news. _Ge._ O, you were there, were you, Phormio? _Pho._ Yes, I was; but hurry up. _Ge._ Well, then, listen. Just now, after we gave you the money in the Forum, we went straight home; and then my master sent me in to your wife. _Ant._ What for? _Ge._ Never mind that now, Antipho; it has nothing to do with this story. When I am about to enter the woman's apartments, the slave-boy Mida runs up to me, plucks me by the coat and pulls me back. I look around, and ask him what he does that for; he says, it's against orders for any one to go to the young mistress. "Sophrona has just taken the old man's brother Chremes in there," he says, "and he's in there with 'em now." As soon as I heard that, I tiptoed toward the door of the room--got there, stood still, held my breath and put my ear to the key-hole. So I listened as hard as I could to catch what they said. _Ant._ Good for you, Geta! _Ge._ And then I heard the finest piece of news. I declare I almost shouted for joy! _Ant._ What for? _Ge._ What do you think? _Ant._ I haven't the slightest idea. _Ge._ But, I tell you, it was the grandest thing! Your uncle turns out to be--the father of--Phanium--your wife! _Ant._ What? How can that be? _Ge._ He lived with her mother secretly in Lemnos. _Pho._ Nonsense! Wouldn't the girl have known her own father? _Ge._ Be sure there's some explanation of it, Phormio. You don't suppose that I could hear everything that passed between them, from outside the door? _Ant._ Now I think of it, I too have had some hint of that story. _Ge._ Now I'll give you still further proof: pretty soon your uncle comes out of the room and leaves the house, and before long he comes back with your father, and they both go in. And now they both say that you may keep her. In short, I was sent to hunt you up and bring you to them. _Ant._ [_all excitement_]. Well, why don't you do it then? What are you waiting for? _Ge._ Come along. _Ant._ O my dear Phormio, good-by! _Pho._ Good-by, my boy. I declare, I'm mighty glad it's turned out well for you. Antipho and Geta hurry away to Demipho's house, while Phormio retires up a convenient alley to await future developments. The only problem now remaining on Phormio's side is how to keep the money that has been given him by the old men, so that Phædria may not be again embarrassed; on the side of the old men the problem is to get back their money. How the poet treats us to the liveliest scene of all after the more important matters have been settled, is now to be seen. Demipho and Chremes come upon the stage, congratulating each other upon the happy turn which their affairs have taken. _Dem._ I ought to thank the gods, as indeed I do, that these matters have turned out so well for us, brother. _Chr._ Isn't she a fine girl, just as I told you? _Dem._ Yes, indeed. But now we must find Phormio as soon as possible, so as to get our six hundred dollars back again before he makes away with it. Phormio now walks across the stage in a lordly way without seeming to see the old men, and goes straight to Demipho's door, upon which he raps loudly and calls to the attendant within: If Demipho is at home. I want to see him, that-- _Dem._ [_stepping up from without_]. Why, we were just coming to see you, Phormio. _Pho._ On the same business, perhaps? _Dem._ Very likely. _Pho._ I supposed so. But why were you coming to me? It's absurd. Were you afraid that I wouldn't do what I had promised? No fear of that. For, however poor I may be, I have always been particularly careful to keep my word. And so I have come to tell you, Demipho, that I am ready; whenever you wish, give me my wife. For I put all my own private considerations aside, as was quite right, when I saw that you wanted this so much. _Dem._ [_who does not know quite what to say_]. But my brother here has asked me not to give her to you. "For," says he, "what a scandal there will be if you do that! At the time when she could have been given to you honorably it was not done; and now it would be a disgrace to cast her off." Almost the same arguments that you yourself urged upon me not long ago. _Pho._ Well, you _have_ got gall! _Dem._ What do you mean? _Pho._ Can't you see? I can't even marry that other girl now; for with what face could I go back to her after I had once thrown her over? _Chr._ [_prompting Demipho, sotto voce_]. "Then I find that Antipho is unwilling to to let his wife go"--tell him that. _Dem._ And then I find that my son objects to letting his wife go. But come right over to the Forum, if you please, Phormio, and sign this money back to me again. _Pho._ How can I, when I have already used it to pay my debts with? _Dem._ Well, what then? _Pho._ [_pompously_]. If you are willing to give me the girl you promised for my wife, I'll marry her: but if you want her to stay with you, why, the dowry stays with me, Demipho. For it isn't right that I should lose this on your account, when it was for the sake of your honor that I broke with the other girl who was offering the same dowry. _Dem._ Go be hanged, with your big talk, you jail-bird! Do you suppose that I don't see through you and your tricks? _Pho._ Look out, I'm getting hot. _Dem._ Do you mean to say you would marry this girl if we gave her to you? _Pho._ Just try me and see. _Dem._ [_with a sneer_]. O yes, your scheme is to have my son live with her at your house. _Pho._ [_indignantly_]. What do you mean? _Dem._ Come, give me that money. _Pho._ Come, give me my wife. _Dem._ [_laying hands on him_]. You come along to court with me. _Pho._ You'd better look out! If you don't stop-- _Dem._ What will you do? _Pho._ I? [_Turning to Chremes_]. Perhaps you think that I take only poor girls under my protection. I'll have you know I sometimes stand as patron to girls with dowries too. _Chr._ [_with a guilty start_]. What's that to us? _Pho._ O nothing. I knew a woman here once whose husband had-- _Chr._ O! _Dem._ What's that? _Pho._ Another wife in Lemnos-- _Chr._ I'm a dead man. _Pho._ By whom he had a daughter; and he's bringing her up on the quiet. _Chr._ I'm buried. _Pho._ And these very things I'll tell his real wife. _Chr._ Good gracious, don't do that! _Pho._ Oho! You were the man, were you, Chremes? _Dem._ [_in a rage_]. How the villain gammons us! _Chr._ You may go. _Pho._ The deuce you say! _Chr._ Why, what do you mean? We are willing that you should keep the money. _Pho._ Yes, I see. But what, a plague! do _you_ mean? Do you think you can guy me by changing your minds like a pair of silly boys? "I won't, I will--I will, I won't, again--take it, give it back--what's said is unsaid--what's been agreed on is no go"--that's your style. [_He turns to go away_]. _Chr._ [_apart_]. How in the world did he find that out? _Dem._ I don't know, but I'm sure I never told any one. _Chr._ Lord! it seems like a judgment on me! _Pho._ [_gleefully, aside_]. I've put a spoke in their wheel! _Dem._ [_aside_]. See here, Chremes, shall we let this rascal cheat us out of our money and laugh in our faces besides? I'd rather die first. Now make up your mind to be manly and resolute. You see that your secret is out, and that you can't keep it from your wife any longer. Now what she is bound to learn from others it will be much better for her to hear from your own lips. And then we will have the whip hand of this dirty fellow. _Pho._ [_overhearing these words, aside_]. Tut! tut! Unless I look out, I'll be in a hole. They're coming at me hard. _Chr._ But I am afraid that she will never forgive me. _Dem._ O, cheer up, man. I'll make you solid with her again, more especially since the mother of this girl is dead and gone. _Pho._ Is _that_ your game? I tell you, Demipho, it's not a bit to your brother's advantage that you are stirring me up. [_To Chremes_]. Look here, you! When you have followed your own devices abroad, and haven't thought enough of your own wife to keep you from sinning most outrageously against her, do you expect to come home and make it all up with a few tears? I tell you, I'll make her so hot against you that you can't put out her wrath, not if you dissolve in tears. _Dem._ Confound the fellow! Was ever a man treated so outrageously? _Chr._ [_all in a tremble_]. I'm so rattled that I don't know what to do with the fellow. _Dem._ [_grasping Phormio's collar_]. Well _I_ do. We'll go straight to court. _Pho._ To court, is it? [_Dragging off toward Chremes' house_]. This way, if you please. _Dem._ [_hurrying toward his own house_]. Chremes, you catch him and hold him, while I call my slaves out. _Chr._ [_holding off_]. I can't do it alone; you come here and help. Demipho comes back and lays hold of Phormio, and all engage in a violent struggle mingled with angry words and blows. Phormio is getting the worst of it, when he says: Now I'll have to use my voice. Nausistrata! Come out here! _Chr._ Stop his mouth. _Dem._ [_trying to do so, without success_]. See how strong the rascal is. _Pho._ I say, Nausistrata! _Chr._ Won't you keep still? _Pho._ Not much. Nausistrata now appears at the door of her house; Phormio, seeing her, says, panting but gleeful: Here's where my revenge comes in. _Naus._ Who's calling me? [_Seeing the disordered and excited condition of the men_]. Why, what's all this row about, husband? Who is this man? [_Chremes remains tongue-tied_]. Won't you answer me? _Pho._ How can he answer you, when, by George, he doesn't know where he is? _Chr._ [_trembling with fear_]. Don't you believe a word he says. _Pho._ Go, touch him; if he isn't frozen stiff, you may strike me dead. _Chr._ It isn't so. _Naus._ What is this man talking about, then? _Pho._ You shall hear; just listen. _Chr._ You aren't going to believe him? _Naus._ Good gracious, how can I believe one who hasn't said anything yet? _Pho._ The poor fellow is crazy with fear. _Naus._ Surely it's not for nothing that you are so afraid. _Chr._ [_with chattering teeth_]. Wh-wh-who's afraid? _Pho._ Well then, since you're not afraid, and what I say is nothing, you tell the story yourself. _Dem._ Scoundrel! Shall he speak at your bidding? _Pho._ [_contemptuously_]. O you! you've done a fine thing for your brother. _Naus._ Husband, won't you speak to me? _Chr._ Well--_Naus._ Well? _Chr._ There's no need of my talking. _Pho._ You're right; but there's need of her knowing. In Lemnos-- _Chr._ O don't! _Pho._ unbeknown to you-- _Chr._ O me! _Pho._ he took another wife. _Naus._ [_screaming_]. My husband! Heaven forbid. _Pho._ But it's so, just the same. _Naus._ O wretched me! _Pho._ And by her he had a daughter--also unbeknown to you. _Naus._ By all the gods, a shameful and evil deed! _Pho._ But it's so, just the same. _Naus._ It's the most outrageous thing I ever heard of. [_Turning her back on Chremes_]. Demipho, I appeal to you; for I am too disgusted to speak to him again. Was _this_ the meaning of those frequent journeys and long stays at Lemnos? Was _this_ why my rents ran down so? _Dem._ Nausistrata, I don't deny that he has been very much to blame in this matter; but is that any reason why you should not forgive him? _Pho._ He's talking for the dead. _Dem._ For it wasn't through any scorn or dislike of you that he did it. And besides, the other woman is dead who was the cause of all this trouble. So I beg you to bear this with equanimity as you do other things. _Naus._ Why should I bear it with equanimity? I wish this were the end of the wretched business; but why should I hope it will be? Am I to think that he will be better now he's old? But he was old before, if that makes any difference. Or am I any more beautiful and attractive now than I was, Demipho? What assurance can you give me that this won't happen again? Phormio now comes to the front of the stage and announces in a loud official voice to the audience: All who want to view the remains of Chremes, now come forward! The time has come.--That's the way I do them up. Come along now, if any one else wants to stir up Phormio. I'll fix him just like this poor wretch here.--But there! he may come back to favor now. I've had revenge enough. She has something to nag him with as long as he lives. _Naus._ But I suppose I have deserved it. Why should I recount to you, Demipho, all that I have been to this man? _Dem._ I know it all, Nausistrata, as well as you. _Naus._ Well, have I deserved this treatment? _Dem._ By no means! but, since what's been done can't be undone by blaming him, pardon him. He confesses his sin, he prays for pardon, he promises never to do so again: what more do you want? _Pho._ [_aside_]. Hold on here; before she pardons him, I must look out for myself and Phædria. Say, Nausistrata, wait a minute before you answer him. _Naus._ Well? _Pho._ I tricked Chremes out of six hundred dollars; I gave the money to your son, and he has used it to buy his wife with. _Chr._ [_angrily_]. How? What do you say? _Naus._ [_to Chremes_]. How now? Does it seem to you a shameful thing for your son, a young man, to have one wife, when you, an old man, have had two? Shame on you! With what face will you rebuke him? Answer me that? [_Chremes slinks back without a word_]. _Dem._ He will do as you say. _Naus._ Well, then, here is my decision: I'll neither pardon him, nor promise anything, nor give you any answer at all, until I have seen my son. And I shall do entirely as he says. _Pho._ You are a wise woman, Nausistrata. _Naus._ [_to Chremes_]. Does that suit you? _Chr._ Does it? Indeed and truly I'm getting off well--[_aside_] and better than I expected. _Naus._ [_to Phormio_] Come, tell me your name. What is it? _Pho._ Mine? It's Phormio; I'm a great friend to your family, and especially to Phædria. _Naus._ Phormio, I vow to you I am at your service after this, to do and to say, so far as I can, just what you want. _Pho._ I thank you kindly, lady. _Naus._ No, upon my word, you've earned it. _Pho._ Do you want to begin right off, Nausistrata, and do something that will both make me happy and bring tears to your husband's eyes? _Naus._ That I do. _Pho._ Well, then, invite me to dinner. _Naus._ With all my heart, I do. _Dem._ Come then, let's go inside. _Chr._ Agreed; but where is Phædria, my judge? _Pho._ I'll soon have him here. And so ends this merry play, as the whole party moves toward Chremes' house, where, let us hope, all family differences were forgotten in the good dinner awaiting them. Meanwhile the man before the curtain reminds us that we still have a duty to perform: Fare you well, my friends, and give us your applause. SUMMARY AND QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW _The Roman Drama_, as illustrated by the works of the early tragedians, from 240 to the first century B. C.: Andronicus Nævius, Ennius, Pacuvius, Accius. The later tragedians to the close of the first century A. D.: Pollio, Varius, Ovid, Maternus, Secundus, Lucan, and Seneca. The writers of comedy, second century B. C.: Plautus and Terence. 1. How did the civilization of Rome in 454 B. C. compare with that of Greece? 2. How did Rome's conquest of the Greek colonies in Italy help the development of Italian literature? 3. How did the First Punic War affect this development? 4. Who was the "first professor of Latin on record"? 5. From what sources were the subjects of the old Roman tragedies taken? 6. How did the Roman spirit differ from that of the Greek? 7. Why did the Romans fail to develop a truly national tragedy? 8. What four names besides that of Andronicus are representative of the old Roman tragedy? 9. What qualities of Accius do we find in the fragments of his writings which remain? 10. What is true of the writers of tragedy after Accius? 11. Why have the tragedies of Seneca special interest? 12. What are their defects? 13. What their strong qualities? 14. Why did the plays of Seneca have such an influence in England? 15. What is the outline of the story of Medea? 16. How does it illustrate Seneca's defects of style? 17. Quote passages which illustrate his skill in epigram. 18. In graphic description. 19. In pathos and passion. 20. In subtile analysis of character and motive. 21. Describe the three great types of Greek comedy. 22. What result followed the attempts of Nævius to write in the spirit of Old Comedy? 23. What two writers alone of comedy are known to us from their works? 24. What are the chief characteristics of _Phormio_ of Terence? BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. OLD ROMAN TRAGEDY. RIBBECK, _Die Römische Tragödie_. WORDSWORTH, _Fragments and Specimens of Early Latin_, pp. 567 and following. SIMCOX, _History of Latin Literature_, Vol. I, pp. 31-44. SELLAR, _Roman Poets of the Republic_, pp. 47-150. TYRRELL, _Latin Poetry_, pp. 32-42. CONINGTON, _Miscellaneous Writings_, Vol. I, pp. 294-347. MOULTON, _The Ancient Classical Drama_, pp. 203-222. 2. LATER ROMAN TRAGEDY AND SENECA. TEUFFEL, _History of Roman Literature_ (translated by Warr), Vol. II, pp. 48-52. NEWTON (and others), _Seneca, his Tenne Tragedies Translated into Englysh_ (Spenser Society reprint, 1887). CONINGTON, _Miscellaneous Writings_, Vol. I, pp. 385-411. CUNLIFFE, _The Influence of Seneca on Elizabethan Tragedy_. PATIN, _Études sur les Tragiques Grecs; Euripides_. The work has many valuable comparisons between Euripides and Seneca. TYRRELL, _Latin Poetry_, pp. 269-272. SIMCOX, _History of Latin Literature_, Vol. II, pp. 24-28. WARD, _History of English Dramatic Literature_, Vol. I, pp. 189 and following. MERIVALE, _History of Rome Under the Empire_, Vol. VI, pp. 382 and following. MOMMSEN, _History of Rome_, Vol. II, pp. 527-538. 3. ROMAN COMEDY. MOMMSEN, _History of Rome_, Vol. II, pp. 503-526. SIMCOX, _History of Latin Literature_, Vol. I, pp. 45-61. SELLAR, _Roman Poets of the Republic_, pp. 153-220. TYRRELL, _Latin Poetry_, pp. 43-58. MOULTON, _The Ancient Classical Drama_, pp. 377-423. PART II SATIRE Satire has always shone among the rest, And is the boldest way, if not the best, To tell men freely of their foulest faults, To laugh at their vain deeds and vainer thoughts. 1. INTRODUCTION AND EARLY SATIRE What prophecy was to the ancient Hebrews, the drama to the Greeks, the purpose-novel and the newspaper editorial to our own day, satire was to the Roman of the republic and the early empire--the moral mentor of contemporary society. This conception of the prophet as the preacher of his day is often obscured by the conception of him as one who could reveal the future; but a closer study of the life and times of these great religious leaders shows them to have been men profoundly interested in current life, who gave all their energies to the task of raising the standard of the religious and social thought of their own day. The function of Greek tragedy was ever religious. It had its very origin in the worship of the gods; and the presence of the altar as the center of the strophic movements of the chorus was a constant reminder that the drama was dealing with the highest problems of human life. Added to the general religious atmosphere of tragedy were the direct moral teachings, the highest sentiments of ancient culture, which constantly sounded through the play. Greek comedy, especially of the old and middle type, also served a distinct moral purpose in society. It did not, indeed, sound the same lofty notes as did its sister tragedy; but it was the lash which was mercilessly applied, at first with bolder license to individual sinners in high places, and afterward in a more guarded manner to the vices and follies of men in general. In either case, the powerful stimulus of fear of public ridicule and castigation must have had a real effect upon the manners and morals of the ancient Greeks. When we turn to our own time, we find the literary preacher at the novelist's desk or in the editor's chair. The influence of the purpose-novel and the editorial can hardly be overestimated. In the generation immediately preceding our own, a very direct influence upon the public social life of his day was wielded by the pen of Dickens. His eyes were open to abuses of every kind--in educational, charitable, legal, and criminal institutions; and he used every weapon known to literary art to right these wrongs. In this task he was ably assisted by men like Thackeray, Reade, Kingsley, and others. And there can be little doubt that the improved conditions in the England of to-day are due in generous measure to the work of these novelist preachers. The editor's function is still more intimately and constantly to hold the mirror up to society, revealing and reproving its faults. And to-day there is probably no more potent force acting directly upon the opinions and conduct of men than the daily editorial. Now, the literary weapon of the Roman moralist was satire. It flourished in all periods of Roman literature, both the word _satire_ and the thing itself being of Latin origin. In other fields of literature there is a large imitation of Greek models. Roman tragedy was at first but little more than a translation of the Greek plays, and the same is true of comedy. Cato, Varro, Vergil, and the rest who wrote of agriculture, had a Greek prototype in Hesiod, who in his _Works and Days_ had treated of the same theme; Lucretius was the professed disciple and imitator of Epicurus; Cicero, in oratory, had ever before his eyes his Demosthenes, and in philosophy his Plato and Aristotle; Vergil had his Homer in epic and his Theocritus in pastoral; Horace, in his lyrics, is Greek through and through, both in form and spirit, for Pindar and Anacreon, Sappho, Alcæus, Archilochus, and the whole tuneful line are forever echoing through his verse. Ovid, in his greatest work, only succeeded in setting Greek mythology in a frame of Latin verse, though he told those fascinating stories as they had never been told before; while the historians, the rhetoricians, the philosophers--all had their Greek originals and models. But in the field of satire the Romans struck out a new literary path for themselves. Even here we are bound to admit that the spirit is Greek, the spirit of the old comedy, of bold assault upon the evils of government, of society, of individuals. But still satire, as a form of literature, is the Roman's own; and beginning with Lucilius, the father of satire in the modern sense, the long line of satirists who followed his lead sufficiently attests the strong hold which this particular form of literature gained upon the Roman mind. We have said that Lucilius was the father of satire in the modern sense; but the name at least, together with many of the features of his satire and that of his successors, reaches far back of him into the recesses of an ancient Italian literature, long since vanished, of which we can gain only the faintest hints. These hints as to the character of that ancient forerunner of the Lucilian satire come to us from two sources--the discussions of the Latin grammarians as to the derivation of the word _satura_ (satire), and the remote reflections and imitations of the old _satura_ in later works. These far-off imitations give some idea of the character of the genuine satire of the earliest time,--that of a medley of verse of different meters, intermingled with prose, introducing words and phrases of other languages, and treating of a great variety of subjects. This literary medley or jumble probably had its origin in the farm or vineyard, where, in celebration of the "harvest home" or other joyous festival, it would be brought out, perhaps accompanied by some kind of musical recitation, and of course loaded with the rude wit of the time. Such, then, we may suppose, was the character of the rude satire of ancient Italy. But alas for any real personal knowledge which we may gain of it, those merry, clumsy jests, those rustic songs, are vanished with the simple sun-loving race which produced them. The olive orchards still wave gray-green upon the sunny slopes, the vineyards still cling to every hillside and nestle in every valley; but the ancient peasantry who once called this land their home, whose simple annals old Cato loved to tell, and who could have given us material for precious volumes upon the folk-lore and customs of their times, have gone, and left scarcely a trace of their rude, unlettered literature. The first tangible literary link that binds us to the old Roman satire is found in the poet Ennius, who flourished about two hundred years before Christ. The story of his life is outlined elsewhere in this book. His satires seem to have been a sort of literary miscellany which included such of his writings as could not conveniently be classified elsewhere. The merest handful of fragments of these satires remains, although there is good ground for believing that there were six books of these. No adequate judgment can therefore be formed as to their character. It can with safety be said, however, that they were in a sense the connecting link between the early satire and the literary satire of the modern type. As has been said above, they were a literary miscellany or medley, and as such contain some salient features of their predecessors; and it is highly probable that they contained attacks upon the vices and follies of the time, in which respect they looked forward to a more complete development in Lucilian satire. A most interesting fragment of the _Epicharmus_ describes the nature of the gods according to the philosophy of Ennius: And that is he whom we call Jove, whom Grecians call The atmosphere: who in one person is the wind and clouds, then rain, And after, freezing hail; and once again, thin air. For this, those things are Jove considered which I name to you, Since by these elements do men and cities, beasts. And all things else exist. There was a satire by Ennius, as Quintilian tells us, containing a dialogue between Life and Death; but of this we have not a remnant. He also introduced the fables of Æsop into his writings. The following is the moral which he deduces from the story of the lark and the farmers--a moral which Aulus Gellius assures us that it would be worth our while to take well to heart. It may be freely translated as follows: Now list to this warning, give diligent heed, Whether seeking for pleasure or pelf: Don't wait for your neighbors to help in your need, But just go and do it yourself! Surely Miles Standish might have gained from his Ennius, as well as from his Cæsar, that famous motto: If you wish a thing well done, You must do it yourself, you must not leave it to others! We may leave our present notice of Ennius with a glance at the epitaph which he wrote for himself. It is classed with his epigrams, but it may properly be considered in connection with the medley of his satires. In it he claims that unsubstantial immortality of remembrance and of mention among men which is even now, as we write and read, being vouchsafed to him. Behold, O friends, old Ennius' carvéd stone, Who wrote your father's deeds with lambent pen; Let no tears deck my funeral, for lo, My soul immortal lives on lips of men. We have seen that the spirit of invective in Lucilius, which became in his hands the spirit of satire, is traceable to the old Greek comedy. The poetic form (the dactylic hexameter in which he wrote twenty of the thirty books of his satire) had already been naturalized in Roman literature by Ennius in his great epic poem. But to Lucilius is due the credit of being the first to incarnate this spirit in this form, and thus to establish an entirely new type in literature. His satires contain invectives against luxury, avarice, and kindred vices, and prevalent superstitions; an attack upon the rich; ridicule of certain rhetorical affectations; grammatical remarks, and criticisms on art; observations upon the Stoic philosophy; the poet's own political experiences and expectations, also other anecdotes and incidents gathered from his own experience; an interesting account of a journey to Sicily, from which Horace probably obtained the model for his famous journey to Brundisium. These and many other subjects filled his pages, and suggest by their wide range the old-time medley-satire. The poet lived in stirring times. Born in 180 B. C., eleven years before the death of Ennius, he died about 103 B. C., three years after Cicero's birth and the year before the birth of Cæsar. He was thus contemporary with some of the most important and striking events in Roman history--the third Macedonian War; the Third Punic War; the Numantian War, in which he himself served as a knight under Scipio Africanus in 133 B. C.; the troubled times of the two Gracchi; the Jugurthine War, and the rise of Caius Marius. He was of equestrian rank, and lived on terms of intimacy with some of the best men at Rome, notably the younger Scipio and Lælius. With such backing as this, of family and friends, he was in good position to direct his satire against the wicked and unscrupulous men of his time, regardless of their rank, without fear or favor. What did the Romans themselves think of Lucilius? To judge from the frequency and character of their references to him, the poet must have made a profound impression upon his countrymen. A study of these references shows that in the main this impression was favorable. He is _doctus_, that is, profoundly learned in the wisdom of the Greeks; and, according to Aulus Gellius, he was equally well versed in the language and literature of his own land. He is to Juvenal the _magnus_, the "father of satire," who has well-nigh preempted the field, to follow whom requires elaborate explanation and apology on the part of the would-be satirist. He is to Cicero _perurbanus_, preëminently endowed with that subtle something in spirit and expression which marks at once the polished man of the world. He is to Fronto remarkable for his _gracilitas_, that plainness, directness, and simplicity of style which, joined with the "harshness" and "roughness" of his "eager" spirit and of his righteous indignation, made his satire such a formidable weapon against the vices of his day. Persius says of him that he "slashed the citizens of his time and broke his jaw-teeth on them." And the testimony of Juvenal is still more striking: "But whenever Lucilius with drawn sword fiercely rages, his hearer, whose soul is cold within him because of his crimes, blushes with shame, and his heart quakes in silent fear because of his guilty secrets." Like those of so many of his predecessors in literature, the works of Lucilius remain to us only in the merest fragments. For these we are indebted largely to the Latin grammarians, who quote freely from him, usually in illustration of the meaning of some word which they may be discussing. A comparatively small number of the fragments have come down to us through quotations on account of their sentiment, as when Cicero says: "Lucilius used to say that he did not write to be read by either of the extremes of society, because one would not understand him, and the other knew more than he did." We shall now examine a few of the more important of the fragments which have been preserved to us. The following has been thought to be a vivid picture of the unworthy struggle of life as he saw it in the Rome of his own time. Lactantius, however, whose quotation of the fragment has saved it, thinks that the poet is portraying in a more general way the unhappy, unrestful life of mankind, unrelieved, as Lucretius would say, by the comforting reflections of philosophy. But now, from morning to night, on holidays and work days, in the same place, the whole day long, high and low, all busy themselves in the forum and never depart. To one and the same pursuit and practice have they all devoted themselves: to cheat as guardedly as possible, to strive craftily, to vie in flattery, to make a pretense of being good men, to lay snares just as if they were all the foes of all. There was a certain Titus Albucius, who, it seems, was so enamored with everything Greek that he was continually affecting the manners and language of that country. Such running after foreign customs and speech has not yet wholly disappeared. This weakness is the object of the poet's wit in the following passage, in which he tells how Scævola, the proprætor of Asia, once "took down" the silly Albucius in Athens: A Greek, Albucius, you would be called, and not a Roman and a Sabine, a fellow-townsman of Pontius and Tritanius, though they are both illustrious men, and first-rate standard-bearers. And so, as prætor at Athens, when I meet you, I salute you in the foreign style which you are so fond of: "+chaire+!"[A] I say; and my lictors and all my retinue inquire: "+chaire+?" Fie, Albucius! for this thou art my country's foe, and my own enemy! [A] Hail. The fourth satire, says an ancient scholiast, was an attack upon luxury and the vices of the rich. The following passage might well have been the opening lines of this satire, representing Lælius as exclaiming in praise of a vegetable diet and against gluttony: "O sorrel, how praiseworthy art thou, And yet how little art thou really known!" over his mess of sorrel Lælius the wise used to cry out, chiding one by one the gluttons of our day. And that he did not hesitate to call the glutton and spendthrift by name is shown by this fragment, which is evidently a continuation of the same diatribe: "O Publius Gallonius, thou spendthrift," said he, "thou art a wretched fellow. Never in all thy life hast thou dined well, though all thy wealth on that lobster and that sturgeon thou consumest." The last selection which we shall present from Lucilius is the longest extant fragment. The passage is a somewhat elaborate definition of _virtue_ as the old Roman understood it. We use the translation of Sellar. Virtue, Albinus, consists in being able to give their true worth to the things on which we are engaged, among which we live. The virtue of a man is to understand the real meaning of each thing: to understand what is right, useful, honorable for him; what things are good, what bad, what is unprofitable, base, dishonorable; to know the due limit and measure in making money; to give its proper worth to wealth; to assign what is really due to office; to be a foe and enemy of bad men and bad principles; to extol the good, to wish them well, to be their friend through life. Lastly, it is true worth to look on our country's weal as the chief good; next to that the weal of our parents; third and last, our own weal. 2. QUINTUS HORATIUS FLACCUS Horace well sustains the character of preacher whose function it has already been said that satire performs. He found in his world the same frail human nature which had aroused the righteous scorn of Lucilius, and had led him to those bitter attacks upon the follies of his time for which his satire was justly dreaded. But Horace is cast in a different mold from Lucilius. While he sees just as clearly the shortcomings of society, he has a realizing sense that he himself is a part of that same society, guilty of the same sins, subject to the same criticism. This consciousness of common frailty leads to moderation on the part of the preacher. He manifests a kindly sense of human brotherhood for better or for worse, which forms one of his most charming characteristics, and differentiates him from his great predecessor as well as from those who followed in the field of satire. It is true that Horace is sufficiently strenuous and severe in his polemics against the prevalent frailties of society as he saw them; but he has a habit of taking his hearers into his confidence at the end of his lecture, and reassuring them by some whimsical jest or the information that the sermon was meant as much for himself as for them. He had no idea of reforming society from the outside as from a separate world; but he proceeded upon the principle that, as real reformation and progress must be the result of reformed internal conditions, so the reformer himself must be a sympathetic part of his world. It was in a homely and wholesome school that our poet learned his moral philosophy. In a glowing tribute of filial affection for his father, he tells us how that worthy man, who was himself only a freedman--a humble collector of debts by trade, or possibly a fishmonger, away down in his provincial home in Apulia--decided that his son should have a better chance in life than had fallen to his own lot. The local school in the boy's native village of Venusia, where the big-boned sons of retired centurions gained their meager education, was not good enough for our young man. He must to Rome and afterward to Athens, and have all the chances which were open to the sons of the noblest families of the land. And so we have the pleasing picture of the sensible old father, not sending but taking his boy to Rome, where he was the young student's constant companion, his "guide, philosopher, and friend," attending him in all his ways, both in school and out. Horace tells us how this practical old father taught him to avoid the vices of the day. No fine-spun, theoretical philosophy for him; but practical illustration drove every lesson home. The poet dwells with pleasure upon this element in his education. That Horace was a worthy son of a worthy father is proved in many ways, but in none more clearly than when, in after years, as a welcome member of the most exclusive social set in Rome, he affectionately recalls his father's training, and tells his high-born friends that, if he had the chance to choose his ancestry, he would not change one circumstance of his birth. The practice of personal observations of the life around him, which he learned from his father, the poet carried with him through life, and is the explanation of the intensely practical and realistic character of his satire. See him as he comes home at night and sits alone recalling the varied happenings of the day. These are some of the thoughts, as he himself tells us, which come to him at such times, and find half-unconscious audible expression: Now that's the better course.--I should live better if I acted along that line.--So-and-so didn't do the right thing that time.--I wonder if I shall ever be foolish enough to do the like. It is after such meditations as these that he takes up his tablets and outlines his satires. We are reminded in this of the practice of the great Cæsar, who is said to have recalled, as he rested in his tent at night, the stirring events of each day, and to have noted these for his history. This method of composition from practical observation explains many peculiarities of the style of Horace's satires. They are absolutely unpretentious, prevailingly conversational in tone, abounding in homely similes and colloquialisms, pithy anecdotes, familiar proverbs, and references to current people and events which make up the popular gossip of the day. He also has an embarrassing habit of suddenly turning his "thou-art-the-man" search-light upon us just when we are most enjoying his castigation of our neighbors. He employs burlesque and irony also among his assortment of satiric weapons. He is, above all, personal, rarely allowing the discourse to stray from the personality of himself and his audience. The following outline of one of his "sermons" will afford a good illustration of his style and method of handling a discourse. Its subject is the sin and folly of discontent and greed for gain, a sin which he frequently denounces, not alone in his satires, but in his odes as well. This satire is addressed by way of compliment to his patron Mæcenas, and is placed at the beginning of his two books of satires. How strange it is that no one lives content with his lot, but must always be envying his neighbor! The soldier would be a merchant, the merchant a soldier; the lawyer would be a farmer, the farmer a lawyer. But these malcontents are not in earnest in this prayer for a change; should some god grant their petition, they would one and all refuse to accept the boon. The excuse of those who toil early and late is, that when they have "made their pile" and have a modest competency for a peaceful old age, they will retire. They say that they seek gold only as a means to an end, and cite the example of the thrifty ant. But herein they show their insincerity; for, while the ant lives upon its hoarded wealth in winter, and stops its active life, the gain-getter never stops so long as there is more to be gotten. "But," you say, "it is so delightful to have a whole river to drink from." Why so? You can't possibly drink it all, and besides, the river water is apt to be muddy. I prefer to drink from a clear little spring myself. And then, too, you are liable to be drowned in your attempt to drink from the river. "But one _must_ have money. A man's social standing depends upon his bank account." It's useless to argue with such a man. He can see nothing but the almighty dollar. If he did but know it, he is simply another Tantalus, surrounded by riches which he cannot, or, in his case, will not enjoy. And besides he does not really care for popular opinion as he professes to do. Poor wretch! he has all the care and none of the pleasures of his wealth. Heaven keep me poor in such possessions! You say that money secures help in sickness? But _such_ help! Your greed has alienated all who would naturally love and care for you; and you must not be surprised if you do not keep the love which you are doing nothing to preserve. No, no! away with your greed; cease to think that lack of money is necessarily an evil; and beware lest your fate at last be miserably to lose your all by a violent death. No, I am not asking you to be a spendthrift. Only seek a proper mean between this and the miser's character. But, to get back to the original proposition, no one is content with his lot, but is constantly trying to surpass his fellows. And so the jostling struggle for existence goes on, and rare indeed is it to find a man who leaves this life satisfied that he has had his share of its blessings. With this conclusion another man would have been content. But Horace somehow feels that he has been a little hard upon his kind, and by way of softening down the seriousness of the lecture, and at the same time saving himself from the fault of verbosity, which he detests, he ends with a characteristic jibe at the wordy Stoic philosophers: But enough of this. Lest you think that I have stolen the notes of the blear-eyed Crispinus, I'll say no more. In another satire, Horace rebukes the fault of censoriousness. His text practically is: "Judge not that ye be not judged." With characteristic indirect approach to his subject, he begins with a tirade against one Tigellius, until we begin to be indignant with this censorious preacher; when suddenly he whips around to the other side, assumes the rôle of one of his hearers, and puts the question to himself: "Have you no faults of your own?" And then we see that he has only been playing a part, and giving us an objective illustration of how it sounds when the other man finds fault, thus exposing to themselves those who, habitually blind to their own faults, are quick to discover those of other men. The dramatic element, which seems to have been inherent in satire from the beginning, is one of the most noticeable characteristics of style in the satires of Horace. Indeed, his favorite method of expression is the dialogue, carried on either between himself and some other person, real or imaginary, or between two characters of his creation, whom he introduces as best fitted to conduct the discussion of a theme. The most dramatic of his satires is that in which he introduces the bore. In this, the poem consists solely of dialogue and descriptions of action which may be taken as stage direction. It therefore needs but slight change to give it perfect dramatic form. The problem of the episode is how to get rid of the bore and at the same time keep within the bounds of gentlemanly conduct. This famous satire is given below in full. THE BORE: A DRAMATIC SATIRE IN ONE ACT The persons of the drama: Horace; the Bore; Aristius Fuscus, a friend of Horace; an adversary of the Bore; Horace's slave-boy; a street mob. SCENE: The Sacred Way in Rome, extending on during the action into the Forum. [_Enter Horace, walking along the street in deep thought. To him enters Bore, who grasps his hand with great show of affection and slaps him familiarly on the shoulder._] _Bore._ How are you, my dear old fellow? _Horace_ [_stiffly_]. Fairly well, as times go. I trust all is well with you? [_As the Bore follows him up, Horace attempts to forestall conversation, and to dismiss his companion with the question of formal leave:_] There's nothing I can do for you is there? _Bore._ Yes, make my acquaintance. I am really worth knowing; I'm a scholar. _Horace._ Really? You will be more interesting to me on that account, I am sure. [_He tries desperately to get rid of the Bore, goes faster, stops, whispers in the slave-boy's ear; while the sweat pours down his face, which he mops desperately. He exclaims aside:_] O Bolanus, how I wish I had your hot temper! _Bore_ [_chatters empty nothings, praises the scenery, the buildings, etc. As Horace continues silent, he says:_] You're terribly anxious to get rid of me; I've seen that all along. But it's no use, I'll stay by you, I'll follow you. Where are you going from here? _Horace_ [_trying to discourage him_]. There's no need of your going out of your way. I'm going to visit a man--an entire stranger to you. He lies sick at his house away over beyond the Tiber, near Cæsar's gardens. _Bore._ O, I have nothing else to do, and I'm a good walker. I'll just go along with you. [_As Horace keeps on doggedly in sullen silence, he continues:_] Unless I am much mistaken in myself, you will find me a more valuable friend than Viscus or Varius. There's no one can write more poetry in a given time than I, or dance more gracefully; and as for singing, Hermogenes himself would envy me. _Horace_ [_interrupting, tries to frighten him off by suggesting that the sick man whom he is going to visit may be suffering from some contagious disease_]. Have you a mother or other relative dependent on you? _Bore._ No, I have no one at all. I've buried every one of them. _Horace_ [_aside_]. Lucky dogs! Now I'm the only victim left. Finish me up; for a dreadful fate is dogging my steps, which an old Sabine fortune-teller once warned me of when I was a boy. She said: "No poisonous drug shall carry this boy off, nor deadly sword, nor wasting consumption, nor crippling gout; in the fulness of time some chatterbox will talk him to death. So then, if he be wise, when he shall come to man's estate, let him beware of all chatterboxes." [_They have now come opposite the Temple of Vesta in the south end of the Forum, near which the courts of justice were held. The hour for opening court has arrived._] _Bore_ [_suddenly remembering that he has given bond to appear in a certain suit, and that if he fails to appear this suit will go against him by default_]. Won't you kindly attend me here in court a little while? _Horace._ I can't help you any. Hang it, I'm too tired to stand around here; and I don't know anything about law, anyhow. Besides, I'm in a hurry to get--you know where. _Bore._ I'm in doubt what to do, whether to leave you or my case. _Horace._ Leave me, by all means. _Bore_ [_after a brief meditation_]. No, I don't believe I will. [_He takes the lead, and Horace helplessly follows. The Bore starts in on the subject which is uppermost in his mind._] How do you and Mæcenas get on? He's a very exclusive and level-headed fellow, now, isn't he? No one has made a better use of his chances. You would have an excellent assistant in that quarter, one who could ably support you, if only you would introduce yours truly. Strike me dead, if you wouldn't show your heels to all competitors in no time. _Horace._ Why, we don't live there on any such basis as you seem to think. There is no circle in Rome more free from self-seeking on the part of its members, or more at variance with such a feeling. It makes no difference to me if another man is richer or more learned than I. Every man has his own place there. _Bore._ You don't really mean that? I can scarcely believe it. _Horace._ And yet such is the case. _Bore._ You only make me more eager to be admitted. _Horace_ [_with contemptuous sarcasm_]. O, you have only to wish it: such is your excellence, you'll be sure to gain your point. To tell the truth, Mæcenas is a soft-hearted fellow, and for this very reason guards the first approach to his friendship more carefully. _Bore_ [_taking Horace's suggestion in earnest_]. O, I shall keep my eyes open. I'll bribe his servants. And if I don't get in to-day, I'll try again. I'll lie in wait for chances, I'll meet him on the street corners, and walk down town with him. You can't get anything in this life without working for it. [_Enter Aristius Fuscus, an intimate friend of Horace. They meet and exchange greetings_]. _Horace_ [_to Fuscus_]. Hello! where do you come from? _Fuscus._ Where are you going? [_Horace slyly plucks his friend's toga, pinches his arm, and tries by nods and winks to get Fuscus to rescue him from the Bore. But Fuscus pretends not to understand._] _Horace_ [_to Fuscus_]. Didn't you say that you had something to say to me in private? _Fuscus._ Yes, but I'll tell you some other time. To-day is a Jewish festival. You wouldn't have me insult the Jews, would you? _Horace._ O, I have no such scruples myself. _Fuscus._ But I have. I'm just one of the plain people--not as strong-minded as you are. You really must excuse me; I'll tell you some other time. [_Fuscus hurries away, with a wicked wink, leaving his friend in the lurch._] _Horace_ [_in a despairing aside_]. O, to think that so dark a day as this should ever have dawned for me! [_At this juncture the Bore's adversary at law comes running up._] _The Adversary_ [_to Bore, in a loud voice._] Where are you going, you bail-breaking rascal? [_To Horace._] Will you come witness against him? [_Horace gives him his ear to touch in token of his assent, and the Bore is hurried off to court, with loud expostulations on both sides, and with the inevitable jeering street crowd following after._] _Horace_ [_left alone_]. Saved, by the grace of Apollo! The fourth and tenth satires of the first book are of especial value to us, because they contain Horace's own estimate of his predecessor, Lucilius; answers to popular criticism against the spirit and form of satire; much general literary criticism; and many personal comments by the poet upon his own method and spirit as a satirist. Following is an abstract of the tenth: Yes, Lucilius _is_ rough--anybody will admit that. I also admit that he is to be praised for his great wit. But wit of itself does not constitute great poetry. There must also be polish, variety of style, sprightliness and versatility. This is what caused the success of the old Greek comedy. "But," you say, "Lucilius was so skilled in mingling Latin and Greek." That, I reply, neither requires any great skill, nor is it a thing to be desired. This last assertion is at once apparent if you take the discussion into other fields of literature than poetry. I myself have been warned by Quirinus not to attempt Greek verse. I have looked over the literary field and found it occupied by men who could write better than I in each department--comedy, tragedy, epic, pastoral. Satire alone promised success to me; but still I do not profess to excel Lucilius. I freely leave the crown to him. But for all that I cannot help seeing his faults which I mentioned in my former satire--his extreme verbosity and roughness. In criticizing him I take the same license which he himself used toward his predecessors, and which he would use now toward his own extant works were he alive to-day. He surely would be more careful, and take more pains with his work, if he were now among us. And that is just the point. One must write and rewrite, and polish to the utmost, if he would produce anything worth reading. He must not be eager to rush into print and cater to the public taste. Let him be content with the applause of men of culture, and strive to win that; and let him leave popular favor to men who are themselves no better than the rabble whom they court. Few Roman writers are more frankly autobiographical than Horace. His odes, epodes, satires, and epistles are full of his own personality and history. From various references in these poems, we learn that he was born in 65 B. C., in Venusia, a municipal town in Apulia; that his father was a freedman, a small farmer, and debt collector by trade; that he was educated in Rome under his father's personal care; that he finished his education in Athens, where he eagerly imbibed Greek philosophy and literature. But now the long storm of civil war, which had attended the rise of Julius Cæsar and the struggle between that leader and Pompey for supremacy, and which had been temporarily allayed by the complete ascendency of Cæsar, broke out afresh with renewed violence upon the assassination of the great dictator. The verse of Horace, especially in his odes, is full of the consciousness of this civil strife, and of deep and sincere regret for its consequence to the state. The young student was just twenty-one years of age when the fall of Cæsar startled the world. And when Brutus reached Athens on his way to Macedonia, and called upon the young Romans there to rally to the republic and liberty, the ardent heart of the youthful Horace responded to the summons. He joined the ill-fated army of the liberators, was made a military tribune, and served as such until the disastrous day of Philippi, when Horace's military and political ambition left him forever, together with all hope which he may have cherished of the lost cause. He made his way back to Rome under shelter of the amnesty which the merciful conqueror had granted, and there found himself in an unfortunate plight indeed; for his father was now dead, his modest estate lost, probably swallowed up in the general confiscations, and he himself with neither money, friends, nor occupation. He managed in some way, however, to secure a small clerkship, the income from which served to keep the wolf from his humble door. But in this obscure, unfriended clerk one was now walking the streets of Rome to whom Rome's proudest and most princely mansions were before many years to open as to a welcome guest. For he carried within him, concealed in a most unpretentious personality, a rich store of education, experience, and genius, which was to prove the open sesame for him to the world's best gifts. To the exercise of this genius he now turned; and the appearance of the earliest of his satires, with perhaps some of his odes and epodes as well, was the result. All these things and much more the poet tells us, frankly giving the whole of his story with neither boasting on the one hand nor false pride on the other. And now the event occurred which was the first link that bound Horace tangibly to his future greatness--his meeting with the poet Vergil, who was at this time famous and powerful in the friendship of Mæcenas, Pollio, and even the emperor himself. This sweet and generous-souled poet, recognizing the kindred spirit of genius in the youthful Horace, straightway admitted him to his own friendship, a friendship which is one of the most charming pictures of that brilliant age, and which was destined to endure unbroken until parted by the death of Vergil himself. It was Vergil who in due time introduced Horace to another friend, a man who was one of the great personages of that age, a leading statesman, a man of letters himself, and a generous patron of letters--Mæcenas, under whose sheltering patronage our poet grew and expanded to the full development of those poetic powers which first had brought him recognition. From this shelter Horace writes a satire addressed to Mæcenas, in which he recounts, among other circumstances of his life, the occasion of his introduction to his patron; and takes occasion to answer the envious criticisms which were aimed against him, that he, a mere freedman's son, should be elevated above his betters to this high social position. The theme of this satire, which he sturdily maintains, is, that in social, even if not in political matters, character, not family, should be the standard; or, in the language of another gifted son of poverty: The rank is but the guinea's stamp; The man's the gowd for a' that. We give quotations from this satire in the translation of Francis. The poet feels justified in addressing it to his patron, because, though Mæcenas is of noble birth himself, he does not hold in contempt the worthy of lowly descent. Horace says that it is all very well to deny a man political advancement on the score of low birth; but when it comes to denying social advancement upon this score to a man of worth, that is quite unbearable. Horace cannot rightly be envied or criticized for his friendship with Mæcenas, for this came to him purely on his merits and not by chance. A pleasing picture is given of his first introduction to Mæcenas, and his final admission to that nobleman's charmed circle of friends. As for myself, a freedman's son confessed; A freedman's son, the public scorn and jest, That now with you I joy the social hour,-- That once a Roman legion owned my power; But though they envied my command in war Justly, perhaps, yet sure 'tis different far To gain your friendship, where no servile art Where only men of merit claim a part. Nor yet to chance this happiness I owe; Friendship like yours it had not to bestow. First my best Vergil, then my Varius, told Among my friends what character I hold; When introduced, in few and faltering words (Such as an infant modesty affords), I did not tell you my descent was great, Or that I wandered round my country seat On a proud steed in richer pastures bred; But what I really was I frankly said. Short was your answer, in your usual strain; I take my leave, nor wait on you again, Till, nine months past, engaged and bid to hold A place among your nearer friends enrolled. An honor this, methinks, of nobler kind, That, innocent of heart and pure of mind, Though with no titled birth, I gained his love, Whose judgment can discern, whose choice approve. The poet here pays a glowing tribute of filial affection to his father, to whose faithful care and instruction he owes it that he has been shielded from the grosser sins and defects of character. If some few venial faults deform my soul (Like a fair face when spotted with a mole), If none with avarice justly brand my fame, With sordidness, or deeds too vile to name; If pure and innocent, if dear (forgive These little praises) to my friends I live, My father was the cause, who, though maintained By a lean farm but poorly, yet disdained The country schoolmaster, to whose low care The mighty captain sent his high-born heir, With satchel, copy-book, and pelf to pay The wretched teacher on th' appointed day. To Rome by this bold father was I brought, To learn those arts which well-born youth are taught; So dressed and so attended, you would swear I was some senator's expensive heir; Himself my guardian, of unblemished truth, Among my tutors would attend my youth, And thus preserved my chastity of mind (That prime of virtue in its highest kind) Not only pure from guilt, but even the shame That might with vile suspicion hurt my fame; Nor feared to be reproached, although my fate Should fix my fortune in some meaner state, From which some trivial perquisites arise, Or make me, like himself, collector of excise. For this my heart, far from complaining, pays A larger debt of gratitude and praise; Nor, while my senses hold, shall I repent Of such a father, nor with pride resent, As many do, th' involuntary disgrace Not to be born of an illustrious race. But not with theirs my sentiments agree, Or language; for if Nature should decree That we from any stated point might live Our former years, and to our choice should give The sires to whom we wished to be allied, Let others choose to gratify their pride; While I, contented with my own, resign The titled honors of an ancient line. Horace proceeds to draw a strong contrast between the very onerous duties and social obligations which fall to the lot of the high-born, and his own simple, quiet, independent life. This friendship with Mæcenas, of which the preceding satire relates the foundation, began in the year 38 B. C., when Horace was twenty-seven years of age. From this time on the poet received many substantial proofs of his patron's regard for him, the most notable of which was the gift of a farm among the Sabine hills about thirty miles from Rome. Such a gift meant to Horace freedom from the drudgery of the workaday world, consequent leisure for the development of his literary powers, a proper setting and atmosphere for the rustic moods of his muse; while his intimacy in the palace of Mæcenas on the Esquiline gave him standing in the city and ample opportunity for indulging his urban tastes. Although this gift of the farm and other favors derived from the friendship of Mæcenas were so important to Horace as to color all his after life and work, he nowhere manifests the slightest spirit of sycophancy toward his patron. While always grateful, he makes it very clear that the favors of Mæcenas cannot be accepted at the price of his own personal independence. Rather than lose this, he would willingly resign all that he has received. The following satire expresses that deep content which the poet experiences upon his farm, the simple delights which he enjoys there, and, by contrast, some of the amusing as well as annoying incidents of his life in Rome as the favorite of the great minister Mæcenas. The satire is in the translation of Sir Theodore Martin. My prayers with this I used to charge,-- A piece of land not over 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. O son of Maia,[B] 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 what wits he has, 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. [B] Mercury, the god of gain, and protector of poets. The poet proceeds to contrast with his restful country life the vexatious bustle of the city, and the officious attentions which people thrust upon him because of his supposed influence with Mæcenas. 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 Cæsar 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: Oh, 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? When on my table shall be seen Pythagoras' 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! Not gossip 'bout our neighbors' houses, But what concerns us nearer, and Is harmful not to understand; Whether by wealth or worth, 'tis plain That men to happiness attain; 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. At some such informal gathering of neighbors as this the story of the city mouse and the country mouse would be told. The poet's own moral of this homely tale is gathered from the farewell words of the country mouse as he escapes from the splendors--and terrors of the city: "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!" 3. AULUS PERSIUS FLACCUS The mantle of the satirist preacher which had fallen from Horace found no worthy claimant for nearly half a century. The successor, and, so far as in him lay, the sincere imitator of Horace, was Aulus Persius Flaccus. His circumstances were as unlike those of his great predecessor as can well be imagined. Horace was the son of a freedman, with no financial or social backing save that which he won by his own genius; Persius was, like Lucilius, of noble equestrian rank, rich, and related by birth to some of the first men of his time. Horace, while he had every opportunity for learning all that books and the schools could teach him, was, as we have already seen, preëminently a student of real life, having been taught by his father to study men as they actually were. Persius, on the other hand, saw little of the world except through the medium of books and teachers. When the future satirist was but six years of age, his father died, and he was brought up chiefly in the society of his mother and sister, carefully shielded from contact with the rough and wicked world. At the age of twelve he was taken from his native Volaterræ in Etruria to Rome, where his formal education was continued in the same careful seclusion until he assumed the toga of manhood. His writings do not, therefore, smack of the street and the world of men as do those of Horace, but they savor of the cloister and the library. Horace preached against the sins of men as he saw them; Persius, as he imagined them and read of them, taking his texts often from the more virile satires of Horace himself. Horace was devoted to no school of philosophy, but accepted what seemed to him best and sanest from all schools, and jeered alike at the follies of all. But Persius was by birth, education, and choice a Stoic. He became an ardent preacher and expounder of the Stoic philosophy, just as Lucretius had thrown his whole heart into expounding the doctrine of Epicurus a hundred years before. Stoicism, as Tyrrell says, was the "philosophy in which under the Roman Empire the human conscience sought and found an asylum. It had ceased now to be a philosophy, and had become a religion, appealing to the rich and great as Christianity appealed to the poor and humble." Persius, accordingly, following his early bent, as soon as he arrived at man's estate, placed himself under the care and instruction of Cornutus, a Stoic philosopher. His own account of this event forms one of the most pleasing passages in his works, and is found in the fifth satire, which is a confession of his own ardent devotion both to his friend the Stoic, and to Stoicism as well. The lofty and almost Christian tone of this ardent young Stoic preacher was greatly admired in the Middle Ages, and he was much quoted by the Church Fathers. His high moral truths sounded out in an age of moral laxity, when faith in the old religious beliefs had given way, and had not yet laid hold upon the nascent doctrine of Christianity which was even now marching westward and was soon to gain admission to Rome itself. To the Stoic, virtue was the bright goal of all living. To gain her was to gain life indeed; and to lose her was to suffer loss irreparable. This loss the poet invokes in a masterly apostrophe in the third satire upon those rulers who basely abuse their power. Dread sire of gods! when lust's envenomed stings Stir the fierce nature of tyrannic kings; When storms of rage within their bosoms roll, And call in thunder for thy just control; O then relax the bolt, suspend the blow, And thus and thus alone thy vengeance show: In all her charms set Virtue in their eye, And let them see their loss, despair, and die! Gifford. The Christian tone of Persius is perhaps best seen in the second satire, which is a sermon on prayer. The tone throughout is far above the level of the thinking of his time, and shows a lofty conception of the deity and of spiritual things. In the closing lines especially, he reaches so high and true a spiritual note that he seems almost to have caught a glimpse of those high conceptions which inspired his great contemporary, the apostle Paul. This sermon might well have had for its text the inspired words of the Old Testament prophet Hosea: "For I desired mercy and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings." That the Romans were not without their own light as to the acceptable offering to heaven is further seen in an ode of Horace, in which he voices the same high truth, that the thought of the heart is of more moment in the sight of God than the offering of the hand. This fine ode ends with the following stanza: If thy hand, free from ill, the altar touch, Thou shalt the offended gods appease as much With gifts of sparkling salt and pious meal As if thy vows more costly victims seal. Hawkins. But let us now return to our poet's sermon on prayer. Persius addresses it to his friend Plotius Macrinus, congratulating him upon the returning anniversary of his birthday. Health to my friend! and while my vows I pay, O mark, Macrinus, this auspicious day, Which, to your sum of years already flown, Adds yet another--with a whiter stone. Amid the prayers to his tutelary genius this day, Macrinus will not offer those selfish and impious prayers with which men are too prone to come before the gods, prayers which they would not dare to utter to a man, or even in the hearing of men. Indulge your genius, drench in wine your cares: It is not yours, with mercenary prayers, To ask of heaven what you would die with shame, Unless you drew the gods aside, to name; While other great ones stand, with downcast eyes, And with a silent censer tempt the skies!-- Sound sense, integrity, a conscience clear, Are begged aloud, that all at hand may hear; But prayers like these (half whispered, half suppressed) The tongue scarce hazards from the conscious breast: "O that I could my rich old uncle see In funeral pomp!--O that some deity To pots of buried gold would guide my share! O that my ward, whom I succeed as heir, Were once at rest! Poor child, he lives in pain, And death to him must be accounted gain.-- By wedlock thrice has Nerius swelled his store, And now--he is a widower once more!" The ingenious manner in which this prayer is framed so as to calm the conscience of the votary is admirably pointed out by Gifford. "The supplicant meditates no injury to any one. The death of his uncle is concealed under a wish that he could see his magnificent funeral, which, as the poor man must one day die, is a prayer becoming a pious nephew. The second petition is quite innocent.--If people will foolishly bury their gold and forget it, there is no more harm in his finding it than another. The third is even laudable; it is a prayer uttered in pure tenderness of heart, for the relief of a poor suffering child. With respect to the last, there can be no wrong in mentioning a fact which everybody knows. Not a syllable is said of his own wife; if the gods are pleased to take a hint and remove her, that is their concern; he never asked it." One question, friend, an easy one, in fine: What are thy thoughts of Jove? "My thoughts?" Yes, thine. Wouldst thou prefer him to the herd of Rome? To any individual?--But to whom? To Statius, for example. Heavens! a pause? Which of the two would best dispense of laws? Best shield th' unfriended orphan? Good! Now move The suit to Statius, late preferred to Jove: "O Jove! Good Jove!" he cries, o'erwhelmed with shame, And must not Jove himself "O Jove!" exclaim? Or dost thou think the impious wish forgiven, Because, when thunder shakes the vault of heaven, The bolt innoxious flies o'er thee and thine, To rend the forest oak and mountain pine? Because, yet livid from the lightning's scath, Thy smoldering corpse, a monument of wrath, Lies in no blasted grove, for public care To expiate, with sacrifice and prayer; Must, therefore, Jove, unsceptered and unfeared Give to thy ruder mirth his foolish beard? What bribe hast thou to win the powers divine Thus to thy rod?--The lungs and lights of swine! Again, the ears of heaven are assailed by ignorant and superstitious prayers, against which the poet inveighs. Then follows a rebuke to those who pray for health and happiness, but who, by their vices and folly, thwart their own prayer. Why do men pray so impiously and foolishly? It is because they entertain such ignorant and unworthy conceptions of the gods, because they think that they are beings of like passions with themselves. No, no! the gods have no such carnal passions, nor do they care for gold and the rich offerings of men's hands. They regard the heart of the worshiper, and if this is pure, even empty hands may bring an acceptable offering. O grovelling souls, and void of things divine! Why bring our passions to the Immortals' shrine, And judge, from what this carnal sense delights, Of what is pleasing in their purer sights? This the Calabrian fleece with purple soils, And mingles cassia with our native oils; Tears from the rocky conch its pearly store, And strains the metal from the glowing ore. This, this, indeed, is vicious; yet it tends To gladden life, perhaps, and boasts its ends; But you, ye priests (for sure ye can), unfold-- In heavenly things, what boots this pomp of gold? No more, in truth, than dolls to Venus paid, The toys of childhood, by the riper maid! No! let me bring the Immortals what the race Of great Messala, now depraved and base, On their huge charger, cannot;--bring a mind Where legal and where moral sense are joined With the pure essence; holy thoughts that dwell In the soul's most retired and sacred cell; A bosom dyed in honor's noblest grain, Deep-dyed;--with these let me approach the fane, And heaven will hear the humble prayer I make, Though all my offering be a barley cake. Gifford. 4. DECIMUS JUNIUS JUVENALIS When one has read his Horace, one feels personally acquainted with the poet, so frankly biographical is he. This is true, though to a much less extent, of Persius. But Juvenal is almost sphinxlike in regard to himself. What little we know is gained from a few indirect references in his writings themselves, and from the numerous and contradictory ancient lives which have come down to us prefaced to the different manuscripts of Juvenal's satires. From these we gather that he was born sometime between 48 and 55 A. D., at the town of Aquinum in Latium, and was the son of a well-to-do freedman who left him a patrimony sufficient for his modest maintenance through life. He had a good education in grammar and rhetoric, and devoted himself through a large part of his earlier life to rhetorical declamation; though he seems not to have made any professional or profitable use of the talent which he undoubtedly possessed for the vocation of the advocate. He enjoyed some unimportant though honorable civil employment under Titus and Domitian, and served for one period of his life in the army, probably in Britain, with the rank of military tribune. In Juvenal's later life he seems to have given offense either to Domitian by some lines which he wrote upon a favorite pantomime dancer of the emperor, or to Hadrian for a similar cause. By one or the other of these emperors, according to tradition, he was practically exiled by an appointment to a command of a legion in Africa. The date of his death is as uncertain as that of his birth, but it seems to lie between 128 and 138 A. D. It will be seen, therefore, that our poet was contemporaneous with ten Roman emperors, his life covering the period from Nero to Hadrian, inclusive. It was during the reign of Domitian, however, that Juvenal, now already well advanced to middle life, took up his residence in Rome and began that work which was to be his material contribution to life and letters. Life in Rome under Domitian!--what a challenge to the satirist! what a field for the preacher! These were the crowning years of well-nigh a century of ever-increasing horror. With the downfall of liberty and the republic, both of which had perished in fact long before their name and semblance vanished, wealth and luxury had poured into Rome from the conquered provinces, and with these that moral laxity against which Horace had aimed his satire, then in four successive reigns Rome had cringed and groaned under the absolute sway of cynic, madman, fool, and flippant murderer, each more recklessly disregardful than the last of civic virtue and the lives and common rights of man. Then three puppets within a year involving the world in civil strife were themselves swept off the stage by Vespasian and Titus, who did indeed give passing respite to the state. And then for fifteen years--Domitian! Of these fifteen years Tacitus, just emerging into the grateful light of Nerva's and of Trajan's reigns, indignantly exclaims: They had besides expelled all the professors of philosophy, and driven every laudable science into exile, that naught which was worthy and honest might anywhere be seen. Mighty, surely, was the testimony which we gave of our patience; and as our forefathers had beheld the ultimate consummation of liberty, so did we of bondage, since through dread of informers and inquisitions of state, we were bereft of the common intercourse of speech and attention. Nay, with our utterance we had likewise lost our memory, had it been equally in our power to forget as to be silent.... Few we are who have escaped; and, if I may so speak, we have survived not only others, but even ourselves, when from the middle of our lives so many years were rent; whence from being young we are arrived at old age, from being old we are nigh come to the utmost verge of mortality, all in a long course of awful silence.--_Galton._ Somewhat earlier than this, though within the same generation, Paul the apostle to the Gentiles, _the_ preacher of that dark age, had written a letter to the infant Christian church at Rome in which he had drawn a terrible picture of what human society can become when it has thrown off all checks and abandoned itself to profligacy. His picture, we may be sure, was drawn from the life. And even as they refused to have God in their knowledge, God gave them up unto a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not fitting; being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, hateful to God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant-breakers, without natural affection, unmerciful: who, knowing the ordinance of God, that they which practice such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but also consent with them that practice them. Upon such a world as this did Juvenal, in the prime of manhood, his powers of reason, observation, and expression fully ripened, look out from his home in the Roman Subura;[C] with the product of such times did he mingle in the crowded reception-rooms of rich and noble patrons. He looked upon society and noted it, and long restrained his speech. But at last, as Tyrrell has well expressed it, "the flood of indignation, pent up in furious silence for forty years, once loose, carried away on its current or tossed aside every obstacle that impeded its onward rush." [C] A quarter in Rome given up to markets and tenement-houses. And this is that which mainly distinguishes him from Horace--his tremendous moral earnestness, his fiery indignation. His spirit did not allow him to play with his theme; there were hard blows to strike at outbreaking sins, and he would strike them. And if venial faults were struck as hard as more serious offenses, that was a proof not of inconsistency, but of an earnestness that could not stop to distinguish; if he writes of practices too shameful for telling in the hearing of polite ears, it is because his righteous indignation was in no mood to mince words, but would hold up vice in all its hideousness to the fatal light. He speaks with frankness of shameful sins, but only to hurl his denunciations at them. He is always in a rage,--strenuous where Horace is gently satirical and whimsical; didactic and straightforward where Horace is conversational and dramatic. At the same time he paints most vivid pictures, filling in the lines with tremendous sweeps of his rhetorical brush. He tells us that he was fairly driven to write satire by the very atmosphere and daily occurrences of folly and sin around him.[D] [D] The quotations from Juvenal which follow are taken from the excellent prose version of Leeper. For who so tolerant of this wrong-headed city, who so callous, that he can contain himself when lawyer Matho's brand-new litter comes along, filled with his Greatness, and after him the betrayer of his distinguished friend, who will soon finish off the remnants of our nobility already preyed upon.... Is not one moved to fill a bulky note-book right in the middle of the cross-roads, when a man is carried past, already indulging in six bearers, showing himself to view on both sides--a forger who has made himself aristocrat and millionaire with a little tablet and a damp seal? Now you are confronted by a lady of position, who, when her husband is thirsty, just before she hands him the mild Calenian, puts in a dash of poison, and, like a superior Lucusta, teaches her unsophisticated kinswomen to carry their livid husbands to burial right through the town and all its gossip.... It is to crime that men owe their pleasure-grounds, their castles, banquets, old silver, and goblets with goat's figure in relief.... When nature refuses, sheer scorn produces verse--the best it can. He cannot abide the Greeks. His national pride is touched at the thought that not only do they swarm in Rome, monopolizing by their superior shrewdness all profitable employments, but that Rome itself has gone crazy after them, and things Greek are all the rage. And now I will at once admit to you,--no false shame shall stop me,--what class is most in favor with our wealthy men, and whom most of all I am flying from. I cannot abide, fellow-citizen, a Greecized Rome.... Your yeoman citizen, Quirinus, dons his Greek boots and wears a Greek collar upon a neck rubbed with Greek ointment.... What a quick intellect, what desperate effrontery, what a ready tongue, surpassing Isæus himself in fluency. Tell me now, what do you take him for? In his own person he has brought us--why, whom you will--critic, rhetorician, geometer, painter, trainer, prophet, rope-dancer, doctor, sorcerer. The starveling Greek knows everything.... Mark how that race, so adroit in flattery, extols the foolish friend's conversation, the ill-favored friend's features; how they compare some weakling's scraggy neck with the throat of a Hercules, or admire a harsh voice which is not a whit better than the cry of a cock.... The whole breed of them are actors. If you but smile, your Greek shakes his sides with heartier merriment; he weeps, if he has spied a tear in his friend's eye, and yet he feels no grief. If you ask in winter time for a bit of a fire, he takes an overcoat: should you remark, "I feel warm," he is in a sweat. Juvenal complains bitterly of the unproductiveness of honest toil in literature and the professions. It's all very well to talk about the poet's inspiration, but Pegasus does not fly upon an empty stomach. He has dined, has Horace, when he shouts his "Evoe." ... Were Vergil left without a slave and a decent lodging, then every snake would tumble from his locks: his trumpet would be hushed, and sound forth no more impressive notes.... Historians, is your toil more productive? It demands more time and more oil. Each of you, doubtless, has his pages rising by the hundred, knowing no limit, growing towards bankruptcy with the pile of papyrus. But what is your harvest--what does opening up that field yield you? Who will pay a historian as much as he would pay a reporter?... Then say what public services and the ever-present big packet of documents bring in to our advocates. Would you know their real gains? In one scale set a hundred advocates' estates; in the other just that of Lacerna, the Red Jockey. The teacher fares no better: Who places in Celadus' and learned Palæmon's lap a due reward for their scholastic toils? Yet, little as it is, the pupil's stupid body servant takes the first bite, and the steward will snip off a something for himself. Submit to it, Palæmon; let something be abated of your due, as if you were a-huckstering winter blankets and white counterpanes. Here is his exhortation to those degenerate Roman nobles who prided themselves upon their blue blood and ancient names, but whose lives belied their birth. The sentiment may seem a commonplace, but it still inspires our modern poets, as in Tennyson: 'Tis only noble to be good. Kind hearts are more than coronets, And simple faith than Norman blood. Of what avail are pedigrees? What boots it, Ponticus, taking rank by length of descent, and having one's ancestors' portrait-masks to show off? What do you gain by the display of a Corvinus in your big family roll, or by your affinity with smoke-begrimed Masters of the Horse, if you live a life of shame in the very face of the Lepidi?... No, though time-honored waxen likenesses adorn the length and breadth of your hall, still virtue is the sole and only nobility. Be a Paulus, a Cossus, or a Drusus in _character_. Rank that above the statues of your ancestors. The first thing you are bound to show me is a good heart. If by word and deed you deserve the character of a blameless man, one who cleaves to the right--good: I recognize the noble; I salute you, Gætulicus be you, or Silanus, or of whatever other blood you come.... For who will call "noble" one who shames his race, and challenges notice by the luster of his name alone? The very horse is ranked and valued by what he does; so much more man, and besides, _noblesse oblige_: He is a "noble" steed, whatever grass he comes from, who takes rank above his fellows--in pace, and who raises the dust upon the course ahead of all; but the progeny of Coryphæus and Hirpinus are "stock for sale"--if Victory has rarely perched on their collar. _There_ is no regard for ancestors, no favoritism toward the shades of the departed.... Therefore, so that we may admire yourself and not your belongings, give me something of your own to carve 'neath your statue, beyond the honors which we have rendered, and render still, to those who made you all you are. Juvenal's most famous satire is the tenth, upon the theme "The Vanity of Human Wishes." It is more general in scope than the other satires, but is nevertheless full of the moral earnestness that everywhere characterizes the author. Here is the broad thesis: Through all lands but few are they who can clear themselves of the mists of errors, and discriminate between the real blessings and what are quite the reverse. For in what fear or wish of ours are we guided by reason's rule? No matter how auspiciously you start with a plan, do you not live to regret your efforts and the attainment of your desire? Whole households have been overthrown ere now, at their own petition, by a too gracious heaven. By the arts of peace and war alike we strive for what will only hurt us. Wealth is notoriously a fatal gift, and should be shunned, not sought. No one need fear poison if he drinks his wine out of a cheap cup. If the love of money is the root of all evil, the possession of money is a challenge to all evil-doers. What, then, may one rightly desire? Power? This is just as fatal to its possessor. Some are brought to ruin through their great power, subject itself to envy just as great; they are wrecked by their long and brilliant roll of honors; down from the pedestals come their statues, and now the stroke of the axe shatters the very wheels of the triumphal cars. Hark! now the fires are hissing, now, by dint of bellows and forge, that head, the people's idol, is aglow; and the great Sejanus is a crackling! And soon from the face, second to one only in the whole world, they are making pipkins, and basins, and a pan--ay, and even meaner vessels!... What laid low a Crassus, and a Pompey, and that leader who broke the proud Romans' spirit and brought them under his lash? Why, it was just the unscrupulous struggling for the highest place, and the prayer of ambition, heard but too well by the malicious gods. It is but seldom that a king does not take a murderous crowd with him down to Ceres' son-in-law; seldom that a despot dies without blood-letting.... Just weigh Hannibal. How many pounds' weight will you find in that greatest of leaders? This is the man for whom Africa is too small--Africa, lashed by the Moorish main, and stretching thence to the tepid Nile; and, on another side again, to the Ethiopian tribes with their towering elephants! He adds Spain to his empire; he bounds over the Pyrenees; Nature barred his path with her Alp and her snow; he rives the rocks and bursts the mountain with vinegar. Now he holds Italy, yet he still strains forward. "Nothing," cries he, "is gained unless we storm the city gates with our Punic soldiery, and this hand plants my standard in the very heart of Rome!" Oh, what a sight! oh, what a subject for a caricature--the one-eyed general bestriding the Gætulian monster! What, then, is his end? Fie, glory! Why, he in his turn is conquered, and flies headlong into exile; and there he sits, that august dependent--a gazing stock at a king's gates--until it may please His Majesty of Bithynia to awake. The soul which once turned the world upside down shall be quelled, not by a sword, not by a stone, no, nor by a javelin; but by that Nemesis of Cannæ, the avenger of all that blood--just a ring.[E] Off with you, madman! Scour the bleak Alps, that so you may--catch the fancy of schoolboys, and become a theme for declamation! [E] Hannibal always carried with him, concealed in a ring, a dose of poison, with which, at last, he took his own life, to escape capture by the Romans. If any are disposed to pray for long life and length of days, Juvenal's dark and repulsive picture of old age would effectually banish that desire. One by one the physical and mental powers fail and the man is left but a pitiful wreck of his former self. But suppose his faculties be sound, yet still he must conduct his sons to their burial; must gaze at the pyre of his beloved wife, and of his brother, and on urns filled with what was once his sisters. This is the forfeit laid upon longevity, to pass to old age amid bereavement after bereavement, thick-coming griefs, and one weary round of lamentations, with the garb of the mourner never laid aside. But age brings not alone loss of friends, but in many instances personal suffering and disaster from which one would be mercifully delivered by a more timely death. This, Caius Marius, the great Roman general, found to his cost: That banishment, that jail, Minturnæ's swamps, and the bread of beggary in conquered Carthage, all had their origin in a long life. What happier being in the world than that Roman could nature, could Rome ever have produced, if, after leading round the train of captives amid all the circumstance of war, he had breathed out his soul in glory, when just stepping down from his Teutonic car? As for beauty, foolish indeed is that mother who prays for her son or her daughter that he or she may possess this; for it is the most fatal possession of all. Not even the most rugged training of the old Sabine school of morality can shield the possessor of great beauty from the poisonous, insidious temptations, if not actual violence, of the wicked world. What then? Shall men then pray for nothing? If you will take my advice, you will allow the gods themselves to determine what is meet for us, and suited to our lot; for the gods will give us--not what is pleasant, but what is most befitting in each case. Man is dearer to them than to himself. Urged on by impulse, by blind and violent desires, we pray for a wife, and for offspring; but only they (the gods) know what the children will be, and of what character the wife. Still, if you must make your petition, and must vow a meat offering at the shrine, then pray for a healthy mind in a healthy body; pray for a brave spirit free from the fear of death--a spirit that regards life's close as one of nature's boons, that can endure any toil, that is innocent of anger and free from desire, and that looks on the sufferings of Hercules and his cruel labors as more blessed than all the wantoning, and reveling, and down-couches of a Sardanapalus. Perhaps the appeal of Juvenal that comes most powerfully to the present generation, and contains the most solemn lesson for us, is his warning to fathers and mothers that all unconsciously to them their sons and daughters are following in their footsteps, bound to copy them, and reproduce their faults in later life. The presence of a child is as sacred as a temple shrine, and should be as carefully guarded from every profaning influence. It is surely notable to find this wholesome teaching springing like a lily out of the mire of that degenerate age. It smacks neither of fervid rhetoric nor of cold and formal philosophy, but rings true and natural as childhood itself. Let no foul word or sight come nigh the threshold where dwells the father of a family. _You owe your boy the profoundest respect. If meditating aught that is base, despise not your boy's tender years; but let the image of your infant son arrest you on the verge of sin._ For should he some day do a deed to earn the censor's wrath, and show himself not only your counterpart in face and figure, but heir of your character as well--one to follow in your steps, and sin every sin in worse degree--you will chide and scold him, no doubt, with loud reproaches, and then proceed to change your will. But whence that boldness, whence those parental rights, when you do worse, despite your age? If company is coming, none of your people will have any rest. Sweep the pavement! Let me see the pillars glistening! Down with the shriveled spider and all her web! Ho! you polish the plain silver, and you the figured cups! So the master storms at the top of his voice, urging them on, with rod in hand. Poor wretch! are you in such a fidget lest the hall may offend your friend's eye, when he comes, and lest the vestibule be splashed with mud--all of which one little page with one half-peck of sawdust puts to rights--but yet bestow no thought on this, that your son's eye shall rest upon a household unsullied, stainless, innocent of vice? We thank you that you gave a citizen to your country and your people, if you make him worthy of that country, helpful to its soil, helpful in public work, in peace and war; for it will matter much in what lessons and principles you train him. Such wholesome truths as these and many more did Juvenal press home upon his generation. And he speaks no less to all humanity; for the problems of human life and conduct are not peculiar to any age, but are always and everywhere the same. We have now reviewed two centuries of Roman preachers, and it may naturally be asked, "What was their influence upon the Roman world?" No direct results are traceable to their efforts. Society went on its accustomed course; the seeds of decay and death sprang up, grew to maturity, and brought forth their natural fruits of national destruction in due season, apparently unchecked by the counter influences of which we have spoken. These influences cannot yet be weighed and known--not until account has been taken of all the factors in the world's life problem, the grand totals cast up and the trial balance made. But in that time the bead-roll of the world's real benefactors will contain the names of these Roman satirists whose voices were raised against an age of wrong in immemorial protest, who were the numb and dormant conscience of the human race awakened and incarnate in a human tongue. SUMMARY AND QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW _Roman Satire_, as illustrated by the works of Ennius (239-169 B. C.), Lucilius (180-103 B. C.), Horace (65-8 B. C.), Persius (34-62 A. D.), and Juvenal (48(?)-138(?) A. D.). 1. What position did the Roman satirist occupy as a teacher of morals? 2. Show how the great Greek writers served as models for the leading Roman men of letters. 3. In what literary field did the Romans strike out for themselves? 4. What may we suppose was the character of the rude satire of ancient Italy? 5. What position does Ennius hold among Roman satirists? 6. What famous events took place within the lifetime of Lucilius? 7. How did his social position help to make his writings effective? 8. What did the Romans themselves think of him? 9. How have fragments of his works been preserved to us? 10. What picture of life in the Roman Forum does he present? 11. Give other examples of the teachings of Lucilius. 12. Quote his definition of virtue. 13. How does Horace's attitude toward his fellow-men differ from that of Lucilius? 14. What advantage had he in his early education? 15. Illustrate his habit of personal reflection upon the events of the day. 16. What are the marked qualities of his style? 17. Describe his argument in favor of contentment. 18. What qualities of the "bore" are brought out in his famous satire on this subject? 19. What is his criticism of Lucilius? 20. Give an account of Horace's own life. 21. What ideas does he set forth in his satire to Mæcenas? 22. What description does he give of his father? 23. What picture does he give of his life on his farm as contrasted with his life in Rome? 24. How did the circumstances of the life of Persius differ from those of Horace? 25. How different is his poetry for this reason? 26. Illustrate the poet's high estimate of Stoicism. 27. How does he treat the subject of prayer in one of his famous satires? 28. How is his skill shown in his picture of the false suppliant? 29. What do we know of the life of Juvenal? 30. What was the character of the times in which he lived? 31. How does his style differ from that of Horace? 32. How does he deal with the Hellenizing tendencies of his time? 33. Give an outline of his satire upon the vanity of human wishes. 34. What is his solemn warning to parents? BIBLIOGRAPHY SIMCOX, _History of Latin Literature_: Early Satire, Lucilius, Vol. I, pp. 62-68; Horace, pp. 283-300; Persius, Vol. II, pp. 80-86; Juvenal, pp. 118-138. SELLAR, _The Roman Poets of the Republic_: Early Roman Satire, C. Lucilius, pp. 222-252. _The Roman Poets of the Augustan Age--Horace and the Elegiac Poets_: The Satires of Horace, pp. 51-84. TYRRELL, _Latin Poetry_: Horace and Lucilius, pp. 162-181; Latin Satire, pp. 216-259. NETTLESHIP, _The Original Form of the Roman Satura. Lectures and Essays_: Horace, Life and Poems, pp. 143-167. CONINGTON, _The Satires of Persius_, with translations and commentary: Lecture on Life and Writings of Persius, pp. xiii-xxxii. GIFFORD, _Satires of Juvenal and Persius_, translated into English verse: The Life of Juvenal, Vol. I, pp. xxxi-xlviii; The Roman Satirists, pp. xlix-lxxxii; Life and Satires of Persius, Vol. II, pp. v-xlvii. PEARSON AND STRONG, _Thirteen Satires of Juvenal_ (the best text edition with commentary): Life of Juvenal, pp. 9-46. PART III EPIC POETRY Who Show'd me that epic was of all the king, Round, vast, and spanning all, like Saturn's ring? 1. CN. NÆVIUS--THE FIRST NATIONAL ROMAN EPIC We have already seen how the national pride of Rome was stirred by the completed subjugation of Italy and the first successful step in foreign conquest as the result of the First Punic War, and how this quickened national pride gave a new impulse to literature. We have seen how from this period under the powerful stimulus of Greek influence the drama sprang into being in its literary form. And it was in this same soil of awakened national consciousness, and in this same atmosphere of Greek thought and expression that the Roman epic had its beginnings. The rude translation of Homer's _Odyssey_ made by Livius Andronicus is not to be considered in this connection, for this was produced with no national feeling, but only that he might have a text-book from which to instruct his Roman schoolboys in their native tongue. The honor of producing the first heroic poem in Roman literature belongs to Cn. Nævius, to whom Mommsen accords the high praise of "the first Roman who deserves to be called a poet." He was a native of the district of Campania, of plebeian family, of most sturdy and independent character. The period of his life falls approximately between the years 269 and 199 B. C. We know that he was a soldier in his earlier life, serving in the First Punic War in Sicily, that he was imprisoned for his bold attacks from the stage upon the noble family of the Metelli, and afterward banished to Africa, where he ended his days. The tragedies and comedies of Nævius date from his life in Rome, but the occupation, and we may well believe the solace, of his old age in exile was the composition of his _Bellum Punicum_, a heroic poem upon the First Punic War. This poem is a truly national epic written in the rough old Saturnian verse which came down from hoary antiquity as a native Roman metrical product. This verse has a jingle not unlike some of our familiar nursery rhymes, of which The king was in his counting-house counting out his money, is a fair sample. Roman in form, the epic of Nævius was also intensely national in spirit and content. It was written in seven books, of which the first two form a kind of mythological background or prelude, and the remaining five books tell the story of the first great duel between Rome and Carthage. In the scanty fragments of this poem, especially in the introductory books, we are surprised to find ourselves upon familiar ground, until we discover that we are dealing with one of the great sources of Vergil's inspiration. For here in these broken scraps as in a shattered mirror we catch glimpses of Æneas and Anchises departing from Troy with their wives and treasure, and of the storm that drove the Trojans out of their course and wrecked them upon the shores of Africa; we hear snatches of Venus' appeal to Jupiter in their behalf, of Jove's reply promising to the Trojans a mighty destiny, and of Dido's request to Æneas for his tale of the Trojan War. The whole seems to have been written in an exceedingly simple and direct style, without much attempt at poetic embellishment. The poet prided himself upon his unadulterated Latinity, and protested against the strong Hellenizing tendency that was setting in. His epitaph (Roman writers had a weakness for composing their own epitaphs) may seem a bit over-laudatory of self from our modest modern standpoint, but it is quite in keeping with the outspoken style of his time, and is very interesting in the claim that he makes to be the mouthpiece and perhaps the last disciple of the native Italian muses (Camenæ). Here is his epitaph: If it were meet that th' immortals' tears should fall on mortal clay, Then would our native Muses weep for this our Nævius; For truly, since to Death's great garner he was gathered in, Our Romans born have clean forgot to speak their mother tongue. 2. QUINTUS ENNIUS The Hellenizing tendency of which Nævius complains was setting in strongly already during his life at Rome. But it was especially the influence of his literary successor, an influence still more strongly tending toward Greek forms and motives, which the unfortunate Nævius mourned from his place of exile and which gave added bitterness to the lament which the sturdy old Roman has left us in his epitaph. This literary successor was the poet Quintus Ennius, who may almost be said to have met Nævius at the gates of Rome, since he arrived at Rome at about the time when Nævius went into banishment. Ennius was not a Roman citizen at this time, having been born and reared down in the extreme heel of Italy, at Rudiæ in Calabria, a section which had for many generations been under Greek influence. He was of good local family, familiar with the rough Oscan speech of his native village, with the polished Greek of neighboring Tarentum, where he was probably at school, and with the Roman tongue, which had become the official language of his district after Rome had pushed her conquests to the limits of Italy. He was wont to say of himself that he had three hearts--Oscan, Latin, and Greek; and certainly by the circumstances of his birth and education he was a good representative of the threefold national influences which were rapidly converging. Ennius was born in 239 B. C., shortly after the close of the First Punic War; but he comes first into notice as a centurion in the Roman army in Sardinia during the Second Punic War. Here Cato, while acting as quæstor in the island, found him, and no doubt attracted by the sturdy scholarly soldier, took him to Rome in 204 in his own train. The poet afterward accompanied M. Fulvius Nobilior on that general's expedition to Ætolia, a privilege which he richly repaid later by immortalizing in verse the Ætolian campaign. He obtained Roman citizenship in 184 through the instrumentality of the son of Fulvius. He was most fortunate, moreover, in enjoying the friendship of the great Scipio, with whom he lived on the most intimate terms. For himself, he lived always at Rome in humble fashion on a slope of the Aventine Hill, and gained a modest living by teaching Greek to the youths of Rome. There is a tradition not very trustworthy that it was of him that Cato himself "learned Greek at eighty." That Ennius was fitted to be a confidential friend to great men of affairs we may well believe if, as Aulus Gellius, who has preserved the passage, would have us understand, the following picture was intended by the poet as a self-portraiture. The passage is from the seventh book of the "Annals," and has a setting of its own, but may well represent the familiar intercourse of the poet with Marcus Fulvius or with Scipio. If this is indeed a portrait, it is a passage of great value, for it pictures the character in great detail. So having spoken, he called for a man with whom often and gladly Table he shared, and talk, and all his burden of duties, When with debate all day on important affairs he was wearied, Whether perchance in the Forum wide, or the reverend Senate; One with whom he could frankly speak of his serious matters,-- Trifles also, and jests,--could pour out freely together Pleasant or bitter words, and know they were uttered in safety. Many the joys and the griefs he had shared, whether public or secret! This was a man in whom no impulse prompted to evil, Whether of folly or malice; a scholarly man and a loyal, Graceful, ready of speech, with his own contented and happy; Tactful, speaking in season, yet courteous, never loquacious. Vast was the buried and antique lore that was his, for the foretime Made him master of earlier customs as well as of newer. Versed in the laws was he of the ancients, men or immortals. Wisely he knew both when he should talk and when to be silent. So unto him Servilius spoke in the midst of the fighting.... Lawton. Ennius died in 169 B. C., and tradition says that his bust was placed in the tomb of the family of his great patron, whereby the poet-soldier and the soldier-statesman were mutually honored. Upon that sarcophagus of Scipio surmounted by the poet's bust might well have been inscribed the saying of Sellar: "Ennius was in letters what Scipio was in action--the most vital representative of his epoch." Ennius wrote satires and tragedies as we have seen; but it is because of his great epic poem the _Annales_, the work of his ripe age, that he deserves the high title accorded to him by the Romans themselves--"the father of Roman literature." This work is epoch-making because of its form and because of its important contribution to the development of the Latin language itself. The poet perceived that the native Saturnian verse was rude and unfitted to serve as a vehicle for the highest form of literary expression. His feeling toward this verse is shown in a fragment upon the First Punic War in which he refers to the _Bellum Punicum_ of Nævius: Others have treated the subject in the verses which in days of old the Fauns and bards used to sing, before any one had climbed to the cliffs of the Muses, or gave any care to style. Sellar. From the Saturnian he turned to the hexameter, whose "ocean-roll of rhythm" had resounded in the great epics of Homer. But it was one thing to admire the Greek dactylic hexameter, with its smooth-flowing cadences, and quite another to force the heavy, rough Latin speech into this measure. But this task, difficult as it was, Ennius essayed, and by the very attempt to force the Latin into the shapely Greek mold, he modified and polished that language itself, and handed it down to his literary successors as a far more fitting vehicle of noble expression than he had found it. It is true that in comparison with the hexameters of Vergil and Ovid the lines of Ennius are noticeably rough and heavy; but still it must be remembered that it was the older poet's pioneer labors that made the verse of Vergil and Ovid possible. The "Annals" of Ennius is an attempt to gather up the traditions of early Roman history and the facts of later times, and present them in a continuous narrative. Ennius was the pioneer in this work, and shows, as he says in the supposed self-portraiture quoted above, a very extensive knowledge of Roman antiquities, as well as a vivid first-hand perception of contemporary men and events. His active service as a soldier in the Second Punic War especially fitted him to write the story of a warlike nation. His descriptions of wars and stirring events are _con amore_. He breathed the air of victory in the long series of Roman triumphs following the Second Punic War, and infused into his great national poem something of that exaltation of spirit which animated his times, and which raised his work far above the plane which his modest title suggests. The poem sank deep into the national heart, and became a very bible of the race, from which his successors drew freely as from a public fountain. This poem, the work of the poet's old age, contained eighteen books, of which only about six hundred lines of fragments remain. The first book covers the period from the death of Priam to the death of Romulus. This period is, however, not as long as it is usually represented by tradition, for Ennius passes over the three hundred years of the Alban kings and represents Æneas as the father of Ilia, the mother of Romulus. One of the longest fragments describes the dream of Ilia in which the birth of Romulus and Remus is foreshadowed. Then follow scattered fragments relating to the birth and exposure of the twins, their nourishment by the wolf, their growth to manhood, a long fragment on the taking of the auspices by which the sovereignty of Romulus over his brother was decided, and at the end a spirited passage from the lamentation of the Romans over the death of Romulus. The second and third books give a history of the Roman kings after Romulus, with glimpses of the victory of the Horatii, the dreadful death of the treacherous Mettius Fufetius, the disgusting impiety of Tullia, and the rape of Lucretia, which precipitated the banishment of the Tarquins. The fourth and fifth books cover the period from the founding of the republic to the beginning of the war with Pyrrhus, which is described in the sixth book. This contains the fine passage in which King Pyrrhus refuses to accept money for the ransom of captives. He says to the Roman ambassadors: Gold for myself I wish not; ye need not proffer a ransom. Not as hucksters might let us wage our war, but as soldiers: Not with gold but the sword. Our lives we will set on the issue. Whether your rule or mine be Fortune's pleasure,--our mistress,-- Let us by valor decide. And to this word hearken ye also: Every valorous man who is spared by the fortune of battle, Fully determined am I of his freedom as well to accord him. Count it a gift. At the wish of the gods in heaven I grant it. Lawton. The seventh book treats of the First Punic War, which he touches upon but lightly, since this subject had been so fully covered by his predecessor. Then follow, in the remaining books, the Macedonian, Ætolian, and Istrian wars, the history being brought down to within a few years of the writer's death. In the last book the old poet very fittingly compares himself to a spirited horse who has won victories in his day, but now enjoys his well-earned rest in the dignity and inactivity of age. As we survey these broken fragments, we gain some appreciation of the cruelty of that fate which preserved to posterity the ten tedious books of Lucan's _Pharsalia_, the seventeen books of Silius' _Punica_, and the twelve books of the _Thebaid_ of Statius, but swept away this great work of Rome's first genuine poet--a work rendered triply valuable because it was the first Roman experiment in hexameters, because in it the Latin language was just molding into literary form, retaining still much of its early roughness and heaviness, and because of the priceless contribution to Roman antiquities which it could have furnished us. 3. PUBLIUS VERGILIUS MARO We turn from Ennius to Vergil as from prophecy to fulfilment. A hundred years separated the death of the one from the birth of the other, and nearly a century and a half stood between their maturer works, a period covering almost the whole range of republican literature. During this time many hands had been at work importing literary treasures from Greece, gleaning from native Italian sources the riches of ancient folk-lore, customs, traditions, and annals; many minds had pondered over the problems of life and human destiny, evolving and compiling treasures of philosophy. And the combined labors of all these had so enlarged, polished, and enriched the Latin speech, their common instrument, that, in the single generation embracing the Augustan age, that finished product was reached which we call the golden age of the language and its literature, and to the standard of which we refer all Latinity of earlier or later date. During this period of development the "inspired" Accius, the immediate successor of Ennius, had given to the world those works which won for him the name of the greatest Roman tragic poet; Lucilius, the father of Roman satire, had left his strong imprint upon his country's life and language; Varro's tremendous diligence had stored up, among much other treasure, material upon agriculture and Roman history and antiquities; Lucretius had written his great didactic poem upon the Epicurean philosophy; Catullus, an older contemporary of Vergil, had finished his brief literary as well as earthly career before Vergil had well begun to write; and lastly, Cicero, Cæsar, and Sallust had wrought in their strong, polished prose for the further perfecting of the Latin speech. With such a birthright was Vergil born; in such a school and from such masters did he gain the equipment for his literary career, which was destined to make him the most brilliant representative of the most brilliant period in Roman literature. His origin was certainly humble enough to hide him from fate. He was born (B. C. 70) the son of a potter, or as some say a farmer, in an obscure little village near Mantua, in northern Italy, and received his early education in the not far away towns of Cremona and Mediolanum. Thence he went to Rome for his higher education, where he acquired the usual accomplishments of the Roman youth. His studies fitted him for the profession of the advocate, but not so his nature. His one appearance at the bar taught him his utter unfitness for that pursuit, for his natural shyness on that occasion quite overcame him. As Ovid tells us of his own experience, the Muses wooed him irresistibly away from the practical pursuits of the "wordy forum," and claimed him for their own. Nature had marked him for a poet. We are told that he was framed on large and generous lines, tall, with the genuine Italian swarthiness of hue, simple and gentle, almost rustic in appearance, with face so suggestive of the purity of character within that the Neapolitans, among whom he loved most to make his home, called him _Parthenias_, "the maiden-like one." Even after he had attained fame, his natural shyness was so great that the popular notice which he attracted upon the streets was a torture to him, from which he always took refuge, as Donatus says, "into the nearest house," as from a hostile mob. The steps which led our poet from obscurity to fame we cannot trace in detail. Local circumstances and his marked poetic ability brought him early under the influence and patronage of Asinius Pollio, soldier, statesman, and littérateur; he was admitted also to the select circle of Mæcenas, to which he himself was privileged later to introduce his friend Horace; and Mæcenas in turn introduced both these poets, so unlike and yet so firmly knit together in the bonds of friendship, to the Emperor Augustus. Vergil's own works, aside from certain minor poems attributed to him, were three in number: the _Eclogues_, _Georgics_, and the _Æneid_, all composed in the dactylic hexameter. His book of _Eclogues_ was written during the period from 43 to 39 B. C., and consists of ten bucolic or pastoral poems after the style of the Sicilian Greek poet Theocritus. These poems, while somewhat artificial in style, are full of genuine feeling for nature, and contain many valuable references to the poet himself and his contemporaries. The _Georgics_ are, as their name implies, a series of treatises in four books upon farming. The first book is devoted to the tilling of the soil, the second to the cultivation of the vine and fruit trees, the third to the breeding of cattle, and the fourth to the care of bees. The whole shows a minute and first-hand knowledge of the subjects treated which only long and loving personal observation could have given. The composition of this book occupied the seven years from 37 to 30 B. C. The work was done chiefly at Naples, where he seems to have passed the most of the remainder of his life. His third and greatest work was his epic poem in twelve books called the _Æneid_, because it relates the story of the Trojan prince Æneas and his followers. This poem, whose merits are so evident to us, and whose faults are so slight in comparison, never in fact received the finishing touches from the author. Having spent eleven years upon the work, Vergil made a journey to Greece, intending to continue his travels to Asia also. But in Athens he met his friend Augustus, who easily persuaded him to return in his train to Italy. It was but coming home to die. Always of frail health, the poet's final sickness seized him on the homeward voyage, and increased so rapidly that he died shortly after landing at Brundisium, B. C. 19. His remains were buried in his beloved Naples, where still is proudly pointed out, upon the side of Posilippo hill, the so-called "tomb of Vergil." A further evidence of the pride which the modern Neapolitans feel in their great adopted fellow-townsman is to be seen in the beautiful memorial shrine of white marble which to-day stands to the poet's (and the city's) honor in the _Villa Nazionale_, the famous seaside park of Naples. Vergil, conscious of the incomplete condition of the _Æneid_, left instructions to Varius and Tucca, his literary executors, to destroy all his unpublished manuscript; but this great loss to the world was prevented by the interference of the emperor, who directed Varius to revise and publish the _Æneid_, which was accordingly done, probably in the year 17 B. C. What is the _Æneid_? The Roman no doubt saw in it a national epic, celebrating the greatness and glory of the Roman race. His heart swelled with renewed pride of citizenship as he read those glorious lines in which world dominion was promised to his race: Others, belike, with happier grace From bronze or stone shall call the face, Plead doubtful causes, map the skies, And tell when planets set or rise: But, Roman, thou, do thou control The nations far and wide; Be this thy genius, to impose The rule of peace on vanquished foes, Show pity to the humbled soul, And crush the sons of pride. Conington. But Vergil was not alone an intense patriot. He was also ardently attached to the new imperial administration; and he seems to have set himself the difficult task of knitting together again into harmony with Augustus' rule the different classes of Roman citizens so long rent asunder by factional strife and civil war. He attempts this by reminding his fellow-citizens of their glorious past and tracing the hand of destiny in unbroken manifestation from Æneas to Cæsar and to Cæsar's heir. Thus Jupiter is seen promising to Venus for her Trojan descendants "endless, boundless reign." This glorious reign is to culminate in the great Cæsar, who with his heir Augustus shall inaugurate the Golden Age again. The _Æneid_ itself may be said in a sense to focus upon Augustus, for in the vision which is granted to Æneas in the underworld of the long line of his mighty descendants, it is Augustus who is singled out for most glowing tribute as the chief glory of the race that is to be: This, this is he, so oft the theme Of your prophetic fancy's dream, Augustus Cæsar, god by birth, Restorer of the age of gold In lands where Saturn ruled of old, O'er Ind and Garamant extreme Shall stretch his reign, that spans the earth. Look to that land which lies afar, Beyond the path of sun or star, Where Atlas on his shoulder rears The burden of the incumbent spheres. Egypt e'en now and Caspia hear The muttered voice of many a seer, And Nile's seven mouths, disturbed with fear, Their coming conqueror know. Conington. Such strains as these in the setting of such a poem, embodying all that most delicately and most powerfully stimulated the Roman pride of birth and country, would do much to confer upon the ruling emperor historic and divine sanction. Perhaps connected with the national character of the _Æneid_ is the strong religious motive which animates the whole. Rome was not produced by chance. The poet never lets us lose sight of the fact that all has been predestined for ages past. Æneas from the first is in the hands of heaven, fated indeed to wander, to endure disappointment, suffering, loss that would have tried beyond endurance a man of weaker faith; but fated as well to work out a glorious destiny. And Æneas, like the typical Roman after him, believed in his destiny. He calmly consoles his shipwrecked friends upon the wild shores of Africa in the face of seemingly irreparable disaster: Comrades! for comrades we are, no strangers to hardships already; hearts that have felt deeper wounds! for these too heaven will find a balm. Why, men, you have even looked on Scylla in her madness, and heard those yells that thrill the rocks; you have even made trial of the crags of the Cyclops. Come, call your spirits back, and banish these doleful fears. Who knows but some day this too will be remembered with pleasure? Through manifold chances, through these many perils of fortune, we are making our way to Latium, where the Fates hold out to us a quiet settlement; there Troy's empire has leave to rise again from its ashes. Bear up, and reserve yourselves for brighter days. Conington. The _Æneid_ breathes throughout a tone of reverence for the gods. This is best seen if we contrast Vergil's and Ovid's attitude. The latter poet affects a free and easy familiarity with the deities of tradition, whose deeds, adventures, and escapades are told, often with slight reverence, and much to the detriment of their divine dignity. But in Vergil's poem the reader enters a stately temple filled with an all-pervading reverence for the gods of heaven, who are to be approached by men only in fitting wise, with veiled face and pure hands; whose power is over all and wielded in righteousness. It should be added that the whole sixth book is devoted to an account of the spirit world, where human souls receive their rewards and punishments for the deeds of their life on earth. Vergil's poems have always been thought to have a decidedly Christian tone, so much so, indeed, that he was revered by the early Christian fathers, who regarded him in the light of a semi-inspired pagan. There is a tradition of the medieval church preserved in a mass sung in honor of St. Paul, in which that saint is said to have stood at the tomb of Vergil and to have exclaimed: "O greatest of poets, what a man I should have made of thee had I but met thee in thy day!" Vergil's standing with the early church was no doubt much enhanced by his remarkable fourth eclogue, in which he foretells the golden age to be inaugurated by the birth of the infant son of Pollio. There is a remarkable similarity between the poet's description of the happy time of "peace on earth" which the Child shall bring and the language of the Messianic prophecies of Isaiah. But entirely aside from its national, religious, or other characteristics, and so far as its place in the world's literature is concerned, the _Æneid_ is first of all a story. It has not, indeed, the simple grandeur of the _Iliad_, upon the model of which it was probably composed. The passing of nearly a millennium of world-life after Homer's time made that impossible; and it is obviously unfair to compare any product of the refined and artificial society of the Augustan with the product of the simple and fresh life of the Homeric age when the world was young. But the _Æneid_ has a grandeur, a grace, a polished beauty all its own; and, compared with the epic product of his own and later ages, Vergil's poem stands colossal--the unapproachable epic of the Roman tongue. It is the heroic story of the last night of Troy, and the subsequent wanderings of a band of Trojans under Æneas, prince of Troy; their long, vain search for their fate-promised land; their shipwreck upon the shores of Africa; their sojourn in Carthage and the love tragedy of Dido and Æneas; their memorial games in Sicily; Æneas' visit to the underworld, and the struggle of the Trojan exiles against native princes for a foothold in their destined Italy--all a story of heroes and heroic deeds, sketched on broad lines and with a free hand, but worked out with exquisite grace and beauty of detail. Vergil follows common usage in telling his story in an order not chronological. The introduction reminds us that the struggle of the Trojan exiles is not confined to earth, but has its counterpart in heaven, where Juno cherishes many old grudges against the Trojans, while Venus champions them for the sake of her son Æneas. A recognition of this divine element is all essential to an understanding of the story, for it is through the agency of these rival goddesses that much of the action for better and for worse is wrought out. The first view of our Trojan band shows them helpless in the grasp of a raging storm, wave-tossed and all but wrecked, they know not where. Through the uproar of the elements we hear the despairing cry of stout-hearted Æneas himself: O happy, thrice and yet again, Who died at Troy like valiant men, E'en in their parents' view! O Diomed, first of Greeks in fray, Why pressed I not the plain that day, Yielding my life to you, Where, stretched beneath a Phrygian sky, Fierce Hector, tall Sarpedon lie: Where Simoïs tumbles 'neath his wave Shields, helms, and bodies of the brave? Conington. But even as he speaks, the mountain waves break and drive his frail ships upon the quicksands near some wild and unknown shore. In striking contrast to this wild scene is the calm haven to which a portion of the shipwrecked band is guided by the kindly divinities of the sea. The description of this spot, and the rest and refreshment of the weary toilers forms one of the most charming bits of realism in the poem. After the necessary refreshment of food and sleep, Æneas, with his faithful Achates as sole companion, sets out at early dawn to explore this wild region upon the shores of which they have been cast. As they wander through a deep forest they meet Venus in the disguise of a huntress, and from her they inquire the name of this land. Æneas now learns that he has been wrecked upon the coast of Africa, not far from the new city which Dido, a Tyrian princess, is building. He learns her tragic story: how her brother had killed her husband Sychæus out of greed for gain, and how she had fled, in consequence, with a band of Tyrian followers. The goddess points out the way to this new city, bids them be of good cheer and follow it, and vanishes from their sight, revealing her true nature to her son as she departs. They soon reach a height which overlooks the new city of Carthage, and find themselves before a temple of Juno, upon whose architrave are sculptured scenes from the Trojan War. It is early morning, and the city is all a-buzz with toil of its inhabitants who urge on the many busy works. Æneas, homesick for his lost city, and long baffled in his search for his own promised home, cries out in longing as he looks upon this scene: Yea, all, like busy bees throughout the flowery mead, Are all astir with eager toil. O blessed toil! O happy ye, whose walls already rise! But I,-- When shall I see my city and my city's walls? Miller.[F] [F] These quotations are made from Miller and Nelson's _Dido, an Epic Tragedy_, by permission of Silver, Burdett & Co. Soon they discover the pictures on the architrave, and are much moved as well as comforted to know that here, so far from home, their heroic struggles are known and appreciated. And now the strains of music and the stir of an approaching throng is heard, and, themselves unseen, Æneas and Achates behold the beautiful and stately queen Dido entering the temple with her train of maidens and courtiers. The queen takes her seat and proceeds to hold an impromptu court, planning the work of the day, and assigning tasks to her lieutenants. Again the approach of a more noisy throng is heard, and into the stately temple breaks a group of desperate men whom Æneas at once recognizes to be a part of his own band who had been cast up upon another part of the shore. They are followed by a mob of jeering Carthaginians. Old Ilioneus, one of the Trojans, pleads their cause before the queen in a speech of mingled supplication and reproach, while at the same time he bewails the loss of his beloved prince Æneas. The queen receives the wanderers with open-handed generosity, disclaims all intentional harshness, bids the Trojans freely share her city and her realm, and expresses the wish that their king himself, Æneas, were before her. These, we may be sure, were glad words to Æneas and his companions. They at once stand forth before the eyes of the astonished throng, joyfully greet their comrades, and Æneas salutes the queen with grateful and courtly speech: Lo, him you ask for! I am he, Æneas, saved from Libya's sea. O, only heart that deigns to mourn For Ilium's cruel care! That bids e'en us, poor relics, torn From Danaan fury, all outworn By earth and ocean, all forlorn, Its home, it's city share! We cannot thank you; no, nor they, Our brethren of the Dardan race, Who, driven from their ancestral place, Throughout the wide world stray. May heaven, if virtue claim its thought, If justice yet avail for aught, Heaven, and the sense of conscious right, With worthier meed your acts requite! What happy ages gave you birth? What glorious sires begat such worth? While rivers run into the deep, While shadows o'er the hillside sweep, While stars in heaven's fair pasture graze, Shall live your honor, name, and praise, Whate'er my destined home. Conington. The astonished Dido finds fitting words of welcome for her royal guest, again assures the Trojans that her city is their own, and proclaims a great feast on the ensuing night in honor of the distinguished strangers. This feast is a scene of royal and barbaric splendor. The Tyrian lords and Trojan princes throng the banquet-hall with its rich tapestries and flashing lights, vessels of massive silver and of gold, while the bright-hued robes of Dido and her train add gladness and color to the scene. Amidst the feasting there was a song by an old minstrel, which he accompanied by the strains of his lyre. The song was upon the ever fascinating theme of natural phenomena, the powers of the air, the earth, the sea--all the dim mysteries of being. We are told that he sang about these things. Let us phrase them for his lyric measures. Of the orb of the wandering moon I sing, As she wheels through the darkening skies; Where the storm-brooding band of the Hyades swing, And the circling Triones arise; Of the sun's struggling ball Which the shadows appall Till the menacing darkness flies; Of the all-potent forces that dwell in the air, With its measureless reaches of blue; The soft, floating clouds of gossamer there, And the loud-wailing storm-rack too; Of the rain and the winds And the lightning that blinds When its swift-darting bolt flashes through; Of the marvels deep hid in the bowels of earth, In the dark caves of Ocean confined, Where the rivers in snow-trickling rills have their birth, And the dense tangled mazes unwind; In the deep underland, In the dim wonderland, Where broods the vast cosmical mind. Of the manifold wonders of life I sing, Its mysterious striving to scan, In the rippling wave, on the fluttering wing, In beast and all-dominant man. 'Tis the indwelling soul Of the god of the whole, Since the dawn of creation began. Meanwhile the queen, deeply moved with pity first, and now with admiration for her heroic guest, hangs breathless on his words, asks eagerly of the famous war, and at last begs him to tell entire the story of that last sad night of Troy. We listen too while he, whose tears start as he speaks, relates that tragic story. He tells how, at the end of the long struggle, when both warring nations were well-nigh exhausted of their strength, the Greeks at last gained entrance to their Trojan city by the trick of the wooden horse. This huge image, found without their walls, filled all unknown to them with their bravest foes, they draw through their gates, and place upon their very citadel, amid dancing children and the joyous shouts of all the citizens; for they have been assured by the lying Sinon that the Greeks have gone home, and have left this horse as an offering to Minerva for their safe return. In the deep night watches, when all are drowned in careless slumber and their festal draughts of wine, Æneas dreams that Hector stands before him, begrimed with gory dust and weeping bitterly. "Ah! fly, goddess-born!" cries he, "and escape from these flames--the walls are in the enemy's hands--Troy is tumbling from its summit--the claims of country and king are satisfied--if Pergamus could be defended by force of hand, it would have been defended by mine, in my day. Your country's worship and her gods are what she intrusts to you now--take them to share your destiny--seek for them a mighty city, which you shall one day build when you have wandered the ocean over." Conington. As Æneas springs up from his couch, warned by this vision, his ears are greeted by the confused sound of distant clamor, hoarse cries, and the accustomed noise of battle. The sky is red with flames. Rushing out, he finds that the Greek forces from wooden horse and fleet have filled the city, while the Trojans, taken unawares, are making brave but desultory resistance. Collecting a band of men, he makes stubborn stand again and again; but at last overpowered, his men flee in scattered twos and threes. Æneas finds himself near Priam's palace. This is beset by swarms of Greeks, who scale the walls and batter at the doors, while desperate defenders on the roof hurl down whatever comes to hand. Æneas gains the roof by a private way, and looking down upon the inner court, he is witness to the darkest tragedy of that night. Old Priam, with Hecuba his wife and helpless daughters, sits cowering upon the steps of the central shrine. A mighty crash and outcry from within tell that the Greeks have gained an entrance at the door. Now out into the peristyle, along the beautiful colonnades of the spacious court, comes Priam's youthful son Polites, hard-pressed by the spear of Pyrrhus, leader of the Greeks. In breathless fascination they watch the race for life until the boy falls slain just at his parent's feet. The aged king, roused by this outrage, stands forth; clad in his time-worn armor, and weak and trembling with age, he chides the Greek: "Aye," cries he, "for a crime, for an outrage like this, may the gods, if there is any sense of right in heaven to take cognizance of such deeds, give you the full thanks you merit, and pay you your due reward; you, who have made me look with my own eyes on my son's death, and stained a father's presence with the sight of blood. But he whom your lying tongue calls your sire, Achilles, dealt not thus with Priam his foe--he had a cheek that could crimson at a suppliant's rights, a suppliant's honor. Hector's lifeless body he gave back to the tomb, and sent me home to my realms in peace." So said the poor old man, and hurled at him a dart unwarlike, unwounding, which the ringing brass at once shook off, and left hanging helplessly from the end of the shield's boss. Pyrrhus retorts: "You shall take your complaint, then, and carry your news to my father, Pelides. Tell him about my shocking deeds, about his degenerate Neoptolemus, and do not forget. Now die." With these words he dragged him to the very altar, palsied and sliding in a pool of his son's blood, wreathed his left hand in his hair, and with his right flashed forth and sheathed in his side the sword to the hilt. Such was the end of Priam's fortunes, such the fatal lot that fell upon him, with Troy blazing and Pergamus in ruins before his eyes--upon him, once the haughty ruler of those many nations and kingdoms, the sovereign lord of Asia! There he lies on the shore, a gigantic trunk, a head severed from the shoulders, a body without a name. Conington. The tide of carnage sucks out of the palace and ebbs away. As Æneas descends from the palace roof, he sees Helen skulking in a neighboring shrine. His heart is hot at sight of her who has been the firebrand of the war, and he resolves to kill her. But Venus flashes before his vision and warns him to hasten to the defense of his own home would he not see his own father lying even as Priam. Conscience-smitten, he hurries thither, divinely shielded from fire and sword. His plan is fixed to take his household and seek a place of safety without the city. The unexpected resistance of his aged father, who is resolved not to survive his beloved Troy, is at last overcome; and soon, with his sire upon his shoulders, his little son held by the hand, and his household following, Æneas steals out the city gate on the side toward Mount Ida, and makes his way to a preconcerted place of meeting. Here, to his consternation, he discovers that his wife Creüsa is missing, and wildly rushes back to the city in search of her. Regardless of danger to himself, he is calling her name loudly through the desolate streets when her shade appears to him and says: "Whence this strange pleasure in indulging frantic grief, my darling husband? It is not without heaven's will that these things are happening. That you should carry your Creüsa with you on your journey is forbidden by fate, forbidden by the mighty ruler of heaven above. You have long years of exile, a vast expanse of ocean to traverse--and then you will arrive at the land of Hesperia, where Tiber, Lydia's river, rolls his gentle volumes through rich and cultured plains. There you have a smiling future, a kingdom and a royal bride waiting your coming. Dry your tears for Creüsa, your heart's choice though she be. I am not to see the face of Myrmidons or Dolopes in their haughty homes, or to enter the service of some Grecian matron--I, a Dardan princess, daughter by marriage of Venus the immortal. No, I am kept in this country by heaven's mighty mother. And now farewell, and continue to love your son and mine." Thus having spoken, spite of my tears, spite of the thousand things I longed to say, she left me and vanished into unsubstantial air. Thrice, as I stood, I essayed to fling my arms round her neck--thrice the phantom escaped the hands that caught at it in vain--impalpable as the wind, fleeting as the wings of sleep. So passed my night, and such was my return to my comrades. Arrived there, I find with wonder their band swelled by a vast multitude of new companions, matrons and warriors both, an army mustered for exile, a crowd of the wretched. From every side they were met, prepared in heart as in fortune to follow me over the sea to any land where I might take them to settle. And now the morning star was rising over Ida's loftiest ridge with the day in its train--Danaan sentinels were blocking up the entry of the gates, and no hope of succor appeared. I retired at last, took up my father, and made for the mountains. Conington. Thus simply ends the thrilling story of the Trojan War, told by one who was himself an active participant in those mighty deeds. It passes from turbulent action to pathetic rest like the tired sobbing of a child which has cried itself to sleep. The banquet-hall of Dido has remained throughout this recital in breathless silence, and now a long sigh of relief from the strained tension of passionate sympathy breathes along the couches. After an impressive pause, during which no word is spoken, Æneas resumes his story and tells of the seven years of wandering over the sea in search of the land that fate has promised him. With his little fleet of vessels, built at the foot of Ida, he touches first at a point in Thrace, intending to found a city there; but he is warned away by a horrible portent. He touches next at Delos, and implores the sacred oracle for a word of guidance to his destined home. To this prayer the oracle makes answer by a voice wafted from the inner shrine, while the whole place rocks and trembles: Sons of Dardanus, strong to endure, the land which first gave you birth from your ancestral tree, the same land shall welcome you back, restored to its fruitful bosom; seek for your old mother till you find her. There it is that the house of Æneas shall set up a throne over all nations, they, and their children's children, and those that shall yet come after. Conington. So it is "Ho, for the mother-land!" But where is that? Whence sprang the Trojans? Here old Anchises, father of Æneas, rich in the lore of old tradition, says: Listen, lords of Troy, and learn where your hopes are. Crete lies in the midst of the deep, the island of mighty Jove. There is Mount Ida, and there the cradle of our race. It has a hundred peopled cities, a realm of richest plenty. Thence it was that our first father, Teucer, if I rightly recall what I have heard, came in the beginning to the Rhoetean coast, and fixed on the site of empire. Ilion and the towers of Pergamus had not yet been reared; the people dwelt low in the valley. Hence came our mighty mother, the dweller on Mount Cybele, and the symbols of the Corybants, and the forest of Ida: hence the inviolate mystery of her worship, and the lions harnessed to the car of their queen. Come, then, and let us follow where the ordinance of heaven points the way; let us propitiate the winds, and make for the realm of Gnossus--the voyage is no long one--let but Jupiter go with us, and the third day will land our fleet on the Cretan shore. Conington. They quickly reach the Cretan shore, joyfully lay out their new city, and begin again the sweet, simple life in home and field which had been theirs before Paris brought the curse on Troy. But alas for their bright hopes! A blighting pestilence falls on man and beast, on tree and shrub; the very ground is accursed. It is the harsh warning of fate that they must not settle here. But where? To Æneas, as he tosses in sleepless anxiety through the night, there appear in the white moonlight the images of his country's gods, who give him the needed counsel: We, the followers of you and your fortune since the Dardan land sank in flame--we, the comrades of the fleet which you have been guiding over the swollen main--we it is that will raise to the stars the posterity that shall come after you, and crown your city with imperial sway. Be it yours to build mighty walls for mighty dwellers, and not abandon the task of flight for its tedious length. Change your settlement; it is not this coast that the Delian god moved you to accept--not in Crete that Apollo bade you sit down. No, there is a place--the Greeks call it Hesperia--a land old in story, strong in arms and in the fruitfulness of its soil--the Oenotrians were its settlers. Now report says that later generations have called the nation Italian, from the name of their leader. That is our true home: thence sprung Dardanus and father Iasius, the first founder of our line. Quick! rise, and tell the glad tale, which brooks no question, to your aged sire; tell him that he is to look for Corythus and the country of Ausonia. Jupiter bars you from the fields of Dicte. Conington. Again on board, they sail for many stormy days until they reach the islands of the Strophades. Here dwell the Harpies, loathsome human birds, whose touch is defilement and whose speech is bitter with railing. Yet even here Æneas finds a prophecy of his destiny. Offended by the onslaught of the Trojans, Celæno, one of the Harpy band, thus reviles and prophesies: What, is it war for the oxen you have slain and the bullocks you have felled, true sons of Laomedon? Is it war that _you_ are going to make on _us_, to expel us, blameless Harpies, from our ancestral realm? Take, then, into your minds these my words, and print them there. The prophecy which the Almighty Sire imparted to Phoebus, Phoebus Apollo to me, I, the chief of the Furies, make known to you. For Italy, I know, you are crowding all sail: well, the winds shall be at your call as you go to Italy, and you shall be free to enter its harbors; but you shall not build walls around your fated city, before fell hunger and your murderous wrong against us drive you to gnaw and eat up your very tables. Conington. Hastily Æneas leaves this place with an earnest prayer that this dire threat may be averted. Past green Zacynthos, Dulichium, and craggy Neritos they go, past Ithaca, cursing it for crafty Ulysses' sake, and reach the rocky shores of Actium; then on past the Phæacian land to Buthrotum in Epirus, on the western shore of Greece. He is astounded and delighted to find that the strange fortunes of war have set Helenus, son of Priam, here as king, with Andromache, wife of the lamented Hector, as his queen. We may be sure that the meeting was sweet and bitter too for all the exiles. They pass many days in hospitable intercourse, recalling the vanished life of their old Phrygian home, and recounting the checkered experiences of their recent years. And now, one bright morning, the breezes call loudly to the sails, and Æneas would pursue his way. He knows by now that Italy is the object of his quest, but how he may reach the destined spot in that vast stretch of coast, and what wanderings still await him, he does not know. But Helenus, his host, is famed as a diviner of hidden things, and to him Æneas appeals. Helenus first warns his friend that he must shun that part of Italy which seems so near at hand, for on this eastern shore the Greeks have many cities; but he must sail far around, until he reach the farthest shore. Above all, let him not try to speed his course through the straits of Sicily, for here the dread monsters Scylla and Charybdis keep the way. They shall at last come to "Cumæ on the western shore, and the haunted lake, and the woods that rustle over Avernus," and there shall they learn further of their fates from the inspired prophetess of Apollo's shrine. Their final resting-place, where heaven shall permit them to found their city and end their wanderings, by this strange token they shall know--a huge white sow with thirty young, lying at ease beneath a spreading oak. "Such," says Helenus, "are the counsels which it is given you to receive from my lips. Go on your way, and by your actions lift to heaven the greatness of Troy." With exchange of gifts, tokens of mutual love, sad at parting, but with high thoughts of glorious destiny, the royal pair speed their guests on their way. One reach to the northward, a night on the sandy shore, an early embarkation in the misty dusk of the morning, and Æneas turns his prows once more to the unknown west. And now the stars were fled, and Aurora was just reddening in the sky, when in the distance we see the dim hills and low plains of Italy. "Italy!" Achates was the first to cry. Italy, our crews welcome with a shout of rapture. Then, my father Anchises wreathed a mighty bowl with a garland, and filled it with wine, and called on the gods, standing upon the tall stern: "Ye powers that rule sea and land and weather, waft us a fair wind and a smooth passage, and breathe auspiciously!" Conington. They make a hasty landing on this nearest shore, pay solemn tribute to Juno as Helenus had bidden them, and speeding across the great curving bay of Tarentum, hug fast the shores of southern Italy. Barely escaping the dangerous straits of Sicily, they pass the night upon the shore near Ætna, whose awful rumblings, whirlwinds of glowing ashes, and belched up avalanches of molten stone, appall their hearts. This night of dread ends in a morning of horror, for there, upon the mountainside, they see the Cyclopean monsters whom Ulysses and his band had so narrowly escaped. Hastily they push away from this dread coast, and sail clear around to western Sicily, where Æneas' aged father dies, and is buried in the friendly realm of King Acestes. From here one more short course would have brought them to their journey's end; but Juno's implacable hate had stirred the winds against them, and by that dark storm they had been driven far away and wrecked on the coast of Africa. Thus father Æneas, alone, amid the hush of all around, was recounting heaven's destined dealings, and telling of his voyages; and now at length he was silent, made an end, and took his rest. Conington. Ages after this, Othello the Moor won the love of Desdemona by tales of valor and of suffering: My story being done, She gave me for my pains a world of sighs; She wished she had not heard it, yet she wished That heaven had made her such a man. She thanked me, And bade me if I had a friend that loved her, I should but teach him how to tell my story, And that would woo her. By these same means, unwittingly has Æneas stirred the love in Dido's heart. She goes to her bed, but not to sleep. All night she tosses restlessly, picturing the hero's face and recalling his words; and in the morning, sick of soul, she pours her tears and cares into her sister Anna's bosom. O sister, what dread visions of the night invade My troubled soul! What of this stranger lodged within Our halls, how noble in his mien, how brave in heart, Of what puissant arms! From heav'n in truth his race Must be derived, for fear betokens low-born souls. Alas, how tempest-tossed of fate was he! How to The dregs the bitter cup of war's reverses hath He drained! If in my soul the purpose were not fixed That not to any suitor would I yield myself In wedlock, since the time when he who won my love Was reft away, perchance I might have yielded now. For sister, I confess it, since my husband's fate, Since that sad day when by his blood my father's house Was sprinkled, this of all men has my feelings moved. Again I feel the force of passion's sway. But no! May I be gulfed within earth's yawning depths; may Jove Almighty hurl me with his thunders to the shades, The pallid shades of Erebus and night profound, Before, O constancy, I violate thy laws! He took my heart who first engaged my maiden love. Still may he keep his own, and in the silent tomb Preserve my love inviolate. Miller. Anna advises her sister to yield to this new love, and argues that policy as well as inclination is on her side. Such a union as this would strengthen her against her brother, and exalt the sway of Carthage to unhoped for glory. And to what glory shalt thou see thy city rise, What strong, far-reaching sway upreared on such a tie! Assisted by the Trojan arms, our youthful state Up to the very pinnacle of fame shall soar. Miller. Thus advised, Dido gives herself up to passion's sway. Her city is forgotten, her queenly ambition gone. In hospitality, in feasting, and the dalliance of love the days go by. And seemingly Æneas, too, has forgotten his glorious destiny, his promised land of Italy, and is sunk in a languorous dream of present bliss. But the fates of future Rome must not be thwarted. He is rudely awakened from his dream by Mercury, who at the command of Jove suddenly appears before him as he is engaged in urging on the walls and towers of Carthage. And can it be that thou art building here the walls Of Tyrian Carthage, and uprearing her fair towers, Thou dotard, of thy realm and thy great destiny Forgetful! Jove himself, the ruler of the gods, Who holds the heavens and earth and moves them at his will, To thee from bright Olympus straight hath sent me here. He bade me bear on speeding pinions these commands: What dost thou here? or with what hopes dost thou delay Upon the Libyan shores? If thou, indeed, art moved By no regard of thine own glorious destiny, Respect at least the budding hopes of him, thy son, Who after thee shall hold the scepter; for to him Are due the realms of Italy, the land of Rome. Miller. Æneas is overwhelmed with astonishment and remorse. At once all his old ambitions regain their sway, and his mind is bent upon instant departure. He cries aloud: O Jove, and I had near forgot my destiny, To oblivion lulled amid the sweets of this fair land! But now my heart's sole longing is for Italy, Which waits me by the promise of the fates. But how From this benumbing passion shall I free myself? How face the queen and put away her clinging love? [_To his attendants._] "Go ye, and swiftly call the Trojans to the shore; Bid them equip the vessels quickly for the sea, And frame for this our sudden voyage some fitting cause." Miller. But Dido has seen the hurrying Trojan mariners, and with her natural perceptions sharpened by suspicious fear, at once divines the meaning of this sudden stir. Maddened with the pangs of blighted love, she seeks Æneas and pours out her hot indignation mingled with pitiful pleadings. And didst thou hope that thou couldst hide thy fell design, O faithless, and in silence steal away from this My land? Does not our love, and pledge of faith once given, Nor thought of Dido, doomed to die a cruel death, Detain thee? Can it be that under wintry skies Thou wouldest launch thy fleet and urge thy onward way 'Mid stormy blasts across the sea, O cruel one? But what if not a stranger's land and unknown homes Thou soughtest; what if Troy, thy city, still remained: Still wouldst thou fare to Troy along the wave-tossed sea? Is't I thou fleest? By these tears and thy right hand-- Since in my depth of crushing woe I've nothing left-- And by our marriage bond and sacred union joined, If ever aught of mercy I have earned of thee, If I have ever giv'n thee one sweet drop of joy, Have pity on my falling house, and change, I pray, Thy cruel purpose if there still is room for prayer. For thee the Libyan races hate me, and my lords Of Tyre; for thee my latest scruple was o'ercome; My fame, by which I was ascending to the stars, My kingdom, fates,--all these have I giv'n up for thee. And thou, for whom dost thou abandon me, O guest?-- Since from the name of husband this sole name remains. What wait I more? Is't till Pygmalion shall come, And lay my walls in ruins, or the desert prince, Iarbus, lead me captive home? O cruel fate! If only ere thou fledst some pledge had been conceived Of thee, if round my halls some son of thine might sport, To bear thy name and bring thine image back to me, Then truly should I seem not utterly bereft. Miller. Æneas is seemingly unmoved by this appeal. With the warnings of Jupiter still sounding in his ears, he dares not let his love answer a word to Dido's pleadings. And so he coldly answers her that he is but following the bidding of his fate, which is leading him to Italy, even as hers had led her to this land of Africa. Dido has stood during this reply with averted face and scornful look, and now turns upon him in a passion of grief and rage. No pleadings now, but scornful denunciation and curses. Thou art no son of Venus, nor was Dardanus The ancient founder of thy race, thou faithless one; But Caucasus with rough and flinty crags begot, And fierce Hyrcanian tigers suckled thee. For why Should I restrain my speech, or greater evil wait? Did he one sympathetic sigh of sorrow heave? Did he one tear let fall, o'ermastered by my grief? Now neither Juno, mighty queen, nor father Jove Impartial sees; for faith is everywhere betrayed. That shipwrecked beggar in my folly did I take And cause to sit upon my throne; I saved his fleet, His friends I rescued--Oh, the furies drive me mad! Now 'tis Apollo's dictate, now the Lycian lots, And now "the very messenger of heaven sent down By Jove himself" to bring this mandate through the air! A fitting task is that for heaven's immortal lords! Such cares as these disturb their everlasting calm! I seek not to detain nor answer thee; sail on To Italy, seek fated realms beyond the seas. For me, if pious prayers can aught avail, I pray That thou amid the wrecking reefs mayst drain the cup Of retribution to the dregs and vainly call Upon the name of Dido. Distant though I be, With fury's torch will I pursue thee, and when death Shall free my spirit, will I haunt thee everywhere. O thou shalt meet thy punishment, perfidious one; My soul shall know, for such glad news would penetrate The lowest depths of hell. Miller. She works herself up to a frenzy, and as she finishes she turns to leave him with queenly scorn, staggers, and falls. The servants carry her from the scene, leaving Æneas in agony of soul, struggling between love and duty. Meanwhile the Trojan preparations go on with feverish haste. The ships are launched, hurried final preparations made, and all is now ready for departure. Dido sends her sister to Æneas with one last appeal, but all in vain. No tears or prayers can move him now. The queen resolves on death. She has a huge pyre built within her palace court under the pretense of magic rites which shall free her from her unhappy love. The Trojans spend the night sleeping on their oars; the queen, in sleepless torment. As the dawn begins to brighten, the sailors are heard singing in the distance as they joyfully hoist their sails. Dido rushes to her window and beholds the fleet just putting out from shore. She cries aloud in impotent frenzy. Ye gods! and shall he go and mock our royal power? Why not to arms, and send our forces in pursuit, And bid them hurry down the vessels from the shore? Ho there, my men, quick, fetch the torches, seize your arms, And man the oars!--What am I saying? where am I? What madness turns my brain? O most unhappy queen, Is it thus thy evil deeds are coming back to thee? Such fate was just when thou didst yield thy scepter up.-- Lo, _there's_ the fealty of him who, rumor says, His country's gods with him in all his wandering bears, And on his shoulders bore his sire from burning Troy! Why could I not have torn his body limb from limb, And strewed his members on the deep? and slain his friends, His son Aschanius, and served his mangled limbs To grace his father's feast?--Such conflict might have had A doubtful issue.--Grant it might, but whom had I, Foredoomed to death, to fear? I might have fired his camp, His ships, and wrapped in common ruin father, son, And all the race, and given myself to crown the doom Of all.--O Sun, who with thy shining rays dost see All mortal deeds; O Juno, who dost know and thus Canst judge the grievous cares of wedlock; thou whom wild And shrieking women worship through the dusky streets, O Hecate; and ye avenging Furies--ye, The gods of failing Dido, come and bend your power To these my woes and hear my prayer. If yonder wretch Must enter port and reach his land decreed by fate, If thus the laws of Jove ordain, this order holds; But, torn in war, a hardy people's foeman, far From friends and young Iulus' arms, may he be forced To seek a Grecian stranger's aid, and may he see The death of many whom he loves. And when at last A meager peace on doubtful terms he has secured, May he no pleasure find in kingdom or in life; But may he fall untimely, and unburied lie Upon some solitary strand. This, this I pray, And with my latest breath this final wish proclaim. Then, O my Tyrians, with a bitter hate pursue The whole accurséd race, and send this to my shade As welcome tribute. Let there be no amity Between our peoples. Rise thou from my bones, O some avenger, who with deadly sword and brand Shall scathe the Trojan exiles, now, in time to come, Whenever chance and strength shall favor. Be our shores To shores opposed, our waves to waves, and arms to arms, Eternal, deadly foes through all posterity. Miller. With this prophetic curse, to be fulfilled centuries hence, on the bloody fields of the Trebia, Trasumenus, and of Cannæ, she snatches up Æneas' sword, rushes out of the room, and mounts the pyre which she has prepared. Here have been placed all the objects which her Trojan lover has left behind. Passionately kissing these and pressing them to her breast, she utters her last words. Sweet pledges of my lord, while fate and god allowed, Accept this soul of mine, and free me from my cares. For I have lived and run the course that Fortune set; And now my stately soul to Hades shall descend. A noble city have I built; my husband's death Have I avenged, and on my brother's head my wrath Inflicted. Happy, ah too happy, had the keels Of Troy ne'er touched my shores!--And shall I perish thus?-- But let me perish. Thus, oh thus, 'tis sweet to seek The land of shadows.--May the heartless Trojan see, As on he fares across the deep, my blazing pyre, And bear with him the gloomy omens of my death. Miller. So saying, she falls upon the sword and perishes. The report of the queen's tragic death runs wild through the convulsed city. With wailing and groaning, and screams of women, the palace rings; the sky resounds with mighty cries and beating of breasts--even as if the foe were to burst the gates and topple down Carthage or ancient Tyre, and the infuriate flame were leaping from roof to roof among the dwellings of men and gods. Conington. With the southern sky murky with the smoke and lurid with the glare of Dido's funeral pyre, Æneas sails away with sad forebodings, and comes again to Sicily. By chance this return to Sicily has fallen upon the anniversary of Anchises' death. Æneas therefore determines to hold a solemn festival in honor of his father, which he celebrates with the accustomed funeral games. While these games are in progress, by the machinations of Juno, the Trojan women, weary of their long wanderings, attempt to burn the fleet. But the vessels are saved, with the loss of four, by the miraculous intervention of Jupiter. Æneas thereupon is advised by Nautes, a Trojan prince, to build a town here in Sicily, and to leave behind all those who have grown weak or out of sympathy with his great enterprise. This advice is ratified by the shade of Anchises, who gives Æneas further direction for his way. My son, more dear, while life remained, E'en than that life to me, My son, long exercised and trained In Ilium's destiny, My errand is from Jove the sire, Who saved your vessels from the fire, And sent at last from heaven above The wished-for token of his love. Hear and obey the counsel sage Bestowed by Nautes' reverend age: Picked youths, the bravest of the brave, Be these your comrades o'er the wave, For haughty are the tribes and rude That Latium has to be subdued. But ere you yet confront the foe, First seek the halls of Dis below, Pass deep Avernus' vale, and meet Your father in his own retreat. Not Tartarus' prison-house of crime Detains me, nor the mournful shades: My home is in the Elysian clime, With righteous souls, 'mid happy glades. The virgin Sibyl with the gore Of sable sheep shall ope the door; Then shall you learn your future line, And what the walls the Fates assign. And now farewell: dew-sprinkled Night Has scaled Olympus' topmost height: I catch their panting breath from far, The steeds of morning's cruel star. Conington. Moved by this vision, Æneas builds a town for the dispirited members of his band; and consigning these to King Acestes, sets his face once more toward Italy. This time, by Venus' aid, he reaches the Italian port of Cumæ, with no misadventure except the loss of his faithful pilot, Palinurus. Once more on land, the Trojans joyfully scour the woods, seek out fresh springs of water, and collect fuel for their fires. Æneas, however, turns his steps to the temple of Apollo upon a neighboring height, and prays the guidance of the god upon his further way. But most of all it is upon the hero's heart to visit his father in the underworld according to the mandate of his father's shade in Sicily. At the advice of the Sibyl who presides over the temple of Apollo, Æneas performs the necessary rites preliminary to this journey, and entering the dread cave near Lake Avernus, they take their gloomy way below. Obscure they went thro' dreary shades, that led Along the waste dominions of the dead. Thus wander travelers in wood by night, By the moon's doubtful and malignant light, When Jove in dusky clouds involves the skies, And the faint crescent shoots by fits before their eyes. Dryden. They reach at last the gates of Hades, where hover the dreadful shapes of Cares, Disease and Death, Want, Famine, Toil and Strife. Through these they fare, and stand upon the sedgy bank of the river of death. They see approaching them across the stream the old boatman Charon, who in his frail skiff ferries souls across the water. A sordid god: down from his hoary chin A length of beard descends, uncomb'd, unclean: His eyes, like hollow furnaces on fire; A girdle foul with grease binds his obscene attire. He spreads his canvas; with his pole he steers; The freights of flitting ghosts in his thin bottom bears. He looked in years; yet in his years were seen A youthful vigor, and autumnal green. Dryden. The unsubstantial shades throng down to Charon's boat, where some are accepted for passage, and some rejected. Æneas in wonder turns to his guide for an explanation of this. She replies: Son of Anchises! offspring of the gods! (The Sibyl said) you see the Stygian floods, The sacred streams, which heav'n's imperial state Attests in oaths, and fears to violate. The ghosts rejected are th' unhappy crew Depriv'd of sepulchres and fun'ral due: The boatman, Charon: those, the buried host, He ferries over to the farther coast; Nor dares his transport vessel cross the waves With such whose bones are not compos'd in graves. A hundred years they wander on the shore; At length, their penance done, are wafted o'er. Dryden. Æneas and his guide now present themselves for passage, but the old boatman refuses his boat to mortal bodies, until he is appeased by the Sibyl. Grim Cerberus, the three-headed dog who guards the farther bank of the stream and blocks their onward way, is next appeased. And on they go, past where the cries of wailing infants fill their ears; where Minos sits in judgment on the shades and assigns to each his place of punishment; past the abode of suicides, who rushed so rashly out of life, but now sigh vainly for the life which they threw away; past the Mourning Fields, dark groves where wander those who died of love. Here Æneas meets the shade of Dido, and learns what he had only feared before. With tears of love and pity he approaches and addresses her; but she, in indignant silence, turns away. They reach the fields where souls of slain warriors dwell, still handling their shadowy arms and ghostly chariots. With empty, voiceless shouts the Trojan dead greet their hero, in wonder that he comes still living among them, while the Grecian shades flee gibbering away. Still on the Sibyl leads her charge, and pausing before the horrid gates of Tartarus, the abode of lost souls, they listen to the dreadful sounds within, "the groans of ghosts, the pains of sounding lashes and of dragging chains." Standing before the gates, Æneas is told of the suffering which these must undergo whose souls, by reason of impious lives on earth, are past all reach of cure. What are the crimes that brought them here? What does Vergil regard as unpardonable sins? They, who brothers' better claim disown, Expel their parents, and usurp the throne; Defraud their clients, and, to lucre sold, Sit brooding on unprofitable gold; Who dare not give, and e'en refuse to lend, To their poor kindred, or a wanting friend-- Vast is the throng of these; nor less the train Of lustful youths, for foul adult'ry slain-- Hosts of deserters, who their honor sold, And basely broke their faith for bribes of gold; All these within the dungeon's depth remain, Despairing pardon, and expecting pain. To tyrants, others have their countries sold, Imposing foreign lords, for foreign gold; Some have old laws repeal'd, new statutes made, Not as the people pleas'd, but as they paid. With incest some their daughters' bed profan'd. All dar'd th' worst of ills, and what they dar'd, attain'd. Dryden. As they turn away from this dread place, a tortured voice sounds after them: Learn righteousness, and dread th' avenging deities. Far off from here they reach the abode of the blessed--the Elysian Fields, Where long extended plains of pleasure lay. The verdant fields with those of heav'n may vie, With ether vested, and a purple sky-- The blissful seats of happy souls below: Stars of their own, and their own suns, they know. There airy limbs in sports they exercise, And on the green contend the wrestlers' prize. Some, in heroic verse, divinely sing; Others in artful measures lead the ring. Here patriots live, who, for their country's good, In fighting fields were prodigal of blood; Priests of unblemish'd lives here make abode, And poets worthy their inspiring god; And searching wits of more mechanic parts, Who grac'd their age with new-invented arts; Those who to worth their bounty did extend, And those who knew that bounty to commend. The heads of these, with holy fillets bound, And all their temples were with garlands crown'd. Dryden. Seeking Anchises among these happy shades, the two are directed to a remote valley, where, beside the waters of Oblivion, old Anchises is passing in review the long train of his posterity, marshaled in the order of their birth into the world. When Anchises sees his son approaching, he cries out joyfully to him: And are you come at last? Has love fulfilled a father's hopes and surmounted the perils of the way? Is it mine to look on your face, my son, and listen and reply as we talked of old? Yes; I was even thinking so in my own mind. I was reckoning that it would be, counting over the days. Nor has my longing played me false. Oh, the lands and the mighty seas from which you have come to my presence! the dangers, my son, that have tossed and smitten you! Oh, how I have feared lest you should come to harm in that realm of Libya! Conington. Then follows a revelation of the mysteries of transmigration of souls, the nature of soul essence, its purgation after years of contact with its old body, and its ages of preparation for another mortal habitation. Anchises now calls his son's attention to his own posterity, standing in majestic review before him--noble shades, some of whom are destined to go to the upper world at once, and some to wait long centuries in the land of preëxistent souls. The mighty host of Roman worthies are marshaled here, who, as yet unknown, are to make the name of Rome known and feared or honored to the farthest bounds of earth. Here stalk the shadowy forms of kings, consuls, generals, and statesmen, who on earth shall be Romulus, Numa, and Tarquin; Brutus, Decius, Camillus, Cato, and the Gracchi; the Scipios, the Fabii; Cæsar and Pompey, and he whose brow shall be first to wear the imperial crown as ruler of the world--Augustus Cæsar. And now Æneas, fortified for any hardships upon earth by these glorious visions of his posterity, turns his face back to the upper world. There are two gates of Sleep: the one, as story tells, of horn, supplying a ready exit for true spirits; the other gleaming with the polish of dazzling ivory, but through it the powers below send false dreams to the world above. Thither Anchises, talking thus, conducts his son and the Sibyl, and dismisses them by the gate of ivory. Æneas traces his way to the fleet, and returns to his comrades; then sails along the shore for Caieta's haven. The anchor is cast from the prow; the keels are ranged on the beach. Conington. The Trojans sail up the coast, touch once more upon the land, skirt wide past Circe's realm of dreadful magic, and then they come to where a wide-mouthed river pours out into the sea. The sea was just reddening in the dawn, and Aurora was shining down from heaven's height in saffron robe and rosy car, when all at once the winds were laid, and every breath sank in sudden sleep, and the oars pull slowly against the smooth unmoving wave. In the same moment Æneas, looking out from the sea, beholds a mighty forest. Among the trees Tiber, that beauteous river, with his gulfy rapids and the burden of his yellow sand, breaks into the main. Around and above, birds of all plumes, the constant tenants of bank and stream, were filling the air with their notes and flying among the woods. He bids his comrades turn aside and set their prows landward, and enters with joy the river's shadowed bed. Conington. Up this great stream they sail, and reach at last the spot which Fate has held in store for them. When that Italy which has so long eluded the grasp of the hero is actually reached, and he stands upon the fated ground to which prophecy and the visions of his eager fancy have long been pointing him, the poem is complete; and all that follows is another poem, actuated by another spirit. To this point Fate has led him, through the smoke of his burning city, through storms and shipwreck, and the unceasing opposition of adverse powers, and here she has finally rewarded his piety and unswerving faith in his destiny. The first six books of the _Æneid_ present the hero as the all-enduring one, the last as the warrior king. The first six books are the story of hope and anticipation; the last, of attainment and realization. The incidents of the last six books which constitute the second part of the _Æneid_ may be briefly told. King Latinus, who ruled over Latium, received the Trojan prince with kindness and promised him Lavinia for his wife, the king's only daughter and heiress of his crown. But Juno's spite still pursued the Trojans, and through her machinations the Latins and their allies were aroused against these foreigners. Especially was Italian Turnus roused, a mighty prince of the Rutuli, for he had long been suitor for Lavinia, and had won the favor of the Queen Amata to his cause. And now all Italy is ablaze with sudden war. Against his allied foes Æneas secures the aid of the Greek Evander with his Arcadians, and of the Etruscan tribes. The plains of Troy are transferred to Italy. Again are heard the clashing of arms, the trumpet's blare, the snorting of horses, the heavy tread of marching feet, hoarse challenges to conflict, the hollow groans of the wounded and dying; the air is lit with the gleam of torches; the ground is red with streams of blood. Juno and Venus are active throughout, as of old in the Homeric story, each in the interest of her own favorite. But Juno's implacable hate is no match for destiny. Æneas must triumph, for the fates have spoken it. The interest of the whole conflict centers in the rival heroes; and when these two, after endless slaughter, on both sides, of lesser men, meet at last in single conflict, there is no doubt, even in the Italian's own heart, that he is foredoomed. And when he falls, wounded by Æneas' spear and slain by his sword, the poem ends abruptly, for the story can contain no more. With these words, fierce as flame, he plunged the steel into the breast that lay before him. That other's frame grows chill and motionless, and the soul, resenting its lot, flies groaningly to the shades. Conington. SUMMARY AND QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW _Roman Epic Poetry_, as illustrated by Nævius (269-199 B. C.), "the first Roman who deserves to be called a poet," _Bellum Punicum_; Ennius (239-169 B. C.), "the father of Roman literature," the _Annals_; Vergil (70-19 B. C.), greatest of Roman poets, the _Æneid_. 1. What is known of the life of Nævius? 2. What is the nature of his _Bellum Punicum_? 3. What did Vergil owe to this poem? 4. Quote the epitaph of Nævius. 5. What is the significance of it? 6. What were the chief events in the life of Ennius? 7. What interesting bit of self-portraiture appears in his _Annals_? 8. Why does he deserve the title of "the father of Roman literature"? 9. What is the nature of the _Annals_? 10. Why is the loss of the great body of this work so much to be regretted? 11. What progress did Latin literature make between the time of Ennius and that of Vergil? 12. How was Vergil fitted for his career both by nature and training? 13. Into what select circle was he privileged to enter? 14. What was the nature of the _Eclogues_? 15. What of the _Georgics_? 16. Why did the _Æneid_ never receive its finishing touches? 17. How was the poem saved from destruction? 18. What was Vergil's probable purpose in writing the _Æneid_? 19. Quote the lines which promise world dominion to the Romans. 20. What religious motive seems to guide Æneas? 21. How does Vergil's treatment of the gods compare with that of Ovid? 22. What in brief is the story of the _Æneid_? 23. What characteristic passages in the poem deal with the mystery of nature? 24. From what different sources does Æneas throughout the poem receive guidance as to his future home? 25. On what occasions do the gods interfere to influence the progress of events? 26. What characteristic customs of the times are portrayed in the poem? 27. What picture of life after death does the poem present? 28. What crimes does Vergil represent as unpardonable sins? 29. How does Vergil glorify Æneas in his descendants? 30. How many books of the poem are devoted to the wanderings of Æneas? 31. What in brief is the story of the remaining books? BIBLIOGRAPHY SELLAR, _The Roman Poets of the Republic_: Nævius and his Historical Epic, pp. 57-61; Ennius and the _Annales_, pp. 62-79, 88-119. SELLAR, _The Roman Poetry of the Augustan Age_: _Vergil_. TYRRELL, _Latin Poetry_: Lost Augustan Poets, pp. 20-26; Vergil, pp. 26, 126-161; Post-Augustan Epics, p. 27; Lucan, pp. 262-269. NETTLESHIP, _Essays in Latin Literature_: Suggestions Introductory to a Study of the _Æneid_, pp. 97-142. CONINGTON, _Miscellaneous Writings_: Early Roman Epic Poetry, pp. 324-347; Later Roman Epic, pp. 348-384. SHAIRP, _Aspects of Poetry_: Vergil as a Religious Poet, pp. 136-163. SHAIRP, _Poetic Interpretation of Nature_: Nature in Lucretius and Vergil, pp. 153-169. BOISSIER, _The Country of Horace and Vergil_: The Legend of Æneas, pp. 119-346. SIMCOX, _History of Latin Literature_: Ennius, the _Annals_, Vol. I, pp. 22-30; Vergil, Vol. I, pp. 253-282; Lucan and his successors, Vol. II, pp. 35-74. MOMMSEN, _History of Rome_: Early Roman Epic, Nævius and Ennius, Vol. II, pp. 519-540. MILLER AND NELSON, _Dido, an Epic Tragedy_: A dramatization of the story of Æneas and Dido. Transcriber Notes: "+ +" indicates Greek transliteration. Pg 051, "his" changed to "has" (all that has passed) Pg 053, "Phromio" changed to "Phormio" (the shrewdness of Phormio) 
14020	----	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 
47677	----	provided by the Internet Archive ARS AMATORIA; or, THE ART OF LOVE. By Ovid Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes, by Henry T. Riley 1885 BOOK THE FIRST. |Should any one of the people not know the art of loving, let him read me; and taught by me, on reading my lines, let him love. By art the ships are onward sped by sails and oars; by art are the light chariots, by art is Love, to be guided. In the chariot and in the flowing reins was Automedon skilled: in the Hæmonian ship _of Jason_ Tiphys was the pilot. Me, too, skilled in my craft, has Venus made the guardian of Love. Of Cupid the Tiphys and the Automedon shall I be styled. Unruly indeed he is, and one who oft rebels against me; but he is a child; his age is tender and easy to be governed. The son of Phillyra made the boy Achilles skilled at the lyre; and with his soothing art he subdued his ferocious disposition. He who so oft alarmed his own companions, so oft the foe, is believed to have stood in dread of an aged man full of years. Those hands which Hector was doomed to feel, at the request of his master he held out for stripes [701] as commanded. Chiron was the preceptor of the grandson of Æacus, I of Love. Both of the boys were wild; both of a Goddess born. But yet the neck of even the bull is laden with the plough; and the reins are champed by the teeth of the spirited steed. To me, too, will Love yield; though, with his bow, he should wound my breast, and should brandish his torches hurled against me. The more that Love has pierced me, the more has he relentlessly inflamed me; so much the fitter avenger shall I be of the wounds so made. Phoebus, I pretend not that these arts were bestowed on me by thee; nor by the notes of the birds of the air am I inspired. Neither Clio nor the sisters of Clio have been beheld by me, while watching, Ascra, in thy vales, my flocks. To this work experience gives rise; listen to a Poet well-versed. The truth will I sing; Mother of Love, favour my design. Be ye afar, [702] ye with the thin fillets on your hair, the mark of chastity; and thou, long flounce, which dost conceal the middle of the foot. We will sing of guiltless delights, and of thefts allowed; and in my song there shall be nought that is criminal. In the first place, endeavour to find out an object which you may desire to love, you who are now coming for the first time to engage as a soldier in a new service. The next task after that, is to prevail on the fair by pleasing her. The third is, for her love to prove of long duration. This is my plan; this space shall be marked out by my chariot; this the turning-place to be grazed by my wheels in their full career. While you may, and while you are able to proceed with flowing reins; choose one to whom you may say, "You alone are pleasing to me." She will not come to you gliding through the yielding air; the fair one that suits must be sought with your eyes. The hunter knows full well where to extend the toils for the deer; full well he knows in what vale dwells the boar gnashing with his teeth. The shrubberies are known to the fowlers. He who holds out the hooks, knows what waters are swam in by many a fish. You, too, who seek a subject for enduring love, first learn in what spot the fair are to be met with. In your search, I will not bid you give your sails to the wind, nor is a long path to be trodden by you, that you may find her. Let Perseus bear away his Andromeda from the tawny Indians, [703] and let the Grecian fair be ravished by Paris, the Phrygian hero. Rome will present you damsels as many, and full as fair; so that you will declare, that whatever has been on the earth, she possesses. As many ears of corn as Gargara has, as many clusters as Methymna; as many fishes as are concealed in the seas, birds in the boughs; as many stars as [704] heaven has, so many fair ones does your own Rome contain; and in her own City does the mother of Æneas hold her reign. Are you charmed by early and still dawning years, the maiden in all her genuineness will come before your eyes; or do you wish a riper fair, [705] a thousand riper will please you; you will be forced not to know which is your own choice. Or does an age mature and more staid delight you; this throng too, believe me, will be even greater. Do you only saunter at your leisure in the shade of Pompey's Portico, [706] when the sun approaches the back of the Lion of Hercules; [707] or where the mother [708] has added her own gifts to those of her son, a work rich in its foreign marble. And let not the Portico of Livia [709] be shunned by you, which, here and there adorned with ancient paintings, bears the name of its founder. Where, too, are the grand-daughters of Be-lus, [710] who dared to plot death for their wretched cousins, and where their enraged father stands with his drawn sword. Nor let Adonis, bewailed by Venus, [711] escape you; and the seventh holy-day observed by the Jew of Syria. [712] Nor fly from the Memphian temples of Isis the linen-wearing heifer; she has made many a woman [713] that which she was herself to Jove. Even the Courts, (who would have believed it?) are favourable to Love; and oft in the noisy Forum has the flame been found. Where the erection [714] of Appius, [715] adjoining the temple of Venus, built of marble, beats the air with its shooting stream; [716] in that spot full oft is the pleader seized by Love; and he that has defended others, the same does not defend himself. Oft in that spot are their words found wanting to the eloquent man; and new cares arise, and his own cause has to be pleaded. From her temple, which is adjoining, [717] Venus laughs at him. He who so lately was a patron, now wishes to become a client. But especially at the curving Theatres do you hunt for prey: these places are even yet more fruitful for your desires. There you will find what you may love, what you may trifle with, both what you may once touch, and what you may wish to keep. As the numberless ants come and go in lengthened train, when they are carrying their wonted food in the mouth that bears the grains; or as the bees, when they have found both their own pastures and the balmy meads, hover around the flowers and the tops of the thyme; so rush the best-dressed women to the thronged spectacles; a multitude that oft has kept my judgment in suspense. They come to see, they come that they themselves may be seen; to modest chastity these spots are detrimental. Romulus, 'twas thou didst first institute the exciting games; at the time when the ravished Sabine fair [718] came to the aid of the solitary men. Then, neither did curtains [719] hang over the marble theatre, [720] nor was the stage [721] blushing with liquid saffron. There, the branches were simply arranged which the woody Palatium bore; the scene was void of art. On the steps made of turf sit the people; the branches promiscuously overshadowing their shaggy locks. They look about them, and they mark with their eyes, each for himself, the damsel which to choose; and in their silent minds they devise full many a plan. And while, as the Etrurian piper sends forth his harsh notes, the actor with his foot thrice beats the levelled ground; in the midst of the applause, (in those days applause was void of guile,) the King gives to his people the signal to be awaited for the spoil. At once, they start up, and, disclosing their intentions with a shout, lay their greedy hands upon the maidens. [722] As the doves, a startled throng, fly from the eagles, and as the young Iamb flies from the wolves when seen; in such manner do they dread the men indiscriminately rushing on; the complexion remains in none, which existed there before. For their fear is the same; the symptoms of their fear not the same. Some tear their hair; some sit without consciousness; one is silent in her grief; another vainly calls upon her mother; this one laments; this one is astounded; this one tarries; that one takes to flight. The ravished fair ones are carried off, a matrimonial spoil; and shame itself may have been becoming to many a one. If one struggled excessively, and repelled her companion; borne off, the man himself lifted her into his eager bosom. And thus he spoke: "Why spoil your charming eyes with tears? What to your mother your father was, the same will I be to you." Romulus, 'twas thou alone didst understand how to give rewards to thy soldiers. Give such a reward to me, and I will be a soldier. In good truth, from that transaction, the festive Theatres, even to this day, continue to be treacherous to the handsome. And let not the contest of the noble steeds escape you; the roomy Circus of the people has many advantages. There is no need there of fingers, with which to talk over your secrets; nor must a hint be taken by you through nods. Be seated next to your mistress, there being no one to prevent it; press your side to her side as close as ever you can; and conveniently enough, because the partition [723] compels you to sit close, even if she be unwilling; and because, by the custom of the place, the fair one must be touched by you. Here let the occasion be sought by you for some friendly chat, and let the usual subjects [724] lead to the first words. Take care, and enquire, with an air of Anxiety, whose horses those are, coming; and without delay, whoever it is to whom she wishes well, to him do you also wish well. But when the thronged procession shall walk with the holy statues of ivory, [725] do you applaud your mistress Venus with zealous hand. And, as often happens, if perchance a little dust should fall on the bosom of the fair, it must be brushed off with your fingers [726] and if there should be no dust, still brush off that none; let any excuse be a prelude to your attentions. If her mantle, hanging too low, shall be trailing on the earth, gather it up, and carefully raise it from the dirty ground. [727] At once, as the reward of your attention, the fair permitting it, her ancles will chance to be seen by your eyes. Look, too, behind, who shall be sitting behind you, that he may not press her tender back with his knee against it. [728] Trifles attract trifling minds. It has proved to the advantage of many a one, to make a cushion with his ready hand. [729] It has been of use, too, to waft a breeze with the graceful fan, and to place the hollow footstool beneath her delicate feet. Both the Circus, and the sand spread for its sad duties [730] in the bustling Forum, will afford these overtures to a dawning passion. On that sand, oft has the son of Venus fought; and he who has come to be a spectator of wounds, himself receives a wound. [731] While he is talking, and is touching her hand, and is asking for the racing list; [732] and, having deposited the stake, [733] is enquiring which has conquered, wounded, he sighs, and feels the flying dart, and, himself, becomes a portion of the spectacle so viewed. Besides; when, of late, [734] Cæsar, on the representation of a rival fight, introduced [735] the Persian and Athenian ships; in truth, from both seas came youths, from both came the fair; and in the City was the whole of the great world. Who, in that throng, did not find an object for him to love? How many, alas! did a foreign flame torment? See! Cæsar prepares [736] to add what was wanting to the world subdued; now, remote East, our own shalt thou be! Parthian, thou shalt give satisfaction; entombed Crassi, rejoice; [737] ye standards, too, that disgracefully submitted to barbarian hands. Your avenger is at hand, and proves himself a general in his earliest years; and, while a boy, is conducting a war not fitted to be waged by a boy. Cease, in your fears, to count the birth-days of the Gods: [738] valour is the lot of the Cæsars, in advance of their years. The divine genius rises more rapidly than its years, and brooks not the evils of slow delay. The Tirynthian hero was a baby, and he crushed two serpents in his hands; even in his cradle he was already worthy of Jove. Bacchus, who even now art a boy, how mighty wast thou then, when conquered India dreaded thy thyrsi! With the auspices and the courage of thy sire, thou, Youth, shalt wield arms; and with the courage and the auspices of thy sire shalt thou conquer. Such first lessons are thy due, under a name so great; now the first of the youths, [739] at a future day to be the first of the men. Since thou hast brothers, [740] avenge thy brethren slain; and since thou hast a sire, [741] vindicate the rights of thy sire. He, the father of thy country and thine own, hath put thee in arms; the enemy is tearing realms away from thy reluctant sire. Thou wilt wield the weapons of duty, the foe arrows accursed; before thy standard, Justice and Duty will take their post. By the badness of their cause, the Parthians are conquered; in arms, too, may they be overcome; may my hero add to Latium the wealth of the East. Both thou, father Mars, and thou, father Cæsar, grant your divine favour as he sets out; for the one of you is now a Deity, thou, the other, wilt so be. What, Parthian, dost thou leave to the conquered, who dost fly that thou mayst overcome? Parthian, even now has thy mode of warfare an unhappy omen. And will that day then come, on which thou, the most graceful of all objects, glittering with gold, shalt go, drawn by the four snow-white steeds? Before thee shall walk the chiefs, their necks laden with chains; that they may no longer, as formerly, be secure in flight. The joyous youths, and the mingled fair, shall be looking on; and that day shall gladden the minds of all. And when some one of the fair shall enquire the names of the Monarchs, what places, what mountains, or what rivers are borne in the procession; answer to it all; and not only if she shall make any inquiry; even what you know not, relate, as though known perfectly well. * This is the Euphrates, [742] with his forehead encircled with reeds; the one whose [743] azure hair is streaming down, will be the Tigris. Make these to be the Armenians; this is Persia, sprung from Danaë; [744] that was a city in the vales of Achæ-menes. This one or that will be the leaders; and there will be names for you to call them by; correctly, if you can; if not, still by such as suggest themselves. Banquets, too, with the tables arranged, afford an introduction; there is something there besides wine for you to look for. Full oft does blushing Cupid, with his delicate arms, press the soothed horns of Bacchus there present. And when the wine has besprinkled the soaking wings of Cupid, there he remains and stands overpowered on the spot of his capture. He, indeed, quickly flaps his moistened wings; but still it is fatal [745] for the breast to be sprinkled by Love. Wine composes to choose an object for you to love, where to lay your nets. Now, I attempt to teach you, by what arts she must be captured who has pleased you, a work of especial skill. Ye men, whoever you are, and in every spot, give attention eager to be informed; and give, all people, a favourable ear to the realization of my promises. First of all, let a confidence enter your mind, that all women may be won; you will win them; do you only lay your toils. Sooner would the birds be silent in spring, the grasshoppers in summer, sooner would the Mænalian dog turn its back upon the hare, than the fair, attentively courted, would resist the youth. She, however, will wish you to believe, so far as you can, that she is reluctant. Lo! I utter a prophecy; thou wilt conquer, and I shall offer the lines which I have vowed; and with a loud voice wilt thou have to be celebrated by me. Thou wilt there he taking thy stand, and in my words thou wilt be animating thy troops. O that my words may not prove unworthy of thy spirit! I will celebrate both the backs of the Parthians as they fly, and the valour of the Romans, and the darts and the feelings, and makes them ready to be inflamed; care flies, and is drenched with plenteous wine. Then come smiles; then the poor man resumes his confidence then grief and cares and the wrinkles of the forehead depart. Then candour, most uncommon in our age, reveals the feelings, the God expelling _all_ guile. On such occasions, full oft have the fair captivated the hearts of the youths; and Venus amid wine, has proved flames in flame. Here do not you trust too much to the deceiving lamp; [746] both night and wine are unsuited to a judgment upon beauty. In daylight, and under a clear sky, did Paris view the Goddesses, when he said to Venus: "Thou, Venus, dost excel them both." By night, blemishes are concealed, and pardon is granted to every imperfection; and that hour renders every woman beauteous. Consult the daylight about jewels, about wool steeped in purple; consult the daylight about the figure and the proportion. Why enumerate the resorts of fair ones suited for your search? The sands would yield to my number. Why mention Baiæ, [747] and the shores covered with sails, and the waters which send forth the smoke from the warm sulphur? Many a one carrying thence a wound in his breast, has exclaimed; "This water was not so wholesome as it was said to be." See, too, the temple in the grove of suburban Diana, and the realms acquired with the sword by hostile hand. [748] Because she is a virgin, because she hates the darts of Cupid, she has given many a wound to the public, _and_ will give many _still._ Thus far, Thalia borne upon unequal wheels, [749] teaches where the foeman hurls from his flying steed. As stealthy courtship is pleasing to the man, so, too, is it to the fair. The man but unsuccessfully conceals his passion; with more concealment does she desire. Were it agreed among the males not to be the first to entreat any female, the conquered fair would soon act the part of the suppliant. In the balmy meads, the female lows after the bull; the female is always neighing after the horny-hoofed horse. Passion in us is more enduring, and not so violent; among men the flame has reasonable bounds. Why mention Byblis, who burned with a forbidden passion for her brother, and who resolutely atoned with the halter for her crimes? Myrrha loved her father, but not as a daughter ought; and she now lies hid, overwhelmed by the bark [750] that grew over her. With her tears too, which she distils from the odoriferous tree, are we perfumed; and the drops still retain the name of their mistress. By chance, in the shady vales of the woody Ida, there was a white hull, the glory of the herd, marked with a little black in the middle between his horns; there was but one spot; the rest was of the complexion of milk. The heifers of Gnossus and of Cydon [751] sighed to mate with him. Pasiphaë delighted to become the paramour of the bull; in her jealousy she hated the beauteous cows. I sing of facts well known: Crete, which contains its hundred cities, untruthful as it is, [752] cannot gainsay them. She herself is said to have cut down fresh leaves and the tenderest grass with hand unused to such employment. She goes as the companion of the herds; so going, no regard for her husband restrains her; and by a bull [753] is Minos conquered. "Of what use, Pasiphaë, is it to put on those costly garments? This love of thine understands nothing about wealth. What hast thou to do with a mirror, when accompanying the herds of the mountain? Why, foolish one, art thou so often arranging thy smoothed locks? Still, do thou believe that mirror, that denies that thou art a heifer. How much couldst thou wish for horns to spring up upon thy forehead! If Minos still pleases thee, let no paramour be sought; but if thou wouldst rather deceive thy husband, deceive him through a being that is human." Her chamber abandoned, the queen is borne over the groves and the forests, just as a Bacchanal impelled by the Aonian God. Alas! how oft with jealous look does she eye a cow, and say, "Why is she thus pleasing to my love? See how she skips before him on the tender grass! I make no doubt that the fool thinks that it is becoming to her." Thus she spoke, and at once ordered her to be withdrawn from the vast herd, and, in her innocence, to be dragged beneath the bending yoke; or else she forced her to fall before the altars, and rites feigned for the purpose; and, with joyous hand, she held the entrails of her rival. How often did she propitiate the Deities with her slain rivals, and say, as she held the entrails, "Now go and charm my love!" And sometimes she begged that she might become Europa, sometimes Io; because the one was a cow, the other borne upon a bull. Still, deceived by a cow made of maple-wood, the leader of the herd impregnated her; and by the offspring was the sire [754] betrayed. If the Cretan dame [755] had withheld from love for Thyestes (alas! how hard it is for a woman possibly to be pleasing to one man only!) Phoebus would not have interrupted his career in the midst, and, his chariot turned back, retreated, with his returning steeds, to the morn. The daughter, who spoiled [756] Nisus of his purple locks, presses beneath her thigh and groin the raving dogs. The son of Atreus, who escaped from Mars by land, and Neptune on the waves, was the mournful victim of his wife. By whom have not been lamented the flames [757] of the Ephyrean Creusa? Medea, the parent, too, stained with the blood of her children? Phoenix, the son of Amyntor, [758] wept with his blinded eyes; you, startled steeds, tore Hippolytus in pieces. Why, Phineus, dost thou tear out the eyes of thy guiltless sons? [759] That punishment will revert to thy own head. All these things have been caused by the passion of females. It is more violent than ours, and has more frenzy _in it_. Come then, and doubt not that you can conquer all the fair: out of so many, there will be hardly one to deny you. What they yield, and what they refuse, still are they glad to be asked for. Even if you are deceived, your repulse is without danger. But why should you be deceived, since new pleasures are delightful, and since what is strange attracts the feelings more than what is one's own? [760] The crop [761] of corn is always more fertile in the fields of other people; and the herds of our neighbours have their udders more distended. But first, be it your care to make acquaintance with the handmaid of the fair one to be courted; she can render your access easy. [762] Take care that she is deep in the secrets of her mistress, and not too little entrusted with her secret frolics. Her do you bribe with promises, her with entreaties; you will obtain what you ask with little trouble, if she shall be willing. Let her choose the time (physicians, even, watch their time) when the feelings of her mistress are pliant, and easy to be influenced. Then will her feelings be easily influenced, when, in the best humour in the world, she shall be smiling, just as the corn on the rich soil. While hearts are joyous, and not closed by sadness, _then_ are they assailable; then with soothing arts does Venus steal on apace. At the time when Troy was in sorrow, she was defended by arms; when joyous, she admitted the horse pregnant with its soldiers. Then, too, must she be assailed, when she shall be fretting on being offended by a rival; then effect it by your means that she go not unrevenged. Let her handmaid, as she combs her hair in the morning, urge her on; and to the sail let her add the resources of the oar. And, sighing to herself, let her say, in gentle murmurs: "In my idea, you yourself cannot pay him in return." [763] Then let her talk about you; then let her add persuasive expressions; and let her swear that you are perishing with frantic passion. But speed on, let not the sails fall, and the breezes lull: like brittle ice, anger disappears in lapse of time. You inquire if it is of use [764] to win the handmaid herself? In such attempts there is a great risk. This one becomes _more_ zealous after an intrigue; that one more tardy; the one procures you as a gift for her mistress, the other for her own self. The result is doubtful; although she should favour your advances, still it is my advice, to refrain from so doing. I shall not go over headlong _tracks_, and over sharp crags; and, under my guidance, no youth shall be deceived. Even if she pleases you, while she gives and receives the letters, by her person, and not only by her zealousness alone; take care and gain her mistress first; let the other follow as her companion; your courtship must not be commenced with a servant-maid. This one thing I advise you (if you only put some trust in my skill, and if the boisterous wind does not bear my words over the seas): either do not attempt, or else do you persist; the informer is removed, when once she herself has shared in the criminality. The bird does not easily escape when its wings are bird-limed; the boar does not readily get away from the loose nets: the wounded fish can be held by the hook it has seized. Once tried, press her hard, and do not retreat, but as the conqueror. Then, guilty of a fault that is common to you both, she will not betray you; and the sayings and doings of her mistress will be well known to you. But let this be well concealed; if your informant shall be well concealed, your mistress will ever be under your eye. He is mistaken who supposes that time is the object of those only who till the fields, and is to be observed by mariners alone. Neither must the corn be always trusted to the treacherous soil; nor the hollow ships at all times to the green waves; nor is it safe to be ever angling for the charming fair. The same thing may often be better done when an opportunity offers. Whether it is her birthday [765] that comes, or whether the Calends, [766] which Venus delights to have as the successor of the month of Mars; or whether the Circus shall be adorned, not with statues, as it was before, but shall be containing the wealth of kings [767] exposed to view; delay your project; then the storm is boisterous, then the Pleiades prevail; [768] then, the tender Kid is sinking in the ocean wave. Then, 'tis well to desist; then, if one trusts the deep, with difficulty he grasps the shipwrecked fragments of his dismantled bark. You may make a beginning on the day on which tearful Allia [769] was stained with the blood of the Latian wounds; on the day, too, when the festival recurs, observed each seventh day by the Syrian of Palestine, a day not suited for [770] the transaction of business. Great must be [771] your dread of the birthday of your mistress, and unlucky be that day on which any present must be made. Though you should cleverly avoid her, still she will spoil you; a woman finds contrivances, by means of which to plunder the riches of the eager lover. The loosely-clad pedlar [772] will be coming to your mistress, so fond of buying, and while you are by, will be exposing his wares. She wills ask you to examine them, only that you may appear to be knowing; then she will give you a kiss, and then entreat you to purchase. She will swear that she will be content with this for many a year; she will say that now she has need of it, now it may be bought a bargain. If you shall make the excuse that you have not the money at home to give; a promissory note [773] will be asked for; it would then profit you not to have learned [774] to write. Besides, too; when she asks for a present, as though for the birth-day cake, [775] and is born for her own pleasure as often as she pleases. And further; when, full of tears, she laments her pretended loss, and the jewel [776] is feigned to have fallen from her pierced ear. They ask for many a sum to be lent them; so lent, they have no inclination to return them. You lose the whole; and no thanks are there for your loss. Had I ten mouths, with tongues as many, they would not suffice for me to recount the abominable contrivances of courtesans. Let the wax that is poured upon the polished tablets first try the ford; let the wax first go as the messenger of your feelings. Let it carry your compliments; and whoever you are, add expressions that feign you to be in love, and entreaties not a few. Achilles, moved with his entreaties, granted Hector to Priam; an angered Divinity is moved by the voice of entreaty. Take care to make promises: for what harm is there in promising? Any person whatever can be rich in promises. Hope, if she is only once cherished, holds out for a long time; she is, indeed, a deceitful Goddess, but still a convenient one. Should you give her [777] anything, you may for that reason be abandoned by her: she will bear off the gift by-gone, and will have lost nothing in return. But that which you have not given, you may always seem as though about to give; thus has the sterile field full oft deceived its owner. So the gambler, in order that he may not lose, does not cease to lose; and the alluring dice ever recall the anxious hand. This is the task, this the labour; to gain her without even the first present. What she has once given, she will always give, that she may not have granted to no purpose. Let the letter go then, and let it be couched in tender expressions; and let it ascertain her feelings, and be the first to feel its way. A letter borne upon an apple [778] deceived Cydippe; and by her own words the fair was unconsciously caught. Youths of Rome, learn, I recommend you, the liberal arts; and not only that you may defend the trembling accused. Both the public, and the grave judge, and the silent Senate, as well as the fair, conquered by your eloquence, shall extend their hands. [779] But let your power lie concealed: and do not be eloquent at the first. Let your letters avoid difficult words. Who, but one bereft of sense, would declaim before a charming mistress? Full oft has a letter proved a powerful cause for hatred. Let your language be intelligible, and your words the usual ones; but pleasing, so that you may seem to be speaking in person. Should she not accept your letter, and send it back unread, hope that she will read it, and persist in your design. In time the stubborn oxen come beneath the ploughs: in time the steeds are taught to submit to the flowing reins: by continued use the ring of iron [780] is consumed: by being in the ground continually, the crooked plough is worn out. What is there harder than stone? What more yielding than water? Yet hard stones are hollowed out by yielding water. Only persist, and in time you will overcome Penelope herself. You see that Pergamus was taken after a long time; still, it was taken. If she reads it, and will not write in answer, do not attempt to compel her. Do you only make her to be continually reading your flattering lines. What she has been pleased to read, she will be pleased to answer when read. _All_ these things will come in their turn, and by degrees. Perhaps even, at first, a discouraging letter will come to you; and one that entreats you not to wish to molest her. What she entreats you _to do_, she dreads; what she does not entreat you _to do, namely_, to persist, she wishes you _to do_. Press on; and soon you will be the gainer of your desires. In the meantime, if she shall be carried lying along upon her couch, do you, as though quite by accident, approach the litter of your mistress; and that no one may give a mischievous ear to your words, cunningly conceal, them so far as you can in doubtful signs. If, with sauntering foot, the spacious Portico is paced by her; here, too, do you bestow your leisure in her attendance. And sometimes do you take care to go before; sometimes follow behind; and sometimes be in a hurry, and sometimes walk leisurely. And be not ashamed to pass from the throng under some of the columns, [781] or to walk with her, side by side. And let her not be seated long without you in the curving Theatre; in her shoulders she will bring something for you to be spectator of. Her you may gaze upon, her you may admire; much may you say by your brows, much by your gestures. Clap too, when the actor is dancing [782] in the part of some damsel; and whatever lover is represented, him applaud. Rise when she rises; sit as long as she is seated; employ your time at the caprice of your mistress. But let it not please you to curl your hair with the irons: [783] and rub not your legs with the rough pumice. [784] Bid those do this, [785] in whose Phrygian notes the Cybeleian Mother is celebrated by their yells. A neglect of beauty becomes men, Theseus bore off the daughter of Minos, though his temples were bedecked by no crisping-pin. Phædra loved Hippolytus, [786] and he was not finely trimmed. Adonis, habituated to the woods, was the care of a Goddess. But let neatness please you; let your body be bronzed on the Plain of Mars: [787] let your robe be well-fitting, and without a spot. Let your tongue, too, not be clammy; [788] your teeth free from yellowness; and let not your foot wallop about, losing itself in the shoe down at heel. Let not the cutting shockingly disfigure your hair bolt upright; let your locks, let your beard be trimmed by a skilful hand. Let your nails, too, not be jagged, and let them be without dirt; and let no hairs project from the cavities of your nostrils. And let not the breath of your ill-smelling mouth be offensive; and let not the husband and the father of the flock [789] offend the nostrils. The rest, allow the luxurious fair to do; and any man that perchance disgracefully seeks to attract another. Lo! Bacchus calls his own Poet: he, too, aids those who love; and he encourages the flame with which he burns himself. The Gnossian fair was wandering distractedly on the unknown sands, where little Dia is beaten by the ocean waves. And, just as she was _on awaking_ from her sleep, [790] clothed in a loose tunic, with bare feet, and having her yellow hair loose, she was exclaiming to the deaf waves that Theseus was cruel, while the piteous shower of tears was moistening her tender cheeks. She exclaimed, and at the same moment she wept; but both became her, nor was she rendered unsightly by her tears. And now again beating her most beauteous bosom with her hands, she cried--"That perfidious man has gone; what will become of me?" "What will become of me?" she said; when cymbals resounded over all the shore, and tambourines were beaten with frantic hand. She dropped down with alarm, and stopped short in her closing words; and no blood was there in her lifeless body. See! the Mimallonian females, [791] with their locks flowing on their backs; see! the nimble Satyrs, the throng preceding the God; sec! Silenus, the drunken old man, [792] on his bending ass, sits there with difficulty, and holds fast by the mane that he presses. While he follows the Bacchanals, the Bacchanals both fly and return: while the unskilful rider is goading on his animal with his stick, slipping from the long-eared ass, he tumbles upon his head. The Satyrs cry aloud, "Come, rise up; rise, father!" Now, the God, from his chariot, the top of which he had wreathed with grapes, loosened the golden reins for the tigers yoked to it. Both her complexion, and Theseus, and her voice forsook the fair one; and thrice she attempted flight, and thrice was she detained by fear. She shuddered, just as the barren ears of corn, which the wind shakes; just as the slender reed quivers in the swampy marsh. To her the Divinity said, "Lo! I come to thee a more constant lover; damsel of Gnossus, lay aside thy fear, the wife of Bacchus shalt thou be. Receive heaven as my gift: a conspicuous Constellation in the heavens, full oft, Cretan Diadem, [793] shalt thou direct the veering bark." Thus he said; and he leapt from the chariot, that she might not be in dread of the tigers; the sand yielded to his foot placed upon it. And folding her in his bosom he bore her off; for to struggle she was unable: how easy 'tis for a God to be able to do anything. Some sing "Hymenæus," some cry "Evie, Evoë!" [794] Thus are the God and his bride united in holy wedlock. Therefore, when the gifts of Bacchus placed before you fall to your lot, and the fair one shall be a sharer in the convivial couch; pray both to father Nyctelius, and his nocturnal rites, that they will bid the wine not to take effect on your head. Here, in secret discourse, you may say to her many a free word, which she may understand is addressed to her; and you may trace out short compliments with a little wine, so that she may read on the table [795] that she is your favorite; and look on her eyes with eyes that confess your flame; the silent features often have both words and expression. Take care to be the next to seize the cup that has been touched by her lips; and drink from the side [796] that the fair drinks from. And whatever food she shall have touched with her fingers, [797] do you reach for it; and while you are reaching, her hand may be touched by you. Let it also be your object to please the husband of the fair; _once_ made a friend, he will be more serviceable for your designs. If you are drinking by lot, [798] grant him the first turn: let the chaplet, taken from your own head, be presented to him. Whether he is below you, or whether your neighbour, let him help Himself to every thing first; and do not hesitate to speak only after he has spoken. Secure and much frequented is the path, for deceiving through the name of friendship. Secure and much frequented though that path be; _still_ it is to be condemned. For this cause 'tis that the agent attends even too much [799] to his agency, and thinks that more things ought to be looked after by him than those entrusted to him. A sure rule for drinking shall be given you by me: let both your mind and your feet ever observe their duty. Especially avoid quarrels stimulated by wine, and hands too ready for savage warfare. Eurytion [801] met his death from foolishly quaffing the wine set before him. Banquets and wine are rather suited for pleasant mirth. If you have a voice, sing; if pliant arms, dance; and by whatever talent you can amuse, amuse. As real drunkenness offends, so feigned _inebriety_ will prove of service. Let your deceiving tongue stutter with lisping accents; so that whatever you shall do or say with more freedom than usual, it may be supposed that excess of wine is the cause. And express all good wishes for your mistress; all good wishes for him who shares her couch; but in your silent thoughts pray for curses on her husband. But when, the tables removed, the guests shall be going, (the very crowd will afford you access and room) mix in the throng: and quietly stealing up [802] to her as she walks, twitch her side with your fingers; and touch her foot with your foot. Now is the time come for some conversation: fly afar hence, coy bashfulness, let Chance and Venus befriend the daring. Let your eloquence not be subject to any laws of mine; only make a beginning, of your own accord you will prove fluent. You must act the lover, and wounds must be feigned in your words. Hence let confidence be sought by you, by means of any contrivances whatever. And 'tis no hard matter to be believed; each woman seems to herself worthy to be loved. Though she be ugly in the extreme, to no one are her own looks displeasing. Yet often, he that pretends to love, begins in reality: full oft he becomes that which in the beginning he feigned to be. For this cause, the rather, O ye fair, be propitious to those who pretend. That passion will become real, which so lately was feigned. Now be it your part stealthily to captivate her affection by attentions; just as the shelving bank is encroached on by the flowing stream. Be not tired of praising either her face or her hair; her taper fingers too, and her small foot. The praise of their beauty pleases even the chaste; their charms are the care and the pleasure of even maidens. For, why, even now, are Juno and Pallas ashamed at not having gained the decision in the Phrygian groves? The bird of Juno [803] exposes her feathers, when praised; if you look at them in silence, she conceals her treasures. Amid the contests of the rapid course, their trimmed manes, and their patted necks, delight the steeds. Promise, too, without hesitation: promises attract the fair: make any Gods you please to be witnesses of what you promise. Jupiter, from on high, smiles at the perjuries of lovers, and commands the Æolian South winds to sweep them away as worthless, Jupiter was accustomed to swear falsely to Juno by the Styx: now is he himself indulgent to his own precedent. 'Tis expedient that there should be Gods; [804] and as it is expedient, let us believe them to exist. Let frankincense and wine be presented on their ancient altars. No repose, free from care and similar to sleep, possesses them; live in innocence, for a Divinity is ever present. Restore the pledge; let piety observe her duties; be there no fraud; keep your hands free from bloodshed. Deceive, if you are wise, the fair alone with Impunity; for this one piece of deceit only is good faith to be disregarded. Deceive the deceivers; in a great measure they are all a guilty race; let them fall into the toils which they have spread. Egypt is said to have been without showers that refresh the fields: and to have been parched during nine years. When Thrasius went to Busiris, [805] and showed that Jupiter could be propitiated by shedding the blood of strangers; to him Busiris said, "Thou shalt become the first sacrifice to Jove, and, a stranger, thou shalt produce rain for Egypt." Phalaris, too, burnt in the bull the limbs of the cruel Perillus; the unhappy inventor was the first to make proof of his work. Each of them was just; and, indeed, no law is there more righteous, than that the contrivers of death should perish by their own contrivances. Therefore, since perjuries with justice impose upon the perjured, let woman grieve, deceived through a precedent her own. Tears, too, are of utility: by tears you will move adamant. Make her, if you can, to see your moistened cheeks. If tears shall fail you, for indeed they do not always come in time, touch your eyes with your wet hand. What discreet person would not mingle kisses with tender words? Though she should not grant them; still take them ungranted. Perhaps she will struggle at first, and will say, "You naughty man!" still, in her struggling, she will wish to be overcome. Only, let them not, rudely snatched, hurt her tender lips, and take care that she may not be able to complain that they have proved a cause of pain. He who has gained kisses, if he cannot gain the rest as well, will deserve to lose even that which has been granted him. How much is there wanting for unlimited enjoyment after a kiss! Oh shocking! 'twere _downright_ clownishness, and not modesty. Call it violence, if you like; such violence is pleasing to the fair; they often wish, through compulsion, to grant what they are delighted _to grant_. Whatever fair one has been despoiled by the sudden violence of passion, she is delighted at it; and the chief is as good as a godsend. But she, who, when she might have been carried by storm, has escaped untouched, though, in her features, she should pretend gladness, will _really_ be sorry. Phoebe suffered [806] violence; to her sister was violence offered; and pleasing was either ravisher to the ravished. The damsel of Scyros being united to the Hæmonian hero, is a well-known story indeed, but not unworthy to be related. Now, the Goddess, worthy to conquer the other two at the foot of mount Ida, had given her reward of the approval of her beauty. Now, from a distant region, had a daughter-in-law come to Priam: and within Ilian walls there was a Grecian wife. All swore in the words of the affronted husband; for the grief of one was the common cause. A disgraceful thing, had he not yielded in this to the entreaties of his mother, Achilles had concealed his manhood by the long garments. What art thou doing, descendant of Æacus? The wool is no task of thine. Do thou seek glory by other arts of Pallas. What hast thou to do with work-baskets? [807] Thy hand is fitted for holding the shield. Why hold the allotted flax in thy right hand, by which Hector shall fall? Spurn those spindles enwrapped in the laborious warp; the lance from Pelion is to be brandished by that hand. By chance in the same chamber there was a royal maiden; in her own undoing she found that he was a male. By force, indeed, was she overcome, so we must believe: but still, by force was she willing to be overcome. Many a time did she say, "Stay," when now Achilles was hastening _to depart_; for, the distaff laid aside, he had assumed valiant arms. Where now is this violence? Why, with gentle voice, Deidamia, dost thou detain the perpetrator of thy disgrace? As, forsooth, there is shame in first beginning at any time, so 'tis pleasing _to the fair_ to submit, when the other takes the initiative. Alas! too great is the confidence of any youth in his own good looks, if he awaits for her to be the first to ask him. Let the man make the first approaches; let the man use words of entreaty; she will kindly receive his soft entreaties. To gain _your wish_, ask; _she only wishes to be asked_. Tell her the cause and the origin of your desires. Jupiter came as a suppliant to the Heroines of olden times; [808] no fair one found fault with great Jove. But if you perceive puffed-up vanity to be the result of your prayers, desist from your design, and withhold your advances. Many desire that which flies from them, and hate that which is close at hand. By pressing on less eagerly, remove all weariness of yourself. Nor must your hope of enjoyment be always confessed by you as you entreat; let Love make his entrance concealed beneath the name of friendship. By this introduction, I have seen the prudish fair deceived; he who was the friend, became the lover. A fair complexion is unbecoming in a sailor; he ought to be swarthy, from the spray of the sea and the rays of the sun. It is unbecoming, too, to the husbandman, who, with his crooked plough and his heavy harrows, is always turning up the ground in the open air. And if your body is fair, you, by whom the glory of the chaplet of Pallas [809] is sought, you will be unsightly. Let every one that is in love be pale; that is the proper complexion for one in love. That is becoming; from your features, let the fair think that you are not in good health. Pale with love for Lyrice, [810] did Orion wander in the woods; pale for the Naiad, in her indifference, was Daphnis. [811] Thinness, too, shows the feelings; and think it no disgrace to put a hood over your shining looks. Let sleepless nights attenuate the bodies of the youths; care, too, and the grief that proceeds from violent love. That you may gain your desires, be wretched, that he who sees you may be able to say, "You are in love." Shall I complain, or _only_ remind you how all right and wrong is confused? Friendship is but a name, constancy an empty title. Alas! alas! it is not safe to praise the object that you love to your friend. When he has credited your praises, he supplants you. But the descendant of Actor did not defile the couch of Achilles; so far as Pirithous was concerned, Phædra was chaste. Pylades [812] loved Hermione, with the affection with which Phoebus loved Pallas; and he was such, daughter of Tyndarus, as thy twin brother Castor was towards thee. If any one expects the same, let him expect that the tamarisks will bear apples, and let him look for honey in the middle of the stream. Nothing pleases but what is base; his own gratification is the object of each. This, too, becomes pleasant from the sorrow of another. Oh disgraceful conduct! no enemy is to be dreaded by the lover. Shun those whom you think trustworthy; then you will be safe. Shun your kinsman, and your brother, and your dear friend; this class will cause you real alarm. I was _here_ about to conclude; but there are various dispositions in the fair; treat these thousand dispositions in a thousand _different_ ways. The same soil does not produce everything; one suits the vine, another the olive; in this, corn springs up vigorously. There are as many characters in these various dispositions, as there are forms in the world; the man that is wise, will adapt himself to these innumerable characters. And as at one moment Proteus will make himself flow in running water; and now will be a lion, now a tree, now a shaggy goat. These fish are taken with a dart, [813] those with hooks; these the encircling nets draw up, the rope being extended. And let no one method be adopted by you for all years. The aged hind will espy from a greater distance your contrivances. Should you seem learned to the ignorant, or forward to the bashful, she will at once distrust herself, now apprehensive. Thence it happens, that she who has dreaded to trust herself to the well-bred man, _often_ falls into the embrace of some worthless inferior. A part remains of the task which I have undertaken, a part is completed; here let the anchor, thrown out, hold fast my bark. BOOK THE SECOND. |Sing, "Io Pæan" [901] and "Io Pæan" twice sing; the prey that was sought has fallen into our toils. Let the joyous lover present my lines with the verdant palm; to _Hesiod_ the Ascræan and to _Homer_ the Mæonian old man shall I be preferred. Such did the stranger son of Priam set his whitening sails from the armed Amyclæ, [902] together with the ravished wife. Such was he who bore thee, Hippodamia, in his victorious chariot, carried by the wheels of the stranger. Why hasten then, young man? Thy ship is sailing in the midst of the waves; and far distant is the harbour for which I make. It is not enough, me your Poet, for the fair to be gained by you. Through my skill has she been acquired; through my skill must she be retained. 'Tis no less merit to keep what is acquired, than to gain it. In the former there is some chance; in the latter will be a work of art. Now, if ever, Boy _Cupid_ and Cytherea, be propitious _to me_: now, Erato; [903] for thou hast a name from Love. Great attempts do I contemplate; to tell by what means Love can be arrested, the Boy that wanders over the world so wide. He is both inconstant, and he has two wings with which to fly.'Tis an arduous task to impose laws on these. Minos had obstructed all means of escape to the stranger. He discovered a bold path [904] with his wings. When Dædalus had enclosed the man half-bull, and the bull half-man, that was conceived in the criminality of his mother; he said, "Most just Minos, let there be a termination of my exile; and let my paternal land receive my ashes. And since, harassed by the cruel Destinies, I cannot live in my country, let me be enabled to die. If the merits of an old man are but small, grant a return to this boy; if thou art unwilling to favour the boy, then favour the old man." This he said: but both this and many more things he might have said; the other did not permit a return to the hero. Soon as he saw this, he said, "Now, O now, Dædalus, thou hast a subject, upon which thou mayst prove ingenious. Lo! Minos possesses the land, and he possesses the ocean; neither earth nor water is open for our escape; there remains a path through the heavens; through the heavens will we attempt to go. Jupiter on high, grant pardon to my design. I do not aim to reach the starry abodes; there is no way but this one, by which I may escape the tyrant. Should a road through Styx be granted; then we will swim through the Stygian waves; let the laws of nature be changed by me." _Misfortunes often sharpen the genius_; who could have ever believed, that a mortal could attempt the paths of the air? He arranges swift feathers in order, like oars, [905] and connects the light work with fastenings of thread; the lower part, too, is bound together with wax, melted by the fire; and now the work of the new contrivance is finished. The smiling boy handles both the wax and the feathers, not knowing that these instruments are prepared for his own shoulders. To him his father says: "With these ships must we reach our native land; by these means must we escape from Minos. The air Minos could not, all else he has, shut against us. Cleave the air, which still thou mayst, with these my inventions. But neither the virgin of Tegeæa, nor the sword-bearing Orion, [906] the companion of Bootes, will have to be beheld by thee. Follow me with the wings given to thee: I will go before on the way. Be it thy care to follow; me thy leader, thou wilt he safe. But if we shall go through the air of the heavens, the sun close to us, the wax will not be able to endure the heat. If we shall wave our wings below, the sea near to us, the fluttering feathers will be wet with the ocean spray. Fly between them both; dread, too, the winds, my son; and whichever way the breezes shall blow, set thy prospering sails." While he thus advises; he fits his work on to the boy, and shows how it is to be moved; just as their mother teaches the helpless birds. Then he places upon his shoulders the wings made for himself; and with timidity he poises his body along this new track. And now about to fly, he gives kisses to his little son; and the cheeks of the father do not withhold their tears. There is a hill, less than a mountain, more lofty than the level plain; hence are their two bodies entrusted to their mournful flight. Dædalus both moves his own wings himself, and looks back on those of his son; and he ever keeps on his own course. And now this unusual path delights him, and, fear laid aside, Icarus flies more courageously with emboldened skill. A person sees them, while he is angling [907] for fish with his quivering rod, and his right hand desists from the work he has commenced. Now Samos and Naxos had been left behind, on the left hand, and Paros, and Delos beloved by the Clarian God. [908] Lebynthos was to the right, and Calymne [909] shaded with its woods, and Astypalæa, [910] surrounded with its fishy shallows; when the boy, too venturesome in his inconsiderate daring, took a higher flight, and forsook his guide. The fastenings give way; and the wax melts, the Divinity being so near; and his arms, when moved, no longer catch the light breeze. Alarmed, he looks down upon the sea from the lofty heavens; darkness, arising from trembling apprehension, comes over his eyes. The wax has now melted; he waves his bare arms, and he trembles, and has no means whereby to be supported. Downward he falls; and as he falls, he cries, "Father! O father! I am undone!" As he spoke, the azure waves closed his mouth. But the unhappy father, a father now no longer, cried aloud, "Icarus, where art thou? Or under what part of the sky dost thou fly?" "Icarus," again he cried aloud; his feathers he beheld in the waves. The dry land covers his bones; the sea retains his name. Minos could not restrain the wings of a mortal; I myself am attempting to arrest a winged Divinity. If any one has recourse to the Hæmonian arts, and gives that which he has torn from the forehead of the young horse, [911] he is mistaken. The herbs of Medea will not cause love to endure; nor yet the Marsian spells [912] mingled with the magic notes. The Phasian damsel would have retained the son of Æson, Circe Ulysses, if love could only have been preserved through incantations. Philtres, too, causing paleness, [913] are of no use when administered to the fair. Philtres injure the intellect, and have a maddening effect. Afar be all criminal attempts; to be loved, be worthy to be loved; _a property_ which comeliness, or beauty alone, will not confer upon you. Though you should be Nireus, [914] be praised by ancient Homer, and the charming Hylas, [915] carried off by the criminality of the Naiads; that you may retain your mistress, and not have to wonder that you are deserted, add the endowments of the mind to the advantages of the person. Beauty is a fleeting advantage; and the more it increases in years, the less it becomes, and, itself, is consumed by length of time. Neither the violets nor the opening lilies bloom for ever; and, the roses lost, the thorny bush is prickly left behind. And, handsome man, soon shall come to you the hoary locks; soon shall come the wrinkles, to furrow your body over. Now form a disposition which may be lasting, and add it to your beauty; that alone endures to the closing pile. And be it no light care to cultivate the mind with the liberal arts, and to learn thoroughly the two languages, _the Latin and the Greek_. Ulysses was not handsome, but he was fluent; and yet with love he racked the ocean Goddesses. [916] Ah! how oft did Calypso grieve at his hastening to depart, and declare that the waves were not favorable to his oars! Again and again did she enquire into the catastrophe of Troy. Often in another manner was he wont to repeat the same thing. On the shore they were standing; even there did the beauteous Calypso enquire about the blood-stained death of the Odrysian chief. With a little stick, for by chance he was holding a stick, he depicted on the firm shore the subject on which she was enquiring. "This is Troy," said he; and the walls he drew on the shore; "This must be Simois for thee, and suppose these to be my tents. There was a plain," and here he drew the plain, "which we moistened with the blood of Dolon, [917] while, as a spy, he was longing for the Hæmonian horses. [918] There were the tents of the Sithonian Rhesus; in this direction was I borne back again by the captured steeds." And many other things was he depicting, when the waves suddenly carried off both Pergamus and the tents of Rhesus together with their chief. Then the Goddess said, "Dost thou behold how famous names these waves have swept away, which thou dost trust will be favorable to thee about to depart?" Come then, with hesitation, feel confidence in beauty so deceiving, whoever you are; or else possess something of more value than comeliness. A beseeming courtesy especially enlists the feelings; rudeness and harsh language promote hatred. We dislike the hawk, because it is always living in warfare; the wolves too, that are wont to rush upon the startled flocks. But the swallow, because it is gentle, is exempt from the snares of men; and the Chaonian bird [919] has the turrets for it to inhabit. Afar lie all strife and contentions of the abusive tongue; with sweet words must gentle love be cherished. With strife let both wives persecute their husbands, and husbands their wives; and, each in their turn, let them ever be thinking that they must resort to law. [920] This is the part of wives; strife is the dowry of the wife. Let the mistress ever hear the accents that she longs for. At the bidding of no law have you come to live together; in your case 'tis love that performs the duties of the law. Bring soft caresses, and words that delight the ear, that she may _ever_ be joyous at your approach. I do not come as the instructor of the wealthy in Love; he who makes presents has no need of my experience. He who says, whenever he pleases, "Accept this," has a genius of his own. To him do I yield: he has greater attractions than have any discoveries of mine. I am the instructor of the poor, because, as a poor man, I have been in love. When I could not give presents, I gave verses. [921] Let the poor man love with caution, let the poor man stand in fear of bad language, and let him _put up with many a thing, not to be endured by the rich_. I remember that once, when in a rage, I disarranged the hair of my mistress; of how many a day did that anger deprive me! I do not think I did, and I did not see that I had, torn her tunic, but she said so, and at my cost it was replaced. But you who are wise, avoid the errors of your instructor; and stand in awe of the punishment of my transgressions. Let battles be with the Parthians, but be there peace with your refined mistress; mirth too, and whatever besides contains a reason for love. If she is not sufficiently kind or affable to you her lover; have patience, and bear it; after a time she will be softened. By giving way the supple branch is bent from the tree; if you make trial of your strength, you break it. By giving way the waves are swam across; but you cannot overcome the stream if you swim _against the flood_ which the tide carries down. 'Tis yielding that subdues the tigers and the Numidian lions. By degrees only does the bull submit to the rustic plough. What was there more coy than Atalanta of Nonacris? [922] Yet, untamed as she was, she yielded to the deserving qualities of a man. They say that many a time, beneath the trees, Milanion wept at his mishaps, and the unkind conduct of the fair one. Full oft on his neck, as ordered, did he bear the treacherous toils; full oft with his cruel spear did he transfix the savage boars. Wounded, too, he experienced the stretched bow of Hylæus; [923] but yet there was another bow still more felt than this. I do not bid you, in arms, to climb the woods of Mænalus, and I do not bid you to carry the toils upon your neck. Nor yet do I bid you to expose your breast to the discharged arrows. The requirements of my skill will be but light to the careful man. Yield to her when opposing; by yielding, you will come off victorious. Only take care to perform the part which she shall bid you. What she blames, do you blame; whatever she approves, do you approve; what she says, do you say; what she denies, do you deny. Does she smile, do you smile; if she weeps, do you remember to weep. Let her prescribe the law for the regulation of your features. If she plays, and throws the ivory cubes [924] with her hand, do you throw unsuccessfully, do you make bad moves [925] to the throws; or if you are throwing [926] the dice, let not the penalty attend upon her losing; take care that losing throws often befall yourself, if your piece is moving at the game that imitates [927] the tactics of war, take care that your man falls before his enemy of glass. Do you yourself hold the screen [928] stretched out by its ribs; do you make room in the crowd the way that she is going. And do not delay to place the footstool before the tasteful, couch; [929] and take off or put on the sandals for her delicate feet. Often, too, must the hand of your mistress, when cold, be made warm in your bosom, though you yourself should shiver in consequence. And think it no disgrace (although it should be a disgrace to you, still it will give pleasure), to hold the looking-glass [930] with the hand of a free-born man. He who, by killing the monsters of his wearied step-mother, earned those heavens which before he had supported, is believed, amid the Ionian girls, to have held the work-basket, [931] and to have wrought the rough wool. The Tirynthian hero was obedient to the commands of his mistress. Go then, and hesitate to endure what he submitted to. When bidden to come to the Forum, take care always to be there before the appointed time; and do not go away until a late hour. Does she appoint to meet you at any place; put off everything else: run quickly, and let not the crowd stop your purposed route. Is she returning home at night, after having been at a feast; then, too, if she calls, come to her as though a servant. [932] If you are in the country and she says, "Come," (love hates the tardy) if a vehicle [933] is not at hand, go your journey on foot. Let neither bad weather nor the parching Dog-star detain you, nor the road made white with the snow that lies there. Love is a kind of warfare; cowards, avaunt! These are not the standards to be defended by timid men. In this tender warfare, night, and wintry storms, and long journies, and cruel pain, and every kind of toil, have their part. Many a time will you have to endure the rain pouring from the clouds of heaven; cold and on the bare ground full oft will you lie. Cynthius [934] said to have fed the cows of Admetus of Pheræ, and to have lived in an humble cottage. What was becoming to Phoebus, to whom is it not becoming? Away with all conceit, whoever you are, who have a care for a lasting passion. If access is denied you by a safe and smooth path; and if her door shall be fastened by the bar put up; then, do you slip straight down through the open roof [935] let the high window, [936] too, present a secret passage. She will be pleased when she knows that she has proved the cause of risk to you. This will be to your mistress a pledge of your unvarying love. Full oft, Leander, couldst thou have done without thy mistress; that she might know thy passion, thou didst swim across. And be not ashamed to make her handmaids, as each one is superior in rank, nor yet her male servants, entirely your own. Salute them each by name, there will be nothing thrown away: press their humble hands, proud lover, with your own. Moreover, (the expense is but trifling) give to the servant who asks, some little present from your means. Make a present, too, to the handmaid, on the day on which [937] the Gallic army, deceived by the garments of the matrons, received retribution. Follow my advice, and make the lower classes [938] your own; in that number let there always be the porter, and him who lies before the door of her chamber. And I do not bid you present to your mistress any costly gift; give her moderate ones, but, in your discrimination, well selected from those that are moderate. While the country is abundantly rich in produce, while the branches are bending beneath their load, let the boy bring your gifts from the country in his basket. You may say that they have been sent by you from your suburban retreat, although they may have been bought even in the Sacred Street. [939] Let him carry either grapes, or what Amaryllis was so fond of; [940] but, at the present day, she is fond of chesnuts no longer. And, besides, both with a thrush and a pigeon, [941] sent as a present, you may show how attentive you are to your mistress. By these means [942] are the expectations of death, and solitary old age, disgracefully made matter of purchase. Oh! may they perish through whom gifts promote criminal objects! Why should I recommend you to send tender lines as well? Alas! poetry does not [943] gain much honour. Verses are praised: but 'tis costly gifts that are sought. If he is only rich, [944] a very barbarian is pleasing. Truly is this the golden age; the greatest honours accrue through gold; love is purchased with gold. Though thou thyself, Homer, shouldst come, attended by the Muses; if thou shouldst bring nothing with thee, thou wouldst be turned out of doors. And yet there are the learned fair, a very limited number; another set are not learned, but they wish to be so. Both kinds may be praised in verse; the reader may set off the lines of whatever quality by a melodious voice. Indeed, a poem, carefully composed in their honour, will be to these or to those, as good, perhaps, as a little present. But take care that whatever you are about to do of your own accord and consider convenient, your mistress shall always first ask that of you. Has freedom been promised to any one of your slaves; still cause him to make a request for it of your mistress. If you forgive punishment and cruel fetters to your slave, let her be indebted to you for what you were about to do. Let the advantage be your own; let the credit be given to your mistress. Suffer no loss yourself, and let her act the part of the person in power. But whosoever you are who have a care to retain the fair, cause her to believe that you are enchanted with her beauty. If she is in Tyrian costume, praise the dress of Tyrian hue; [945] if she is in that of Cos, [946] consider the Coan habit as becoming. Is she arrayed in gold, let her be more precious in your eyes than gold itself: if she wears a dress of felt, [947] praise the felt dress that she wears. Does she stand before you in her tunic, exclaim, "You are setting me on fire;" [948] but entreat her, with a voice of anxiety, to beware of the cold. Is the parting of her hair nicely arranged; praise the parting of it; has she curled her hair by aid of the fire: curled locks, do you prove the attraction. As she dances, admire her arms, her voice as she sings; and use the words of one complaining because she has left off. Her very embraces [949] you may commend, on the points that please yourself; and with murmuring accents you may signify your delight. Though she be more fierce than the grim Medusa; to her lover she will become gentle and kind. Only, take you care that you be not discovered to be a deceiver in these expressions; and by your looks do not contradict your words. If devices are concealed, they are of use; when discovered, they cause shame, and deservedly remove confidence for all future time. Often, at the approach of autumn (when the year is most beauteous, and the filled grape is growing red with its purple juice; at the time when at one moment we are chilled with cold, at another we are melted with heat), through the varying temperature a languor takes possession of the body. She, indeed, may be in good health; but if, through illness she keeps her bed, and, ailing, feels the bad effects of the weather, then let your love and affection be proved to the fair; then sow, that hereafter with the sickle of abundance you may reap. Let no disgust at her malady, that renders her so cross, come upon you: by your hands too, let whatever she will permit, be done. And let her see you as you weep; and be not tired of giving her kisses; and with her parched lips let her dry up your tears. Make many a vow for her cure, but all before her: and as often as she will permit, be seeing pleasant visions to tell her of. Let the old woman come, [950] too, to purify her couch and chamber; and in her palsied hand let her carry before her the sulphur and the eggs. In all these things there will be traces of a pleasing attention; for many a one has this road proved a path to another man's will. But still, let not loathing on the part of the sick fair be the result of your officiousness; let there be certain limits shown in your careful attentiveness. Do not you forbid her food, nor administer the cups with the bitter draught; let your rival mingle those. But when you have gained the open sea, you must not use the breeze to which you set your sails from off the shore. While Love is wandering in his youth, let him gain strength by habit; if you nurse him well, in time he will be strong. Him that you fear as a bull, as a calf you were wont to pat; the tree under which you are now reclining, was once a twig. A river at its rise is small, but it acquires strength in its course; and where it runs, it now receives many a stream. Make her become used to you; there is nothing more powerful than habit. While you are courting her, avoid no amount of trouble. Let her be always seeing you; let her be always lending ear to you; let both night and day show your countenance. When you have a greater confidence that you may be missed; then, destined to be her care when absent, go away to a distance. Give yourself some repose; the land that has lain fallow, gives back in abundance what has been entrusted to it; and the dry ground sucks up the water of the heavens. Demophoôn, when present, inflamed Phyllis in a less degree; when he had set sail, more violently did she burn. The crafty Ulysses, by his absence, tortured Penelope: far away, tearful Laodamia, was thy hero of Phylace. But a short respite alone is safe; in time, cares become modified, and the absent love decays and a new one makes its entrance. While Menelaus was absent, Helen, that she might not lie alone, was received at night into the warm bosom of his guest. What meant, Menelaus, this stupidity of thine? Thou didst go away alone; under the same roof were both the stranger and thy wife. And dost thou entrust, madman, the timid doves to the hawk? Dost thou entrust the well-filled sheep-fold to the mountain wolf? Helen commits no sin; this paramour of hers does no wrong; he does what thou, what any one, would do. Thou dost persuade them to adultery, by giving both time and opportunity. What advice, but thine own, has the fair made use of? What is she to do? Her husband is away, and a guest, no repulsive person, is present, and she is afraid to sleep alone in an empty couch. Let the son of Atreus think better of it: I acquit Helen of criminality; she made use of the opportunity given by an easy husband. But neither is the tawny boar so fierce in the midst of his rage, when he hurls the furious dogs with the lightning shock of his tusks; nor the lioness, when she is giving the breast to her sucking whelps; nor the little viper, when inhired by the heedless foot; as the woman, who is furious on detecting the rival of her nuptial couch, and bears on her features the proofs of her feelings. To the sword and to flames does she resort; and, shame laid aside, onward she is impelled, as though struck by the horns of the Aonian God. The barbarian fair one of Phasis avenged the fault of her husband, and the violated rights of a wife, by the death of her sons. See, how another cruel parent ('tis the swallow that you behold) has her breast stained with blood. 'Tis this breaks those attachments that are firmly united, this, those of long duration; these faults must then be guarded against by cautious men. But still, my judgment does not condemn you to one fair alone. The Gods forbid! hardly can the married woman adhere to this. Disport yourself; but let your faultiness be concealed by a decent stealthiness. No glory must be sought in one's own delinquency. And do you give no present of which the other may know; nor be there any stated times for your intriguing. And, lest the fair one should catch you in the retreat so well known to her, all must not be met in the same place of rendezvous. And, as often as you shall be writing, do you first examine the whole of the tablet; many a woman reads more than what has been sent to her. A slighted passion brandishes the arms of retribution, and hurls back the weapon, and causes yourself to complain of that of which it complained so lately. So long as the son of Atreus was content with one woman, she, too, was chaste; through the fault of her husband did she become culpable. She had heard how that Chryses, bearing in his hand the laurel and the fillets, had not prevailed in behalf of his daughter. She had heard, too, ravished one of Lyrnesus, of thy sorrows; and how the warfare had been protracted through disgraceful delays. Still, these things she had only heard of; the daughter of Priam, herself, she had seen. Thou, the conqueror, wast the disgraced captive of thy own captive. Then did she receive the son of Thyestes, both into her chamber and her affections; and the daughter of Tyndarus avenged herself on a husband so deeply criminal. Your actions, which you have studiously concealed, if perchance any of them are discovered, although they should be notorious, still do you always deny them. On such occasions, do you neither be subdued, nor more kind than usual. That bears the marks of a mind that has too deeply offended. Still, spare not any endearments on your side; peace is entirely centred in caresses alone; by these must the former intrigue be disavowed. There are some who would recommend you to use injurious herbs, such as savory; in my opinion they are so many poisons. Or else, they mingle pepper with the seed of the stinging nettle; [952] and the yellow camomile pounded in old wine. But the Goddess, whom the lofty Eryx receives beneath his shady hill, does not allow us to be impelled in such manner to her delights. The white onion [953] which is sent from the Pelasgian city of Alcathoiis, [954] and the salacious herbs which come out of the gardens, and eggs may be eaten; the honey of Hymettus may be eaten, and the nuts which the pine-tree with its sharp leaves produces. Why, learned Erato, art thou thus diverging into the medical art? The inner side of the turning-place must be grazed by my chariot. You, who just now were, by my recommendation, to conceal your delinquencies, change your course, and, by my advice, disclose your intrigues. Nor yet is any inconsistency of mine to be censured; the curving ship does not always carry those on board with the same breezes. For sometimes we run with the Thracian Boreas, sometimes with the East wind; full aft does the canvass swell with the Zephyrs, with the South wind full aft. See how, in the chariot, the driver, at one moment, gives the flowing rein, at another, skilfully checks the horses in full career. There are some, with whom an anxious obsequiousness is ruinous, and if there is no rival existing, then their passion waxes faint. The feelings often run riot amid prosperity; and to bear good fortune with equanimity is no easy task. As the declining fire, its strength consuming by degrees, itself lies concealed, and the ashes become white over the surface of the fire; but still, when sulphur is applied, it finds the flames that were extinguished, and the light returns which existed before; so, when the feelings, sluggish through repose, and free from care, become torpid, by sharp stimulants must love be aroused. Make her to be jealous on your account, and rekindle her deadened feelings; let her turn pale at the proof of your inconstancy. Oh four times blest, and so oft, that it is not possible to limit it to numbers, is that man, on whose account the slighted fair is in grief! who, soon as the charge has reached her unwilling ears, faints away: and both her voice and colour leave the sorrowing fair. Would that I were he, whose locks she tears in her fury; would that I were he, whose tender cheeks she tears with her nails; whom she looks upon bursting into tears; whom she beholds with scowling eyes; without whom she cannot exist; _but still_ wishes that she could. If you enquire as to its duration: let the time be short for her to complain of her injuries, lest her anger may acquire strength in the slowly passing lapse of time. And now let her fair neck be encircled in your arms; and as she weeps, she must be received in your bosom. Give her kisses as she weeps: bestow her caresses as she weeps. Peace will ensue: by this method alone is anger appeased. When she has been passionately raving, when she shall seem to be an assured enemy; then seek your treaty of peace in caresses; she will then be pacified. For 'tis there that Concord dwells, all arms laid aside; 'tis in that spot, believe me, that the Graces were born. The doves which fought the moment before, are now billing; their cooing has the meaning of caresses, and of words. At first [955] there was a confused mass of things without arrangement; and the stars, the earth, and the ocean, were but of one appearance. Afterwards, the heavens were placed above the earth; the land was surrounded by the sea, and the confused Chaos was divided into its elements. The woods received the beasts, the air the birds as its possession; in the flowing waters, you, fishes were concealed. At that time the human race wandered in the solitary woods: and it consisted of nothing but brute force, and a mind quite uninformed. The woods were their houses, grass their food, and leaves their beds; and for a long time the one was unknown to the other. Voluptuous pleasure is said to have been the first to soften their rude dispositions; afterwards, the woman and the man settled in the same spot. What should they do? They had been instructed by no preceptor: Venus completed this delightful task without any art. The bird has an object to love: the female fish finds in the midst of the waters an object with which to share her joys. The hind follows her mate; the serpent couples with the serpent; the bitch, too, consorts with the dog. The delighted sheep unites with the ram; the heifer, also, is pleased with the bull; the fiat-nosed she-goat, too, receives her unclean mate. [956] Mares are driven to frenzy, and follow the horses, separated by streams, over places far distant from each other in situation. Come, then, and give an efficacious remedy to the angered fair; 'tis that alone that puts an end to violent grief. 'Tis that remedy which excels the potions of Machaon; [957] through that, when you have offended, you will have to be reinstated. While I was thus singing, Apollo, suddenly appearing, touched with his thumb the strings of his lyre inlaid with gold. In his hands there was a laurel, placed on his holy locks there was a laurel: visible as a Poet he came. [958] "Thou instructor in wanton Love," says he, "come, lead thy pupils to my temples. There is there a sentence celebrated in fame over the universal world, which bids each one to know himself. [959] He who shall be known to himself, will alone love with prudence, and will proportion every task to his strength. He to whom nature has given beauty, for that let him be admired; he who has a fair complexion, let him often lie down with a shoulder exposed. He who charms with his discourse, let him break the quietude of silence; he who sings with skill, let him sing; he who drinks with elegance, [960] let him drink. But in the middle of a conversation, neither let those who are eloquent declaim, and let not the insane poet be reciting his own compositions." Thus Phoebus recommended; observe this recommendation of Phoebus. There is full confidence in the hallowed lips of this Divinity. I am now called to my more immediate subject: whoever shall love with prudence, he will prove successful, and will obtain from my skill what he shall require. The furrows do not always return with interest that which has been entrusted to them; nor does the breeze always aid the veering barks. What pleases lovers, is but a little: 'tis much more that crosses them; let them resolve to endure many things with their feelings. As many as are the hares on Athos; [961] as the bees that feed on Hybla; [962] as the berries which the azure-coloured tree of Pallas bears; as the shells on the sea-shore; so many are the pangs of love; the shafts which we endure are reeking with plenteous gall. She, whom perchance you shall see, will be said to have gone out of doors; believe that she is gone out of doors, and that you make a mistake in your seeing. Is the door shut against you on the appointed night; endure even to lay your body on the dirty ground. Perhaps, too, the lying maid will say with a haughty air, "Why is that fellow blocking up our door?" Suppliantly entreat even the door-posts of the obdurate fair; and place at the door the roses that have been taken from off your head. [963] Come when she desires it; when she shall shun you, you'll go away. It is not becoming for men of good breeding to cause weariness of their company. Why should your mistress be able to say of you, "There is no getting rid of this man?" The senses [964] are not on the alert at all hours. And deem it no disgrace to put up with the curses of the fair one, or her blows, nor yet to give kisses to her delicate feet. But why dwell upon trifles? Let my mind be occupied with greater subjects. Of great matters will I sing; people, give all attention. I attempt an arduous task, but merit there is none, but what is secured by arduous means. By my undertaking are laborious attempts required. Endure a rival with patience; the victory will rest with yourself; you will be the conqueror on the heights of mighty Jove. [965] Believe that not a mortal tells you this, but the Pelasgian oaks of Dodona: my skill has nothing superior to this to teach you. Does she make a sign to him, do you put up with it; does she write, don't you touch the tablets; let her come from whatever place she likes; and wherever she chooses, let her go. This do husbands allow to their lawful wives; even, too, when thou, gentle sleep, [966] dost come to thy duty. I confess, that in this art I myself am not yet perfect. What must I do? I am myself unequal to my own precepts. And is any one in my presence to be making signs to my mistress? And am I to endure it? And is not my anger to hurry me away to any extreme? Her own husband [967] (I remember it well) gave her a kiss; I complained of kisses being given; my love is brimful of fierceness. Not once alone has this failing proved an injury to me; he is more skilful, by whose encouragement other men visit [968] his mistress. But 'tis still better to know nothing of it. Allow stealthy intrigues to lie concealed, lest the blush of confession should fly in future from her countenance when detected. With greater reason then, ye youths, forbear to detect your mistresses. Let them be guilty; and guilty, let them suppose that they have deceived you. When detected, the passion increases; when the fortune of the two is the same, each persists in the cause of the disgrace. There is a story told, very well known in all the heavens, how Mars and Venus [969] were caught by the contrivance of Mulciber. Father Mars, distracted by a frantic passion for Venus, from a terrible warrior, became a lover. Neither did Venus (for, indeed, no Goddess is there more kind) proved coy or stubborn to Gradivus. O how many a time is she said, in her wantonness, to have laughed at the feet of her husband, and at his hands, hardened with the fire or his handicraft. In the presence of Mars, mocking him, she imitated her husband, and she was beauteous _even while so doing_; and many a grace was there combined with her charms. But they were in the habit of skilfully concealing their early intercourse; and their frailty was replete with modest propriety. Through the information of the Sun (who is there that can deceive the Sun?), the actions of his wife became known to Vulcan. Thou Sun, what a bad example thou art setting! Ask a bribe of her; and shouldst thou hold thy tongue, she has a favour which she may grant to thee. Around and above the bed, Muleiber disposes the hidden toils; the work, by its fineness, escapes their eyes. He pretends a journey to Lemnos; the lovers come, according to the appointment; entangled in the toils, they both lie naked. He calls the Gods together; the captives afford a spectacle. People believe that Venus could hardly restrain her tears. They cannot conceal their faces; they cannot, in fact, veil their modesty with their hands. Upon this, one says, laughing, [970] "Transfer to me thy chains, most valiant Mavors, if they are a burden to thee." With difficulty, Neptune, at thy entreaty, does he release their captured bodies. Mars makes for Thrace, [971] and she for Paphos. [972] This, Vulcan, was done by thee; what before they used to conceal, they now do more openly, since all modesty is gone. Yet often, foolish one, dost thou confess that thou didst act unwisely; and they say that thou hast repented of thy wrath. This I have already forbidden: lo! Dione forbids you to suffer that detection which she herself endured. And do you arrange no toils for your rival; and intercept no words written by the hand in secret. Let the men seek for those, (if, indeed, they think they ought to be sought for) whom the fire and water render [973] lawful husbands. Behold! again do I protest; no sportive subject is here treated of, but what is permitted by the laws; there is no matron concerned with my sallies. [974] Who would dare to publish to the profane the rites of Ceres, [975] and the great mysteries that were established in the Thracian Samos? 'Tis a small merit to hold one's silence upon matters; but, on the other hand, 'tis a grievous fault to speak of things on which we should be silent. O justly does it happen, that the blabbing Tantalus is thirsting in the midst of the water, the apples on the tree being caught at by him in vain! Cytherea especially bids her rites to be concealed. I recommend no talkative person to approach them. If the mysteries of Venus are not enclosed in chests, [976] and the hollow cymbals do not resound with frantic blows; although among ourselves they are celebrated by universal custom, yet it is in such a manner that among us they demand concealment. Venus herself, as oft as she lays her garments aside, conceals her groin with the left hand, [977] a little bent back. The cattle couple in public and promiscuously; even when this is seen, full oft the fair one turns away her face. Chambers and doors are provided for our stealthy dalliance; and our nakedness lies concealed by garments placed over it. And if we do not require darkness, still we do something of a retired shade, and something less exposed than open day. In those times, even, when tiles did not as yet keep out the sun and the shower, but the oak was affording both shelter and food; in the groves and caves, and not in the open air, were shared the delights of love. So great was the regard for modesty, even in a savage race. But now-a-days we give praises to the exploits of the night; and nothing beyond the power of talking of it, is purchased at a heavy price. [978] You will, for sooth, be discussing all the damsels in every quarter, that you may say to every person, "She, too, has been mine," that none may be wanting for you to point at with your fingers; and as you touch upon each, there will be a scandalous tale. But I am complaining of trifles; some pretend things, which, if true, they would deny, and not declare that there is not a woman from whom they have not received the last favour. If they cannot meddle with their persons, so far as they can, they meddle with their names; and, their persons untouched, their reputation bears the blame. Go now, odious keeper, and shut the doors of the fair: and add to the solid door-posts a hundred bars. What safety is there, while the defiler of character exists, and desires to be thought that he is that which it has not proved his lot to be? Even my real amours I confess but with reserve, and my secret intrigues are concealed with sure fidelity. Especially forbear to censure the blemishes of the fair; to many it has proved of advantage to conceal them. Her complexion was not made an objection against Andromeda by him, on whose two feet were the waving wings. [979] To all others Andromache seemed of larger stature [980] than was becoming; Hector was the only one who called her of moderate size. What you endure with impatience, accustom yourself to; and you will endure it with patience. Length of time makes many things endurable; but a rising passion catches sight of everything. While the young branch is uniting within the green bark, [981] whatever breeze shakes it while now tender, it falls. Soon, hardened in time, the same tree will stoutly resist the winds, and bear the adopted fruit. Time itself removes all blemishes from the person; and what was a fault, in lapse of time ceases so to be. The nostrils that are unaccustomed to it, are not able to endure the hides of bulls; the odour is not perceived by those that have been rendered used to it in length of time. We may palliate faults by names; let her be called swarthy, whose blood is blacker than the pitch of Illyria. If she has a cast in the eyes, she is like Venus: if yellow haired, like Minerva. She that is only half alive through her leanness, let her be grace ful. Whatever woman is small, say that she is active; her that is gross, call plump; and let each fault lie concealed in its proximity to some good quality. And don't you enquire what year she is now passing, nor under what Consulship [982] she was born; a privilege which the rigid Censor [983] possesses. And this, especially, if she has passed the bloom of youth, and her best years [984] are fled, and she now pulls out the whitening hairs. This age, O youths, or even one more advanced, has its advantages; this soil will produce its crops, this is worth the sowing. While strength and years permit, endure labour; soon will bending old age come with silent foot. Either cleave the ocean with the oars, or the earth with the plough; or turn your warlike hands to cruel arms; or devote your strength and your attention to the fair. This, too, is a kind of warfare; [985] this, too, seeks its advantages. Besides, in these [986] there is a greater acquaintance with their subject; and there is long practice, which alone renders skilful. By attention to dress they repair the ravages of years; and by carefulness they cause themselves not to appear aged.= ```Utque velis, Venerem jungunt per mille figuras. ````Inveniat plures nulla tabella modos. ```Illis sentitur non irritata voluptas: ````Quod juvet, ex æquo fcemina virque ferant. ```Odi concubitus, qui non utrumque resolvunt; ````Hoc est, cur pueri tangar amore minus. ```Odi quæ præbet, quia sit præbere necesse; ````Siccaque de lanâ cogitât ipsa suâ.= ```Quæ datur officio, non est mihi grata voluptas, ````Officium faciat nulla puella mihi. ```Me voces audire juvat sua gaudia fassas: ````Utque morer memet, sustineamque roget. ```Aspiciam dominse victos amends ocellos. ````Langueat; et tangi se vetet ilia diu.= Those advantages has nature given not to early youth, which are wont to spring up soon after seven times five years [987] have passed. Those who are in a hurry, let them drink of new wine; for me let the cask, stored up in the times [988] of ancient Consuls, pour forth the wine of my ancestors. No plane-tree but a mature one is able to withstand Phoebus; the shooting grass, [989] too, hurts the tender feet. And could you, forsooth, have preferred Hermione [990] to Helen? And was Gorge [991] more attractive than her mother? Whoever you are that wish to enjoy matured passion, if you only persevere, you will obtain a fitting reward.= ```Conscius ecce duos accepit lectus amantes: ````Ad thalami clausas, Musa, résisté fores. ```Sponte suâ, sine te, celoberrima verba loquentur: ````Nec manus in lecto læva jacebit iners. ```Invenient digiti, quod agant in partibus illis, ````In quibus occulte spicula figit Amor. ```Fecit in Andromache prius hoc fortissimus Hector; ````Nec solum bellis utüis file fuit. ```Fecit et in captâ Lyrneside magnus Achilles, ````Cum premeret mollem lassus ab hoste torum.= ```Illis, te tangi manibus, Brisei, sinebas, ````Imbutæ Phrygiâ quæ nece semper erant. ```An fuit hoc ipsum, quod te lasciva juvaret ````Ad tua victrices membra venire manus? ```Crede mihi, non est Yeneris properanda voluptas: ````Sed sensim tarda prolicienda morâ. ```Cum loca repereris, quæ tangi fcemina gaudet; ````Non obstet, tangas quo minus ilia, pudor. ```Adspicics oculos tremulo fulgore micantes, ```Ut sol a liquida sæpe refulget aquâ. ```Accèdent questus, accedet amabile murmur, ````Et dulces gemitus, aptaque verba loco. ```Sed neque tu dominam velis majoribus usus ````Desine; nec cursus anteat ilia tuos. ```Ad metam properate simul; turn plena voluptas, ````Cum pariter victi foemina virque jacent. ```Hi tibi servandus tenor est, cum libera dantur ````Otia; furtivum nec timor urget opus. ```Cum mora non tuta est, totis incumbere remis ````Utile, et admisso subdere calcar equo.= There is an end now of my task; grant me the palm, ye grateful youths, and present the myrtle garlands to my perfumed locks. As great as was Podalirius [992] among the Greeks in the art of healing, as the descendant of Æacus with his right hand, as Nestor with his eloquence; as great as Calchas [993] was in soothsaying, as the son of Telamon was in arms, as Automedon [994] was in guiding the chariot, so great a Lover am I. Celebrate me as your bard, ye men, to me repeat my praises; let my name be sung throughout all the earth. Arms have I given to you; to Achilles Vulcan gave arms. With the gifts presented to you, prove victorious, as he proved victorious. But whoever subdues the Amazon with my weapons, let him inscribe upon his spoil [995] --"Naso was my preceptor." And lo! the charming fair are asking me to give them my precepts. You then shall be the next care of my song.---- BOOK THE THIRD. |With arms against the Amazons I have furnished the Greeks. Arms remain for me to present, Penthesilea, [1001] to thee and to thy squadrons. Go to the combat equally prepared; and may those prove the victors, whom genial Dione [1002] favours, and the Boy who flies over the whole world. It was not fair for the females unprotected to engage with the men in arms, and so it would have been disgraceful for you to conquer, ye men. One of the multitude may say, "Why add venom to the serpent? And why deliver the sheep-fold to the ravening wolf? Forbear to lay the culpability of the few upon the many; and let each fair one be considered according to her own deserts. If the younger son of Atreus has Helen, and the elder son of Atreus [1003] has the sister of Helen, to charge with criminality, if the son of Oclus, [1004] through the wickedness of Eriphyle, daughter of Talaion, alive, and with living steeds, descended to Styx; there is Penelope constant, while her husband was wandering for twice five years, and for as many years engaged in war. Witness the hero from Phylace, [1005] and her who is said to have descended as the companion of her husband, and to have died before her destined years. The wife from Pagasæ redeemed the son of Pheres [1006] from death, and in place of [1007] the funeral of her husband, the wife was carried out. "Receive me, Capaneus; we will mingle our ashes," said the daughter of Iphis, and she leapt on the midst of the pile. Virtue, herself, too, is a female, both in dress and name. 'Tis not to be wondered at, if she favours her own sex. But still, 'tis not such dispositions as these that are required by my art. Sails of less magnitude are befitting my skiff. [1008] Nothing but wanton dalliance is taught by me; in what manner a woman is to be loved, I purpose to teach. The woman repels neither the flames, nor the cruel bow; those weapons, I see, make less havoc among the men. Many a time do the men prove false; not often the charming fair; and, if you make inquiry, they have but few charges of fraud against them. Jason, the deceiver, repudiated the Phasian, when now a mother; and into the bosom of the son of Æson there came another bride. [1009] Ariadne, left alone in an unknown spot, had fed the sea-birds, so far, Theseus, as thou wast concerned. Enquire why she is said to have gone on her nine journies, [1010] and hear how the woods lamented Phyllis, their foliage laid aside. And Elissa, she has the credit of affection; and still, that guest of thine, Elissa, afforded both the sword and the cause for thy destruction. Shall I tell what it was that ruined thee? Thou didst not know how to love; thou wast wanting in skill; through skill, love flourishes for ever. Even still would they have been ignorant, but Cytherea commanded me to instruct them, and stood, herself, before my eyes. Then to me she said, "Why have the unfortunate fair deserved this? An unarmed multitude is handed over to the men in arms. Two treatises [1011] have rendered them skilful; this side, as well, must be instructed by thy advice. He who before had uttered [1012] reproaches against the wife from Therapnæ, soon sang her praises to a more fortunate lyre. If well I know thee, injure not the fair whom thou dost adore; their favour must be sought by thee so long as thou shalt live." Thus she said; and from the myrtle (for she was standing with her locks wreathed with myrtle) she gave me a leaf and a few berries. Receiving them, I was sensible of the divine influence as well; the sky shone with greater brightness, and all care departed from my breast. While she inspires my genius; hence receive the precepts, ye fair, which propriety, and the laws, and your own privileges, [1013] allow you. Even now, be mindful of old age, that one day will come; then will no time be passed by you in idleness. Disport yourselves, while yet you may, and while even now you confess to your true years; after the manner of the flowing stream, do the years pass by. Neither shall the water which has past by, be ever recalled; nor can the hour which has past, ever return. You must employ your youthful age; with swift step age is gliding on; and that which follows, is not so pleasing as that which having passed was charming. Those brakes, which are withering, I have beheld as beds of violets; from amid those brambles, has a beauteous chaplet been gathered for myself. The time will be, when you, who are now shutting out a lover, will be lying, an old woman, chilled in the lonely night. No door [1014] of yours will be broken open in the broils of the night; nor will you find in the morning your threshold bestrewed with roses. [1015] How soon, ah me! are our bodies pursed with wrinkles, and that colour which existed in the beauteous face, fades away! The grey hairs, too, which you might have sworn that you had had from childhood, will suddenly be sprinkled over all your head. Old age is thrown off by serpents, together with the light slough; and the shedding of their horns makes the stags not to be old. Our advantages fly irretrievably; pluck the flowers then; if they be not plucked, they will lamentably fade themselves to your sorrow. Besides, child-bearing makes the hours of youth more short-lived; with continual crops the soil waxes old. Endymion of Latmus, O Moon, causes not thee to blush; nor was Cephalus a prey for the rosy Goddess to be ashamed of. Though Adonis be allowed to Venus, whom she yet laments; whence had she Æneas and Hermione [1016] for her children? Follow, O race of mortals, the example of the Goddesses; and refuse not your endearments to the eager men. Even should they deceive you, what do you lose? All remains the same. Were a thousand to partake thereof, nothing is wasted thereby. Iron is worn away, stones are consumed by use; your persons are proof against all apprehension of detriment. Who would forbid light to be taken from another light presented? Or who, on the deep sea, would hoard up the expanse of waters? "But 'tis not right," you say, "for any woman to grant favours to a man." Tell me, what are you losing but the water, which you may take up again? [1017] Nor are my words urging you to prostitution; but they are forbidding you to fear evils that do not exist: your favours are exempt from loss to yourselves. But while I am in harbour, let a gentle breeze impel me, destined to sail with the blasts of a stronger gale. I begin with dress: [1018] from the well-dressed vine Bacchus has birth; and in the well-dressed field the high corn springs up. Beauty is the gift of the Divinity; how many a one prides herself on her beauty? Still, a great part [1019] of you is wanting in such endowments. Care will confer charms; charms neglected will perish, even though she be like the Idalian Goddess. If the fair of olden times did not pay such attention to their persons; neither had the ancients men so well-dressed. If Andromache was clad in a coarse tunic, what wonder is it? She was the wife of a hardy soldier. And would his companion, forsooth, come bedecked to Ajax, him whose covering was seven hides of oxen. Formerly a rustic simplicity existed: now gorgeous Rome possesses the wealth of the subdued earth. See the Capitol, what it now is and what it was, you would declare that they belonged to different Jupiters. The Senate-house, which is now right worthy of an assemblage so august, when Tatius held the sway, was made of straw. The fields of the Palatine hill, which are now resplendent in honour of Phoebus [1020] and our rulers, what were they but pastures for the oxen that ploughed? Let old times delight others: I congratulate myself that I am born thus late; this is the age that is suited to my tastes. Not because the pliable gold is now dug out of the earth, and choice shells [1021] come here from foreign shores; nor yet because, the marble cut out, mountains diminish; nor yet because the azure waves are kept out by the moles. [1022] But because civilization prevails; and because the rude manners that flourished with our ancient forefathers have not come down to our days. But do not you as well load your ears with precious stones, which the tawny Indian seeks in the green waves. And do not go forth heavily loaded with clothes embroidered with gold: by the wealth through which you seek to attract us, you often drive us away. By neatness we are captivated; let not your hair be without arrangement; the hands applied to it both give beauty and deny it. The method, too, of adorning is not a single one; let each choose the one that is becoming it to her, and let her first consult her mirror. An oval face becomes a parting upon the unadorned head: Laodamia had her hair thus arranged. Round features [1023] require a little knot to be left for them on the top of the head, so that the ears may be exposed. Let the hair of another he thrown over either shoulder. In such guise art thou, tuneful Phoebus, thy lyre being assumed. Let another Lave her hair tied behind after the manner of well-girt Diana, as she is wont when she hunts the scared wild beasts. It becomes another to have her floating locks to flow loosely: another must be bound by fillets over her fastened tresses. Another it delights to be adorned with the figure of the tortoise [1024] of the Cyllenian God: let another keep up her curls that resemble the waves. [1025] But neither will you count the acorns on the branching native oak, nor how many bees there are in Hybla, nor how many wild beasts on the Alps: nor am I able to comprehend in numbers so many modes; _each successive day brings a new fashion_. Even neglected locks are becoming to many; often would you suppose that they are lying neglected since yesterday; the very moment before they have been combed afresh. Let art imitate chance. 'Twas thus that, in the captured city, when Hercules beheld Iole; "Her," said he, "do I love." In such guise, deserted fair one of Gnossus, did Bacchus bear thee away in his chariot, while the Satyrs shouted Evôe! O how indulgent is nature to your beauty, whose blemishes can be atoned for in fashions so numerous! We men, to our misfortune, become bald; and our hair, carried away by time, falls off, like Boreas shaking down the leaves. The female stains her grey hair with the herbs from Germany; [1026] and by art a colour is sought superior to the genuine one. The female walks along, thickly covered with purchased hair; and for money [1027] she makes that of others--here comes those of fair complexion: black became the laughter of Brises. Nor is she ashamed to buy it openly: we see it being sold before the eyes of Hercules [1028] and the Virgin throng. What am I to say on clothing? Gold flounces, [1029] I have no need of you; nor you, the wool which dost blush twice dipt in Tyrian purple. Since so many colours can be procured at a lower price, what folly it is to be carrying a fortune on one's person. [1030] Lo! there is the colour of the sky, at the time when the sky is without clouds, and the warm South wind is not summoning the showers of rain. Lo! there is the colour like to thee, that art said [1031] once to have borne away Phryxus and Helle from the treachery of Ino. That which resembles the waves, [1032] has its name, too, from the waves; I could imagine that the Nymphs are clad in vestments of this colour. Another resembles saffron; in saffron-coloured garments is the dewy Goddess dressed,when she yokes her steeds that bear the light of day. Another resembles the Paphian myrtles; another the purple amethysts, or the white roses, or the Thracian crane. Neither are there wanting, Amaryllis, [1033] thy chesnuts, nor yet almonds; and wax [1034] has given its own name to woollen textures. As many as the flowers which the renewed earth produces, when in warm spring the vine puts forth its buds, and sluggish winter retreats; so many, or still more, shades of dye does the wool imbibe. Choose them by rule; for every colour will not be suitable to every complexion. When she was carried off, then, too, was she clothed in a dark garment. White befits the swarthy; in white, daughter of Cepheus, thou wast charming; by thee, thus clothed, was Seriphos [1035] trodden. How nearly was I recommending you that there should be no shocking goat [1036] in the armpits, and that your legs should not be rough with harsh hair. But I am not instructing fair ones from the crags of Caucasus, and who are drinking, Mysian Caïcus, of thy waves. Besides; need I to recommend that idleness should not blacken your teeth, and that your mouth ought to be washed each morning with water used for the purpose. You know, too, how to find whiteness in an application of wax; [1037] she who is blushing with no real blood, is blushing by the aid of art. With skill do you fill up the bared edges of the eye-brows, [1038] and the little patch [1039] covers your cheeks in all their genuineness. 'Tis no harm, too, to mark the eyes [1040] slightly with ashes; or with saffron, produced, beauteous Cydnus, near to thee. I have a little treatise, [1041] but through the care bestowed, a great work, in which I have mentioned the various recipes for your beauty. From that as well, do you seek aid for your diminished charms: my skill is not idle in behalf of your interests. But let not your lover discover the boxes exposed upon the table; art, by its concealment only, gives aid to beauty. Whom would not the paint disgust, besmeared all over your face, when, through its own weight, it flows and falls upon your heated bosom? Why is the smell of the oesypum [1042] so powerful, sent from Athens though it be, an extract drawn from the filthy fleece of the sheep? Nor would I recommend you in his presence to apply the mixture of the marrow of the deer, [1043] nor before him to clean your teeth. These things will give you good looks, but they will be unbecoming to be seen; there are many things, too, which, disgusting while being done, add charms when done. The statues which now bear the name of the laborious Myron, [1044] were once a sluggish weight and a solid mass. That the ring may be made, the gold is first beaten; the clothes, that you are wearing, were once dirty wool. While it was being wrought, it was hard stone; now, as a beautiful statue, [1045] naked Venus is wringing the moisture from her dripping locks. You, too, while you are dressing, let us suppose to be asleep; after the finishing hand, you will be seen much more àpropos. Why is the cause of the fairness of your complexion known to me? Shut the door of your chamber, why expose the work half done? It is proper for the men to be in ignorance of many a thing. The greatest part of things would cause disgust, if you were not to conceal what is within. Examine the gilded statues which hang in the decorated theatre; how thin the tinsel that covers the wood. But it is not permitted the public to approach them unless completed; neither ought your charms to be heightened unless the men are at a distance. But I would not forbid you to allow your hair to be combed in their presence, so that it may be flowing along your back. Only take care especially on such occasions not to be cross; and do not many times undo your hair, pulled down, when fastened up. Let your coiffeuse be with a whole skin. I detest her who tears the face of her attendant with her nails, and who, seizing the hair-pin, pierces her arms. [1046] As she touches the head of her mistress, she curses it; and at the same time, streaming with blood, she is crying over the odious locks. The fair one that has but little hair, let her set a watch on her threshold; or let her always make her toilet in the temple [1047] of the Good Goddess. I was unexpectedly announced as having paid a visit to a certain lady; in her confusion, she put on her locks the wrong side before. May a cause of shame so disgraceful fall to the lot of my foes, and may that dishonour happen to the Parthian dames. A mutilated animal is repulsive, the fields without grass are repulsive; and so is a shrub without foliage, and a head without hair. You have not come to be instructed by me, Semele, or Leda, thou, too, Sidonian fair, [1048] who wast borne across the sea upon the fictitious bull; or Helen, whom, Menelaus, not without reason, thou didst demand to be restored to thee, and whom, not without reason, thou Trojan ravisher, didst retain. A multitude comes to be instructed, both pretty and ugly damsels; and the unsightly are ever more in number than the good-looking. The beauteous care less for the resources and the precepts of art; they have their own endowments, charms that are powerful without art. When the sea is calm, the sailor rests free from care; when it becomes boisterous, he appeals to his own resources. Few, however, are the forms free from defect. Conceal your blemishes; and, so far as you can, hide the imperfections of your person. If you are short, sit down; that, while standing, you may not appear to be sitting; and if of a diminutive size, throw yourself upon your couch. Here, too, that your measure may not be able to be taken as you lie, take care that your feet are concealed with the clothes [1049] thrown over them. She who is too thin, let her wear clothes of thick texture; and let her vestments hang loosely from her shoulders. Let her who is pale, tint her complexion with purple stripes; [1050] do you that are more swarthy, have recourse to the aid of the Pharian fish. [1051] Let an ill-shaped foot be always concealed in a boot of snow-white leather steeped in alum; and do not unloose their laced sandals from the spindly legs. For high shoulders, small pads are suitable; [1052] and let the girth [1053] encircle the bosom that is too prominent. She whose fingers are dumpy, and whose nails are rough, should mark with but little gesture whatever is said. She, whose breath is strong smelling, should never talk with an empty stomach; and she should always stand at a distance [1054] from her lover's face. If your teeth are black, or large, or not, growing straight, you will suffer very great inconvenience from laughing. Who could have supposed it? The fair take lessons even in laughing; and even in that respect is gracefulness studied by them. Let your mouth be but moderately open; let the dimples on either side he but small; and let the extremity of the lips cover the upper part of the teeth. And do not let your sides be shaking with prolonged laughter; but let them utter sounds gentle and feminine, to I know not what degree. Some there are, who distort their face with an unsightly grin; another, when she is joyous in her laughter, you would take to be crying. Another makes a harsh noise, and screams in a disagreeable manner; just as the unsightly she-ass brays by the rough mill-stone. To what point does not art proceed? Some study how to weep with grace, and cry at what time and in what manner they please. Nay, further; when the letters are deprived of their full sound, and the lisping tongue becomes contracted with an affected pronunciation; then is grace sought in an imperfection; to pronounce certain words badly, they learn to be less able to speak than they really are. To all these points, since they are of consequence, give attention. Learn how to walk with steps suited to a female. Even in the gait, there are certain points of gracefulness not to be disregarded; this both attracts and repels men who are strange to you. This fair one moves her sides with skill, and with her flowing tunics catches the breeze, and haughtily moves her extended feet. Another walks just like the redfaced spouse of some Umbrian [1055] husband, and, straddling, takes huge strides. But, as in many other things, let there be a medium here as well; one movement is clownish; another movement will be too mincing in its gait. But let the lower part of your shoulders, and the upper part of your arm be bare, to be beheld from your left hand upwards. This is especially becoming to you, ye of fair complexion; when I see this, I have always a longing to give a kiss to the shoulder, where it is exposed. The Sirens were monsters of the deep, which with their tuneful voices detained the ships, even though in full career. On hearing them, the son of Sisyphus [1056] almost released his body from the mast; for the wax [1057] was melted in the ears of his companions. The voice is an insinuating quality; let the fair learn how to sing. In place of beauty, her voice has proved the recommendation of many a woman. And sometimes let them repeat what they have heard in the marble theatres; and sometimes the songs attuned to the measures of the Nile. [1058] Neither, in my way of thinking, ought a clever woman to be ignorant how to hold the plectrum [1059] in her right hand, the lyre in her left. Orpheus of Rhodope with his lyre moved rocks, and wild beasts, and the lakes of Tartarus, and Cerberus the triple dog. At thy singing, most righteous avenger of thy mother, [1060] the attentive stones built up the walls. The fish, (the well-known story of the lyre of Arion, [1061] although he was dumb, is supposed to have been moved by his voice. Learn, too, to sweep the chords of the festive psaltery [1062] with your two hands; 'tis an instrument suited to amorous lays. Let the songs of Callimachus [1063] be known to you, let those of the poet of Cos, [1064] let the Teian Muse too, of the drunken old bard. Let Sappho, too, be well known; for what is there more exciting than she? Or than him, through whom [1065] the father is deceived by the tricks of the crafty Geta? You may, too, have read the poems of the tender Propertius, [1066] or something of Gallus, or thy works, Tibullus. [1067] The fleece, too, so bewailed, O Phryxus, of thy sister, shining with its yellow hair, celebrated by Varro. [1068] The exiled Æneas, as well, the first origin of lofty Rome, [1069] than which no work exists in Latium of greater fame. Perhaps, too, my name will be mingled among these, and my writings will not be consigned to the waters of Lethe. And people will one day say, "Read the elegant lines of our master, in which he instructs the two sides. [1070] Or of his three books, which the title designates as, 'The Amours,' choose a portion to read with skilful lips, in a languishing way. Or let his Epistles be repeated by you with well-modulated voice; this kind of composition, [1071] unknown to others, did he invent." O Phoebus, mayst thou so will it; so too, ye benignant Divinities of the Poets, Bacchus, graceful with thy horns, and you, ye nine Goddesses! Who can doubt that I should wish the falr one to know how to dance, that, the wine placed on table, she may move her arms in cadence, when requested. Masters of posture, [1072] the representations on the stage, are much valued; so much gracefulness does that pliant art possess. I am ashamed to advise on trifling points, to understand how to throw a cast of dice, and, thy value, the cube when thrown. And now let her throw the three numbers; now let her consider, at which number she can cleverly enter most conveniently, and which one she must call for. [1073] And, with her skill, let her play not amiss at the hostilities of the pieces; [1074] when the single man perishes between his two enemies. How the warrior, too, [1075] wages the war when caught without his companion; and how the enemy full oft retreats on the path on which he has begun. Let the smooth balls, [1076] too, be poured into the open net; and not a ball must be moved but the one which you shall be lifting up. There is a kind of game, [1077] distributed into as many lines on a small scale, as the fleeting year contains months. A little table receives [1078] three pebbles on each side, on which to bring one's own into a straight line, is to gain the victory. Devise a thousand amusements. 'Tis shocking for the fair one not to know how to play; many a time, while playing, is love commenced. But the least matter is how to use the throws to advantage; 'tis a task of greater consequence to lay a restraint on one's manners. While we are not thinking, and are revealed by our very intentness, and, through the game, our feelings, laid bare, are exposed; anger arises, a disgraceful failing, and the greed for gain; quarrels, too, and strife, and, then, bitter regrets. Recriminations are uttered; the air resounds with the brawl, and every one for himself invokes the angry Divinities. There is no trusting [1079] the tables, and, amid vows, new tables are called for; full oft, too, have I seen cheeks wet with tears. May Jupiter avert from you indiscretions so unbecoming, you, who have a care to be pleasing to any lover. To the fair, has nature, in softer mood, assigned these amusements; with materials more abundant do the men disport. They have both the flying ball, [1080] and the javelin, and the hoop, and arms, and the horse trained to go round the ring. No plain of Mars receives you, nor does the spring of the Virgin, [1081] so intensely cold; nor does the Etrurian [1082] river carry you along with its smooth stream. But you are allowed, and it is to your advantage, to go in the shade of Pompey's Portico, at the time when the head is heated by the steeds of the Constellation of the Virgin. [1083] Frequent the Palatium, consecrated to the laurel-bearing Phoebus;'twas he that overwhelmed in the deep the ships of Parsetonium. [1084] The memorials, also, which the Bister and the wife [1085] of our Ruler have erected; his son-in-law [1086] too, his head encircled with naval honors. Frequent the altars of the Memphian heifer, [1087] that smoke with frankincense; frequent the three Theatres, [1088] in conspicuous positions. Let the sand, stained with the warm blood, have you for spectators; the goal, also, to be passed with the glowing wheels. [1089] That which lies hid is unknown; for what is not known there is no desire. All advantage is lost, when a pretty face is without one to see it. Were you to excel even Thamyras [1090] and Amcebeus in your singing, there would be no great regard for your lyre, while unknown. If Apelles of Cos [1091] had never painted Venus, she would have lain concealed beneath the ocean waves. What but fame alone is sought by the hallowed Poets? The sum of all my labours has that crowning object. In former days, Poets were [1092] the care of rulers and of kings; and the choirs of old received great rewards. Hallowed was the dignity, and venerable the name of the Poets; and upon them great riches were often bestowed. Ennius, born in the mountains of Calabria, was deemed worthy, great Scipio, to be placed near to thee. [1093] At the present day, the ivy lies abandoned, without any honor; and the laborious anxiety that toils for the learned Muses, receives the appellation of idleness. But be it our study to lie on the watch for fame; who would have known of Homer, if the Iliad, a never-dying work, had lain concealed? Who would have known of Danâe, if she had been for ever shut up, and if, till an old woman, she had continued concealed in her tower? The throng, ye beauteous fair, is advantageous to you; turn your wandering steps full oft beyond your thresholds. The she-wolf goes on her way to the many sheep, that she may carry off but one; and the bird of Jove pounces down upon the many birds. Let the handsome woman, too, present herself to be seen by the public; out of so many, perhaps there will be one for her to attract. In all places, let her ever be desirous to please; and, with all attention, let her have a care for her charms. Chance is powerful everywhere; let your hook be always hanging ready. In waters where you least think it, there will be a fish. Many a time do the hounds wander in vain over the woody mountains; and sometimes the stag falls in the toils, with no one to pursue him. What was there for Andromeda, when bound, less to hope for, than that her tears could possibly charm any one? Many a time, at the funeral of a husband, is another husband found. To go with the tresses dishevelled, and not to withhold your lamentations, is becoming. But avoid those men who make dress and good looks their study; and who arrange their locks, each in its own position. What they say to you, they have repeated to a thousand damsels. Their love is roving, and remains firm in no one spot. What is the woman to do, when the man, himself, is still more effeminate, and himself perchance may have still more male admirers? You will hardly believe me, but still, do believe me; Troy would have been still remaining, if it had followed the advice of its own Priam. [1094] There are some men who range about, under a fictitious appearance of love, and, by means of such introductions, seek disgraceful lucre. And do not let the locks deceive you, shining much with the liquid nard; [1095] nor yet the narrow belt, [1096] pressed upon the folds of their dress. Nor let the robe of finest texture beguile you; nor yet if there shall be many and many a ring [1097] on their fingers. Perhaps the best dressed of the number of these may be some thief, [1098] and may be attracted by a desire for your clothes. "Give me back my property!" full oft do the plundered fair ones cry; "Give me back my property!" the whole Forum resounding with their cries. Thou, Venus, [1099] unmoved, and you, ye Goddesses, [1101] Hear the Appian way, from your temples blazing with plenteous gold, behold these disputes. There are even certain names notorious by a reputation that admits of no doubt; those females who have been deceived by many, share the criminality of their favorites. Learn, then, from the complaints of others, to have apprehensions for yourselves; and do not let your door be open to the knavish man. Refrain, Cecropian fair, from believing Theseus, [1102] when he swears; the Gods whom he will make his witnesses, he has made so before. And no trust is there left for thee, Demophoôn, heir to the criminality of Theseus, since Phyllis has been deceived. If they are lavish of their promises, in just as many words do you promise them; if they give, do you, too, give the promised favours. That woman could extinguish the watchful flames of Vesta, and could bear off the sacred things, daughter of Inachus, [1103] from thy temples, and could administer to her husband the aconite, mixed with the pounded hemlock, if on receiving a present she could deny a favour. My feelings are prompting me to go too close; check the rein, my Muse: and be not hurled headlong by the wheels in their full career. Should lines, written on the tablets made of fir, try the soundings; let a maid suited for the duty take in the billets that are sent. Examine them; and collect from the words themselves, whether he only pretends what you are reading, or whether he entreats anxiously, and with sincerity. And after a short delay, write an answer: delay ever stimulates those in love, if it lasts only for a short time. But neither do you make yourself too cheap to the youth who entreats, nor yet refuse, with disdainful lips, what he is pressing for. Cause him both to fear and to hope at the same moment; and oft as you refuse him, let hopes more assured, and diminished apprehensions arise. Write your words, ye fair, in a legible hand, but of common parlance, and such as are usual; the recognized forms of language are most pleasing.--Ah! how oft has the wavering lover been inflamed by a letter, and how oft has uncouth language proved detrimental to, a graceful form! But since, although you are without the honors of the fillet of chastity, it is still your care to deceive your husbands; [1104] let the skilled hand of a maid, or of a boy, carry the tablets, and don't entrust your pledges to some unknown youth. I myself have seen the fair pale with terror on that account, enduring, in their misery, servitude to all future time. Perfidious, indeed, is he who retains such pledges: but still in them he has power equal to the lightnings of Ætna. In my opinion deceit is allowable, for the purpose of repelling deceit; and the laws permit us to take up arms against the armed. One hand should be accustomed to write in numerous styles. Perdition to those, through whom this advice must be given by me! Nor is it safe to write, except when the wax is quite smoothed over; so that the same tablet may not contain two hands. [1105] Let your lover be always styled a female when you write; in your billets let that be "she," which really is "he." But I wish to turn my attention from trifles to things of more consequence, and with swelling canvass to expand my filling sails. It conduces to good looks to restrain habits of anger. Fair peace becomes human beings, savage fury wild beasts. With fury the features swell; with blood the veins grow black; the eyes flash more wildly than the Gorgonian fires. "Pipe, hence avaunt, [1106] thou art not of so much worth to me," said Pallas, when she saw her features in the stream. You, too, if you were to look at your mirror in the midst of your anger, hardly could any one distinctly recognize her own countenance. And, in no less degree, let not a repulsive haughtiness sit upon your features; by alluring eyes love must be enticed. Believe me, ye fair who know it by experience, I hate immoderate conceit. Full oft do the features in silence contain the germs of hatred. Look at him who looks on you; smile sweetly in return to him who smiles. Does he nod at you; do you, too, return the sign well understood. When the Boy Cupid has made these preludes, laying aside his foils, he takes his sharp arrows from his quiver. I hate the melancholy damsels too. Let Ajax be charmed with Tecmessa; [1107] us, a joyous throng, the cheerful woman captivates. Never should I have asked thee, Andromache, nor thee, Tecmessa, that one of you would be my mistress. I seem hardly ably to believe it, though by your fruitfulness I am obliged to believe it, that you could have granted your favours to your husbands. And could, forsooth, that most melancholy woman say to Ajax, "My life!" and words which are wont to please the men? What forbids me to apply illustrations from great matters to small ones, and not to be standing in awe of the name of a general? To this person the skilful general has entrusted a hundred to be ruled with the twig of vine; [1108] to this one so many cavalry; to that one he has given the standard to defend. Do you, too, consider, to what use each of us is suited, and class each one in his assigned position. Let the rich man give his presents; let him that professes the law, defend; the eloquent man may often plead the cause of his client. We who compose verse, verses alone let us contribute. This throng, before all others, is susceptible of love. Far and wide do we herald the praises of the beauty that pleases us. Nemesis [1109] has fame; Cynthia, too, has fame. The West and the lands of the East know of Lycoris: and many a one is enquiring who my Corinna is. Besides, all deceit is wanting in the hallowed. Poets, and even our art contributes to forming our manners. No ambition influences us, no love of gain; despising the Courts, the couch and the shade are the objects of our commendation. But we are easily attracted, and are consumed by a lasting heat; and we know how to love with a constancy most enduring. Indeed, we have our feelngs softened by the gentle art; and our manners are in conformity with our pursuits. Be kind, ye fair, to the Aonian bards. In them there is inspiration, and the Pierian maids show favour unto them. In us a Divinity exists: and we have intercourse with the heavens. From the realms of the skies does that inspiration proceed. 'Tis a crime to look for a present from the learned Poets. Ah wretched me! of this crime no fair one stands in dread. Still, do act the dissemblers, and at the very first sight, do not be ravenous. On seeing your nets, a new lover will stop short. But neither can the rider manage with the same reins the horse which has but lately felt the bridle, and that which is well-trained; nor yet must the same path be trod by you in order to captivate the feelings that are steadied by years, and inexperienced youth. The latter is raw, and now for the first time known in the camp of Love, who, a tender prey, has reached your chamber; with you alone is he acquainted; to you alone would he ever prove constant. Shun a rival; so long as you alone shall possess him, you will be the conqueror. Both sovereignties and love do not last long with one to share in them. The other, the veteran soldier, will love you gradually, and with moderation; and he will put up with much that will not be endured by the novice. He will neither break down your door-posts, nor burn them with raging flames; nor will he fly at the tender cheek of his mistress with his nails. He will neither tear his own clothes, nor yet the clothes of the fair; nor will her torn locks be a cause for grieving. These things befit boys, who are heated with youthful years and with passion: the other, with tranquil feelings, will put up with cruel wounds. With slowly consuming fires will he smoulder, just like a damp torch; or like the wood that has been cut down upon the mountain ridge. This passion is more sure; the former is short-lived and more bounteous. With speedy hand do you pluck the fruit that passes away. Let all points be surrendered; the gates we have opened to the enemy, and let confidence be placed in this perfidious betrayal. That which is easily conceded, but badly supports a lasting passion. A repulse must now and then be mingled with your joyous dalliance. Let him lie down before your doors: "Cruel door!" let him exclaim; and let him do many a thing in humble, many in threatening mood. The sweet we cannot endure; with bitter potions we may be refreshed. Full oft does the bark perish, overwhelmed by favouring gales. This it is that does not permit wives to be loved; husbands have access to them, whenever they please. Shut your door, [1110] and let your porter say to you with surly lips, "You cannot come in, desire will seize you as well, thus shut out." Now lay aside the blunted swords; let the battle be fought with sharpened ones. And I doubt not but that I myself shall be aimed at with weapons of my own furnishing. While the lover that has been captured only of late is falling into your toils, let him hope that he alone has admission to your chamber. But soon let him be aware of a rival, and a division of the privileges of your favours. Remove these contrivances; and his passion will grow effete. Then does the high-mettled courser run well, the starting-place being opened, when he has both competitors to pass by, and those for him to follow. Harshness rekindles the flame, even if gone out. Myself to wit, I confess it, I do not love unless I am ill-used. Still, the cause for grief should not be too manifest: and in his anxiety he ought to suspect that there is more than what he actually knows. The harsh supervision, too, of some feigned servant should excite him, and the irksome watchfulness of a husband too severe. The pleasure that is enjoyed in safety, is the least valued of all. Though you are more at liberty than even Thais, [1111] still feign apprehensions. Whereas you could do it far better by the door, admit him through the window; and on your countenance show the signs of fear. Let the cunning maid rush in, and exclaim, "We are undone!" and then do you hide the youth in his fright in any spot. Still, an enjoyment without anxiety must be interspersed with his alarms; lest he should not think your favours to be worth so much trouble. But I was about to omit by what methods the cunning husband may be eluded, and how the watchful keeper. Let the wife stand in awe of her husband; let the safe keeping of a wife be allowed. That is proper; that the laws, and justice, and decency ordain. But for you as well to be watched, whom the Lictor's rod [1112] has but just set at liberty, who can endure it? Come to my sacred rites, that you may learn how to deceive. Even if as many eyes shall be watching you, as Argus had, if there is only a fixed determination, you will deceive them all. And shall a keeper, forsooth, hinder you from being able to write, when an opportunity is given you for taking the bath? When a female confidant can carry the note you have penned, which her broad girth [1113] can conceal in her warm bosom? When she can conceal the paper fastened to her calf, and carry the tender note beneath her sandalled foot. Should the keeper be proof against these _contrivances_; in place of paper, let your confidant afford her shoulders; and upon her own person let her carry your words. Letters, too, written in new milk, are safe and escape the eye; touch them with powdered coals, and you will read them. The writing, too, which is made with the stalk of wetted flax, [1114] will deceive, and the clean surface will bear the secret marks. The care of watching a fair one fell to Acrisius; still, through his own fault, did she make him a grandsire. What can a keeper do, when there are so many Theatres in the City? When, eagerly she is a spectator of the harnessed steeds? When she is sitting in attendance upon the sistra of the Pharian heifer, and at the place where her male friends are forbidden to go? While, too, the Good Goddess [1115] expels the gaze of males from her temples, except any that, perchance, she bids to come: while, as the keeper watches outside the clothes of the fair, the baths may in safety conceal the lovers who are hiding there; while, so often as is requisite, some pretended she-friend may be sick, and, ill as she is, may give place for her in her couch. While the false key, too, tells [1116] by its name what we are to do, and it is not the door alone that gives the access you require. The watchfulness of the keeper is eluded by plenty of wine; even though [1117] the grapes be gathered on the hills of Spain. There are drugs, too, which create deep sleep; and let them close the eyes overpowered by Lethæan night. And not amiss does the confidant occupy the troublesome fellow with dalliance to create delay, and in his company spins out the time. What need is there to be teaching stratagems and trifling precepts, when the keeper may be purchased by the smallest present? Believe me, presents influence both men and Gods: on gifts being presented, Jupiter himself is appeased. What is the wise man to do, when even the fool is gratified with a present? The husband himself, on receiving a present, will be silent. But once only throughout the long year must the keeper be bought; full oft will he hold out the hand which he has once extended. I complained, I recollect, that new-made friends are to be dreaded; that complaint does not extend to men alone. If you are too trusting, other women will interrupt your pleasures; and this hare of yours will be destined to be hunted down by other persons. Even she, [1118] who so obligingly lends her couch and her room, believe me, has not once only been in my company. And do not let too pretty a maid wait upon you; many a time has she filled [1119] her mistress's place for me. Whither, in my folly, am I led on? Why with bared breast do I strive against the foe, and why, myself, am I betrayed through information that is my own? The bird does not instruct the fowler in which direction he may be taken: the hind does not teach the hostile hounds how to run. Still, let interest see to itself; my precepts, with fidelity will I give. To the Lemnian dames, [1120] for my own destruction, will I present the sword. Give reason (and 'tis easy to do so) for us to believe ourselves to be loved. Belief arises readily in those who are anxious for the fulfilment of their desires. Let the fair one eye the youth in a kindly manner; let her heave sighs from her very heart, and let her enquire, why it is he comes so late? Let tears be added, too, and feigned apprehensions about a rival, and with her fingers let her tear her face. Soon will he be thoroughly persuaded, one? he will pity you of his own accord; and will say to himself "This woman is consumed by affection for me." Especially, if he shall be well drest, and shall please himself at the looking-glass, he will believe that the Goddesses might be touched with love for him. But, whoever you are, let an injury disturb you only in a moderate degree; and don't, on hearing of a rival, go out of your mind. And don't at once believe it; how injurious it is at once to believe things, Procris will be no slight proof to you. There is near the empurpled hills of blooming Hymettus a sacred spring, and the ground is soft with the verdant turf. The wood, of no great height, there forms a grove; the strawberry tree overshadows the grass; rosemary, and laurels, and swarthy myrtles give their perfume. Neither the box-trees with their thick foliage and the slender tamarisks, nor yet the tiny trefoil and the garden pine, are wanting there. Moved by the gentle Zephyrs and the balmy air, the leaves of these many kinds, and the tops of the grass quiver. Pleasant was this retreat to Cephalus; [1121] his servants and his hounds left behind, the youth, when weary, often sat down in this spot. And here he was in the habit of repeating, "Come, gentle Aura [breeze], to be received in my bosom, that thou mayst moderate my heat." Some person, maliciously officious, with retentive lips carried the words he had heard to the timid ears of his wife. Procris, when she heard the name of Aura [breeze], as though of a rival, fainted away, and with this sudden apprehension she was mute. She turned pale, just as the late leaves become wan, which the coming winter has nipped, the clusters now gathered from the vine; and as the quinces [1122] which in their ripeness are bending their boughs; and as the cornels not yet quite fit for food for man. When her senses had returned, she tore her thin garments from off her body with her nails, and wounded her guiltless cheeks. And no delay was there; raving, with dishevelled locks, she flew amid the tracks, like a Bacchanal aroused by the thyrsus. When she had come near the spot, she left her attendants in the valley; and with silent footsteps, in her boldness, she herself stealthily entered the grove. What, Procris, were thy feelings, when thus, in thy frenzy, thou didst he concealed? What the impulse of thy disquieted breast? Each moment, forsooth, wast thou expecting that she would come, whoever Aura might be, and that their criminality would be witnessed with thine eyes. Now dost thou repent of having come, for indeed thou wouldst not wish to detect him; and now thou art glad; fluctuating affection is tormenting thy breast. There is the spot, and the name, and the informant to bid thee give credence; and the fact that the lover always apprehends that to exist which he dreads. When she beheld the grass beaten down, the impress of his body, her trembling bosom was throbbing with her palpitating heart. And now midday had made the unsubstantial shadows small, and at an equal distance were the evening and the morn. Behold! Cephalus, the offspring of the Cyilenian God, [1123] returns from the woods, and sprinkles his glowing face with water of the fountain. In thy anxiety, Procris, art thou lying concealed. Along the grass he lies as wont, and says, "Ye gentle Zephyrs, and thou Aura [breeze], come hither." When the welcome mistake of the name was thus revealed to the sorrowing fair, both her senses and the real colour of her face returned. She arose; and the wife, about to rush into the embrace of her husband, by the moving of her body, shook the leaves that were in her way. He, thinking that a wild beast had made the noise, with alacrity snatched up his bow; his arrows were in his right hand. What, wretched man, art thou about? 'Tis no wild beast; keep still thy weapons. Ah wretched me! by thy dart has the fair been pierced. "Ah me!" she cries aloud, "a loving heart hast thou pierced. That spot has ever retained the wound inflicted by Cephalus. Before my time I die, but injured by no rival; this, O Earth, will make thee light when I am entombed. Now is my breath departing in the breeze that I had thus suspected; I sink, alas! close my eyes with those dear hands." In his sorrowing bosom he supports the dying body of his spouse, and with his tears he bathes her cruel wounds. Her breath departs; and gradually fleeting from her senseless breast, her breath [1124] is received into the mouth of her wretched husband. But let us return to our path; I must deal with my subject undisguised, that my wearied bark may reach its port. You may be waiting, in fact, for me to escort you to the banquet, and may be requesting my advice in this respect as well. Come late, and enter when the lights are brought in; delay is a friend to passion; a very great stimulant is delay. Even should you be ugly, to the tipsy you will appear charming: and night itself will afford a concealment for your imperfections. Take up your food with your fingers; [1125] the method of eating is something; and do not besmear all your face with your dirty hand. And do not first [1126] take food at home; but cease to eat a little sooner than you could wish, and could have eaten. Had the son of Priam seen Helen greedily devouring, he would have detested her; and he would have said, "That prize of mine is an oaf." It is more proper and is more becoming for the fair to drink to excess. Thou dost not, Bacchus, consort amiss with the son of Venus. This too, only so far as the head will bear it, and the senses and the feet will be able to perform their duty; [1127] and do not see each object that is single, as double. A woman sprawling along, and drenched in plenteous wine, is a disgusting object; she is worthy to endure the embraces of any kind of fellows. And it is no safe thing when the tables are removed to fall asleep; in sleep many a shocking thing is wont to happen. I feel ashamed to instruct you any further, but genial Dione says, "That which shames you is especially my own province." Let each particular then be known unto you:= `````----modos a corpore certos ````Sumite; non omnes una figura decet. ```Quse facie prsesignis eris, resupina jaceto: ````Spectentur tergo, quîs sua terga placent. ```Milanion humeris Atalantes crura ferebat: ````Si bona sunt, hoc sunt accipienda modo. ```Parva vehatur equo: quod erat longissima, nunquarc ````Thebais Hectoreo nupta resedit equo. ```Strata premat genibus, paulum cervice reflexâ, ````Foemina, per longum conspicienda latus. ```Cui femur est juvenile, carent cui pectora mendâ, ````Stet vir, in obliquo fusa sit ipsa toro. ```Nec tibi turpe puta crinem, ut Phylleia mater, ````Solvere: et effusis colla reflecte comis. ```Tu quoque, cui rugis uterum Lucina notavit, ````Ut celer aversis utere Parthus equis. ```Mille modi Veneris. Simplex minimique laboris, ````Cum jacet in dextrum semisupina latus, ```Sed neque Phoebei tripodes, nec comiger Ammon, ````Vera raagis vobis, quam mea Musa, canent. ```Si qua fides arti, "quam longo fecimus usu, ````Crédité: præstabunt carmiua nostra fidem. ```Sentiat ex imis Yenerem resoluta medullis ````Foemina: et ex æquo res juvet ilia duos. ```Nec blandæ voces, jucundaque murmura cessent; ````Nec taceant medus improba verba jocis. ```Tu quoque, cui Yeneris sensum natura negavit, ````Dulcia mendaci gaudia finge sono. ```Infelix, cui torpet hebes locus ille, puella es; ````Quo pariter debent foemina virque frui. ```Tantum, cum linges, ne sis manifesta caveto: ````Effice per motum luminaque ipsa fidem. ```Quod juvet: et voces et anhelitus arguat oris. ````Ah pudet! arcanas pars habet ista notas. ```Gaudia post Yeneris quæ poscet munus amantem, ````Ipsa suas nolet pondus habere preces.= And admit not the light in your chamber with the windows wide open; many blemishes of your person more becomingly lie concealed. My pastime draws to a close; 'tis time to descend from the swans, [1128] that have borne my yoke upon their necks. As once the youths did, so now the fair, as my audience, may inscribe, "Naso was our preceptor," upon their spoils. FOOTNOTES BOOK ONE [Footnote 701: For stripes.--Ver. 16. Statius, in the Thebaid, mentions the strictness of the discipline of Chiron. See the Amores, i. El. xiii. 1. 18.] [Footnote 702: Be ye afar.--Ver. 31. He quotes this and the following line in the Tristia, Book ii. 1. 248, to show that it was not his intention, by his precepts, to inculcate breaches of chastity among the Roman matrons. See the Note to the passage, and to the Fasti, Book ii. 1. 30. The 'vitta,' or 'fillet,' was worn solely by women of pure character.] [Footnote 703: The tawny Indians.--Ver. 53. Herodotus considers the Æthiopians to be Indians. According to some, the father of Andromeda was king of Ethiopia; but she is more frequently represented as a native of Joppa, on the coast of Syria.] [Footnote 704: As many stars as.--Ver. 59. Heinsius considers this and the next line to be spurious.] [Footnote 705: Wish a riper fair.--Ver. 63. 'Juvenis,' applied to a female, would mean something more than a mere girl. 'Juventus' was that age in which a person was in his best years, from about twenty to forty.] [Footnote 706: Pompey's Portico.--Ver. 67. He alludes to the Portico which had been erected by Pompey at Rome, and was shaded by plane trees and refreshed by fountains. The Porticos were walks covered with roofs, supported by columns. They were sometimes attached to other buildings, and sometimes were independent of any other edifice. They were much resorted to by those who wished to take exercise without exposure to the heat of the sun. The Porticos of the temples were originally intended for the resort of persons who took part in the rites performed there. Lawsuits were sometimes conducted in the Porticos of Rome, and goods were sold there.] [Footnote 707: The lion of Hercules.il--Ver. 68. The Nemean lion; which formed the Constellation Leo in the Zodiac.] [Footnote 708: Where the mother.--Ver. 69. He alludes to the Theatre and Portico which Augustus built; the former of which received the name of his nephew Marcellus, the latter of his sister Octavia, the mother of Marcellus. After the death of Marcellus, Octavia added a public library to this Portico at her own expense. Here there were valuable paintings of Minerva, Philip and Alexander, and Hercules on Mount Aeta. Some suppose that the temple of Concord, built by Livia, and mentioned in the Fasti, is here referred to.] [Footnote 709: The Portico of Livia.--Ver. 72. The Portico of Livia was near the street called Suburra. This Portico is also mentioned in the Fasti. We learn from Strabo that it was near the Via Sacra, or Sacred Street.] [Footnote 710: Granddaughters of Belus.--Ver. 73. This was the Portico of the Danaides, in the temple of Apollo. It is referred to in the Second Elegy of the Second Book of the Amores.] [Footnote 711: Bewailed by Venus.--Ver. 75. He alludes to the temple of Venus, at Rome, which, according to Juvenal, was notorious as the scene of intrigues and disgraceful irregularities. It was a custom of the Romans, borrowed from the Assyrians, to lament Adonis in the temple of Venus. See the Tenth Book of the Metamorphoses. This worship of the Assyrians is mentioned by the Prophet Ezekiel, chap. viii. ver. 13, 'women weeping for Thatnmuz.'] [Footnote 712: The Jew of Syria.--Ver. 76. He alludes to the rites performed in the Synagogues of the Jews of Rome, on the Sabbath, to which numbers or females were attracted, probably by the music. There were great numbers of Jews at Rome in the reign of Augustus, who were allowed to follow their own worship, according to the law of Moses. The Roman females visiting the Synagogues, assignations and gross irregularities became the consequence. Tiberius withdrew this privilege from the Jews, and ordered the priests' vestments and ornaments to be burnt. This line is thus rendered in Dryden's version:] 'Nor shun the Jewish walk, where the foul drove,] On Sabbaths rest from everything but love.'] This wretched paraphrase is excused by the following very illiberal note,] 'If this version seems to bear a little hard on the ancient Jews, it does not at all wrong the modern.'] [Footnote 713: Many a woman.--Ver. 78. Io, or Isis, was debauched by Jupiter. Martial and Juvenal speak of the irregularities practised on these occasions.] [Footnote 714: Where the erection.--Ver. 81. He refers to the Forum of Cæsar and the temple of Venus, which was built by Julius Cæsar after the battle of Pharsalia.] [Footnote 715: Of Appius.--Ver. 82. He alludes to the aqueduct which had been constructed by the Censor Appius. This passed into the City, through the Latin gate, and discharged itself near the spot where the temple of Venus was built.] [Footnote 716: Shooting stream.--Ver. 82; He alludes to the violence with which the water was discharged by the pipes of the aqueduct into the reservoir.] [Footnote 717: Which is adjoining.--Ver. 87. The temple of Venus was near the Forum.] [Footnote 718: Ravished Sabine fair.--Ver. 102. See the Fasti, Book iii. 1. 199.] [Footnote 719: Neither did curtains.--Ver. 103. The 'vela,' here referred to, may mean either the 'siparia,' or curtains of the theatres, or the awnings which were hung over them. See the Note on the 'siparia' of the theatres, referred to in the Third Book of the Metamorphoses, L 111. The 'velaria,' or 'awnings,' were stretched over the whole space of the theatres, to protect the spectators from the sun and rain.] [Footnote 720: Marble theatre.--Ver. 103. The Theatres of Pompey and Scaurus were of marble.] [Footnote 721: Nor was the stage.--Ver. 104. The 'pulpita' was that part of the stage where the actors stood who spoke. It was elevated above the orchestra, where the Chorus, and dancers and musicians were placed.] [Footnote 722: Upon the maidens.--Ver. 116. Some writers say that only thirty women were carried off. Valerius Antius made the number 427, and Plutarch mentions a statement that it was 600] [Footnote 723: The partition.--Ver. 141. See the Amores, Book iii. El. ii. 1. 19.] [Footnote 724: Let the usual subjects.--Ver. 144. 'Publica verba' means the compliments of the day,' and the 'topics suited to the occasion.'] [Footnote 725: Statues of ivory.--Ver. 149. For an account of this procession, see the Amores, Book iii. El. ii. 1. 43.] [Footnote 726: Your fingers.--Ver. 150. See 1. 42, of the same Elegy.] [Footnote 727: Dirty ground.--Ver. 154. See 1. 26, of the same Elegy.] [Footnote 728: Knee against it.--Ver. 158. See 1. 24, of the same Elegy.] [Footnote 729: With his ready hand.--Ver. 160. As the seats of the Circus were hard, the women often made use of a cushion to sit upon. Those who were not so fortunate as to get a front seat, and so rest their feet in the railings opposite (see the Second Elegy of the Third Book of the Amores, 1. 64, and the Note), used a footstool, 'scamnum,' (which is mentioned here in the 162nd line,) on which they rested their feet.] [Footnote 730: Its sad duties.--Ver. 164. Juvenal tells us that gladiatorial spectacles were sometimes exhibited in the Forum.] [Footnote 731: Himself receives a wound.--Ver. 166. The word 'habet,' here used, is borrowed from the usage at the gladiatorial games. When a gladiator was wounded, the people called aloud 'habet,' or 'hoc habet and the one who was vanquished lowered his arms, in token of submission. If the people chose that he should be saved, they pressed down their thumbs; but they turned them up, if they desired that he should be killed.] [Footnote 732: Asking for the racing list.--Ver. 167. The 'libellus,' here mentioned, was the list of the horses, with their names and colours, and those of the drivers. It served the same purpose as the race-cards on our courses.] [Footnote 733: Having deposited the stake.--Ver. 168. When a bet was made, the parties betting gave to each other a pledge, 'pignus,' in the shape of some trinket, such as a ring. When the bet was completed, they touched hands.] [Footnote 734: When of late.--Ver. 171. He speaks of a 'Naumachia,' or mimic sea-fight, which had been lately exhibited at Rome by Augustus, in commemoration of the battle of Actium. As Antony had collected his forces from the East and all parts of Greece, his ships are alluded to as the Persian and Cecropian, or Athenian ships. The term, 'Naumachia,' was applied both to the representation of a sea-fight, and to the place where it was given. They were sometimes exhibited in the Circus or Amphitheatre, the water being introduced under-ground, but more generally in spots constructed for the purpose. The first was shown by Julius Cæsar, who caused a lake to be dug for the purpose in a part of the Campus Martius, which Suetonius calls 'the lesser Codeta.' This was filled up by Augustus, who dug a lake near the Tiber for the same purpose; to which, probably, reference is here made.] [Footnote 735: Introduced.--Ver. 172. 'Induxit.' By the use of this word, it would seem that Augustus Cæsar introduced the ships, probably, from the river Tiber into the lake.] [Footnote 736: See! Cæsar prepares.--Ver. 177. Augustus sent his grandson, Caius, the son of his daughter Julia and Agrippa, to head an expedition against Phraates, the king of the Parthians, the conquerors of Crassus; from this expedition he did not live to return, but perished in battle.] [Footnote 737: Crassi, rejoice.--Ver. 180. See the Fasti, Book v. 1. 583-8, with the Note. Also Book vi. 1. 465] [Footnote 738: Of the Gods.--Ver. 183. In a spirit of adulation, he deifies Caius Cæsar, and his brother Lucius.] [Footnote 739: First of the youths.--Ver. 194. The 'princeps juvenum' had the honour of riding first, in the review of the Equestrian ranks by the Emperor. See the Tristia, Book ii. 1. 90. Caius did not live to fulfil this prophecy, as he was slain through the perfidy of the Parthian general.] [Footnote 740: Since thou hast brothers.--Ver. 195. He alludes, probably, to Lucius Cæsar, the other grandson of Augustus, and Marcus Agrippa, the husband of Julia, the daughter of Augustus.] [Footnote 741: Hast a sire.--Ver. 196. He had been adopted by Augustus. *What rivers are borne.--Ver. 220. See the twentieth line of the Second Elegy, Book iv. of the Tristia. * Perfectly well.--Ver. 222. See a similar passage in the Tristia' Book iv. EL ii. 1. 24.] [Footnote 742: The Euphrates.--Ver. 223. The rivers were generally personified by the ancients as being crowned with reeds.] [Footnote 743: The one whose.--Ver. 224. The young man is supposed to be addressing the damsel in these words.] [Footnote 744: From Danaë.--Ver. 225. He means, that Persia was so called from Perses, the son of Andromeda, by Perseus, the son of Danaë. It is more generally thought to have been so called from a word signifying; a horse.' Achæmenes was one of the ancient kings of Persia.] [Footnote 745: Still it is fatal.--Ver. 236. 'Solet,' 'is wont,' is certainly a pre-narrative reading here to 'nocet.'] [Footnote 746: Deceiving lamp.--Ver. 245. This is as much as to remind him of the adage that women and linen look best by candle-light.] [Footnote 747: Why mention Baiæ.--Ver. 255. Baiæ was a town on the sea-shore, near Naples, famous for its hot baths. It was delightfully situate, and here Pompey, Caesar, and many of the wealthy Romans, had country seats: Seneca and Propertius refer to it as famous for its debaucheries, and it was much frequented by persons of loose character. It was the custom at Baiæ, in the summer-time, for both sexes to cruise about the shore in boats of various colours, both in the day-time and at night, with sumptuous feasts and bands of music on board.] [Footnote 748: Hostile hand.--Ver. 260. See the Fasti, Book iii. 1. 263. He means that the Arician grove was much resorted to by those engaged in courtship tad intrigues.] [Footnote 749: Borne upon unequal wheels.--Ver. 264. He alludes to Thalia, the Muse who inspires him, preferring the unequal or Hexameter and Pentameter measure of Elegiac verse.] [Footnote 750: By the lark.--Ver. 286. See the Metamorphoses, Book x.] [Footnote 751: Of Cydon.'--Ver. 293. This was a city of Crete.] [Footnote 752: Untruthful as it is.--Ver. 298. The Cretans were universally noted in ancient times for their disregard for truth. St. Paul, in his Epistle to Titus, ch. i. ver, 12, says, quoting from the Cretan poet Epimenides "One of themselves, even a prophet of their own, said, 'The Cretans are alway liars, evil beasts, slow bellies.' This witness is true."] [Footnote 753: By a bull!--Ver. 302. See this story explained in the Translation of the Metamorphoses, p. 70.] [Footnote 754: The sire.--Ver. 326. This was the Minotaur. See the Metamorphoses, Book viii] [Footnote 755: If the Cretan dame.--Ver. 327. This was Ærope, the wife of Atreus, who slew the children of his brother Thyestes, and set them on table before their father.] [Footnote 756: Who spoiled.---Ver. 331. He falls into his usual mistake of confounding Scylla, the daughter of Nisus, with the daughter of Phorcys.] [Footnote 757: The flames.--Ver. 335. See the Metamorphoses, Book vii. 1. 391, and the Epistle of Medea to Jason.] [Footnote 758: The son of Amyntor.--Ver. 337. Phoenix, the son of Amyntor, according to Homer, became blind in his latter years. See the Note to the 307th line of the Eighth Book of the Metamorphoses.] [Footnote 759: Of thy guiltless sons.--Ver. 339. Phineus was a king of Arcadia, or, according to some, of Thrace or Paphlagonia. His wife, Cleopatra, being dead or divorced, he married a Scythian, named Harpalice, at whose suggestion he put out the eyes of his sons by Cleopatra. He was persecuted by the Harpies, as a punishment.] [Footnote 760: What is one's own.--Ver. 348. 'Suis' seems preferable here to suos.'] [Footnote 761: The crop.--Ver. 349. These lines are referred to by Juvenal in the Fourteenth Satire, 1.143.] [Footnote 762: Your access easy.--Ver. 352. See his address to Nape, in the Amores, Book i. El. ii. Cypassis seems to have been a choice specimen of this class. See the Amores, Book ii. El. viii.] [Footnote 763: Pay him in return.'--Ver. 370. This seems to mean, 'I do not think you can make sufficient return for his ardent affection,' referring to the lover. Some of the Commentators think that it signifies a hint from the servant, that as her mistress's husband has offended her by his infidelities, she ought to repay him in his own coin.] [Footnote 764: Is of use.--Ver. 375. This abominable notion seems to have been acted upon by the Poet himself. See the Amores, Book ii. El. viii.] [Footnote 765: Her birthday.--Ver. 405. See the Amores, Book i. El. viii. 1. 94.] [Footnote 766: Whether the Calends.--Ver. 405. The Matronalia were celebrated on the first day of the Calends of March. It was usual on that day, for husbands to make presents to their wives, and lovers to the objects of their affection. The Calends of March preceded April, which month was sacred to Venus. See the Fasti, Book iii. 1. 170.] [Footnote 767: The wealth of kings.--Ver. 408. It was the custom to bring the spoils of the enemy, or the most curious portions of it, to Rome, where it was exposed to view in the Circus and the Theatres. Ovid tells his readers that they must not think that the ladies can give them any of their leisure on such occasions, as, being so much engaged with the sights, they will have no time for love-making.] [Footnote 768: Pleiades prevail.--Ver. 409. This is said figuratively.] [Footnote 769: Tearful Allia.--Ver. 413. The 16th of July, the day on which the Romans were defeated by the Gauls at the Allia, was deemed unlucky, and no business was transacted on it.] [Footnote 770: A day not suited for.--Ver. 415. The Jews are here alluded to. and he refers to their Sabbath. How some Commentators can have dreamed that the feast of the Saturnalia is referred to, it is hard to say.] [Footnote 771: Great must be.--Ver. 417. The meaning is, 'Be careful not to make your first advances on the birthday of your mistress, as that is the time for making presents, and you will certainly be out of pocket.' See the Amores, Book i. El. viii. 1. 94, and the Note.] [Footnote 772: The loosely-clad pedlar.--Ver. 421. Institor' was properly a person who sold wares, and kept a 'taberna' or 'shop' on account of another. Sometimes free persons, but more frequently slaves, were 'institores.'] [Footnote 773: A promissory note.--Ver. 428. 'Syngraphus/ or 'syngrapha,' was a 'bill' 'bond,' or 'promissory note,' which was most probably the kind of writing that the pedlar would here require. It may possibly mean a cheque upon his bankers, the 'argentarii' of Rome.] [Footnote 774: Not to have learned.--Ver. 428. The reading here seems to be non didicisse juvat.' 4 It is not to your advantage that you have learned (to write).' The other reading, 'ne didicisse juvet,' may be rendered, '(perhaps) it may be no advantage that you have learned (to write).'] [Footnote 775: Birth day cake.--Ver. 429. See the Amores, Book i. El. viii. 1. 94.] [Footnote 776: The jewel.--Ver. 432. For an account of the earrings of the ancients, see the Notes to the Metamorphoses, Book x. 1. 116.] [Footnote 777: Should you give her.--Ver. 447. The meaning of this and the following line is very obscure; so much so that Burmann is in doubt on the subject. It, however, seems to be, that it is not discreet, on first acquaintance, to give presents, as the damsel may then have a reason for peremptoily giving you up; she carries off your gift, and gives no favour in return.] [Footnote 778: Upon an apple.--Ver. 457: See the twentieth and twenty-first Epistles in the present volume.] [Footnote 779: Extend their hands.--Ver. 462. This figure is taken from the gladiatorial games, where the conquered extended their hands in token of submission.] [Footnote 780: Ring of iron.--Ver. 473. The rings worn by the lower classes were of iron.] [Footnote 781: Under some of the columns.1--Ver. 490. The learned Heinsius absolutely thinks that 'columnas' here means 'mile-stones'! It is pretty clear that Ovid alludes to the columns of the Portico; and he seems to say, that the attentive lover, when he sees the damsel at some distance before him, is not to hesitate to escape the crowd by going into the open space outside of the columns, and then running on, for the purpose of overtaking her. See the Tristia, Book iii. El. iii, where he makes mention of the columns in the Portico of the Danaides.] [Footnote 782: Actor is dancing.--Ver. 501. See the Tristia, Book ii. i. 497.] [Footnote 783: With the irons.'--Ver. 505. See the Amores, Book i. El. xiv 1 25, and the Note. The effeminate among the Romans were very fond of having their hair in curls.] [Footnote 784: With the rough pumice.--Ver. 506. Pliny the Elder mentions pumice stone as 'a substance used by women in washing their bodies, and now by men as well.' Persius, in his Fourth Satire, inveighs against this effeminate practice.] [Footnote 785: Bid those do this.--Ver. 507'. He alludes to the Galli, the eunuch priests of Cybele.] [Footnote 786: Hippolytus.--Ver. 511. Phædra, in her Epistle, alludes to his neglect of dress, as one of the merits of Hippolytus.] [Footnote 787: Plain of Mars.--Ver. 513. The Roman youth practised wrestling, and other athletic exercises, on the Campus Martius Being often stripped naked, or nearly so, the oil, combined with t he heat, would tend to bronze the skin.] [Footnote 788: Not be clammy.--Ver. 515. Probably this is the meaning of 'lingua ne rigeat,' although Nisard's French translation has it, 'let your tongue have no roughness.' Dryden's translation is, of course, of no assistance, as it carefully avoids all the difficult passages.] [Footnote 789: The father of the flock.--Ver. 522. He alludes to the rank smell to the arm-pits, which the Romans called by the name 'hircus,' 'a goat,' from a supposed similarity to the strong smell of that animal.] [Footnote 790: Awaking from her sleep.--Ver. 529. See the Epistle of Ariadne to Theseus.] [Footnote 791: Mimallonian females.--Ver. 541. It is a matter of doubt why the Bacchanalian women were called Mimallonides. According to some, they are so called from Mimas, a mountain of Asia Minor, where the rites of Bacchus were celebrated. Suidas says that they are so called, from 'imitation,' because they imitated the actions of men. Bochart thinks that the word is of Hebrew origin, and that they receive their name from 'memelleran,' 'garrulous' or 'noisy'; or else from mamal,' a 'wine- press.'] [Footnote 792: Drunken old man.--Ver. 543. See the adventure of Silenus, in the beginning of Book xi. of the Metamorphoses; and in the Fasti, Book iii. 1. 742. He seems to have been always getting into trouble.] [Footnote 793: Cretan Diadem.--Ver. 558. See the Fasti. Book iii. 1. 516.] [Footnote 794: Evie, Evoë!--Ver. 563. In the combat with the Giants, Jupiter is said, when one of them was slain by Bacchus, to have exclaimed 'Well done, son:' whence the exclamation 'Evie!' was said to have originated. See the Metamorchoses, Book iv. 1. 11 and 15, and the Note.] [Footnote 795: On the table.'--Ver. 572. See the Epistle of Paris to Helen; and the Amores, Book i. El. iv. 1. 20, and Book ii. El. v. 1. 17, and the Notes.] [Footnote 796: From the side.--Ver. 576. See the Amores, Book i. EL iv. 1. 32.] [Footnote 797: Touched with her fingers.--Ver. 577. The ancients are supposed not to have used at meals any implement such as a knife or fork, but merely to have used the fingers only, except in eating soups or other liquids, or jellies, when they employed spoons, which were denoted by the names 'cochlear' and 'ligula.' At meals the Greeks wiped their fingers on pieces of bread; the Romans washed them with water, and dried them on napkins handed round by the slaves.] [Footnote 798: Are drinking by lot.--Ver. 581. The 'modimperator,' or 'master of the banquet,' was often chosen by lot by the guests, and it was his province to prescribe how much each person should drink. Lots were also thrown, by means of the dice, to show in what order each person was to drink. This passage will show the falsity of his plea in the Second Book of the Tristia, addressed to Augustus, where he says that it was not his intention to address the married women of Rome, but only those who did not wear the 'vittæ' and the 'instita,' the badges of chastity.] [Footnote 799: Agent attends even too much.--Ver. 587. His meaning seems to be, that in the same way as the agent does more than attend to the injunctions of his principal, and puts himself in a position to profit by his office, so is the inamorato, through the confidence of the husband reposed in him, to make a profit that has never been anticipated.] [Footnote 801: Eurytion.--Ver. 593. At the nuptials of Pirithous and Hippoda-mia. See the Metamorphoses, Book xii. 1. 220, where he is called Eurytus.] [Footnote 802: Stealing up.--Ver. 605. This piece of impudence he professes to practise in the Amores, Book i. El iv. l. 56.] [Footnote 803: Bird of Juno.--Ver. 627. This fact, in natural history, was probably known only to Ovid, or the peacocks of the present day may be less vain than the Roman ones. See the Metamorphoses, Book i. 1. 723.] [Footnote 804: That there should be Gods.--Ver. 637. This was the avowed opinion of some of the philosophers and atheists of antiquity. We learn from Tertullian that Diogenes, being asked if the Gods exist, answered that he did not know anything about it, but that they ought to exist. The doctrine of the Epicureans was, that the Gods lived a happy and easy life, were not susceptible of anger, and did not trouble themselves about men.] [Footnote 805: Went to Busiris.--Ver. 649. See the Tristia, Book iii. El. xi. 1. 39, where the story of Phalaris is also referred to. Thrasius was the brother of Pygmalion, and was justly punished by Busiris for his cruel suggestion.] [Footnote 806: Phoebe suffered--Ver. 679. See the story of the rape of Phoebe, by Castor and Pollux, in the Fasti, Book v. 1. 699.] [Footnote 807: Work-baskets.--Ver. 693. See the Note to the seventy-third line of the Ninth Epistle.] [Footnote 808: Heroines of olden times.--Ver. 713. Such as Danaë, Europa Seraele, Alcmena, Io, Calisto, Antiope, Maia, Electra, and others.] [Footnote 809: Chaplet of Pallas.--Ver. 727. A crown of olive was presented to the victors in the athletic exercises at the Olympic games.] [Footnote 810: Love for Lyrice.--Ver. 731. If Lyrice here is a female name, it is not known who she was.] [Footnote 811: Daphnis.--Ver. 732. He was a Sicilian, the son of Mercury; and the inventor of Bucolic poetry.] [Footnote 812: Pylades.--Ver. 745: Hermione was the wife of Orestes, the friend of Pylades.] [Footnote 813: With a dart.--Ver. 763. It appears by this, that it was the custom to take fish by striking them with a javelin Salmon ere foretimes caught in a similar manner at the present day.] FOOTNOTES BOOK TWO [Footnote 901: Sing, 'Io Pean.'--Ver. 1. This was the usual cry of the hunters, who thus addressed Apollo, the God of the chase, when the prey had been captured iu the toils. See the Metamorphoses, Book iv. 1. 513.] [Footnote 902: Amyclæ.--Ver. 5. A town of Laconia. See the Metamorphoses, Book x. 1. 219, and the Note.] [Footnote 903: Erato.--Ver. 16. He addresses himself to this Muse, as her name was derived from the Greek 'love.' It has been suggested that he had another reason for addressing her, as she was thought to take pleasure in warfare, a state which sometimes, by way of variety, exists between lovers.] [Footnote 904: A bold path.--Ver. 22. This story is again related in the Eighth Book of the Metamorphoses.] [Footnote 905: Like oars.--Ver. 45. He aptly compares the arrangement of the main feathers of a wing to a row of oars.] [Footnote 906: Orion.'--Ver. 56. So in the Metamorphoses, Book v. 1. 206, he says to his son Icarus, 'Fly between both: and I bid thee neither to look at Bootes, nor Helice, nor the drawn sword of Orion.'] [Footnote 907: Is angling.--Ver. 77. There is a similar passage in the Metamorphoses, 1. 216.] [Footnote 908: The Clarian God.--Ver. 80. See the Fasti, Book i. 1. 20, and the Note.] [Footnote 909: And Calymne.--Ver. 81. These peaces are mentioned in the corresponding passages in the Metamorphoses, Book viii. 1. 222.] [Footnote 910: Astypalæa..--Ver. 82. This was an isle in the group of the Sporades, between Crete and the Cyclades. It contained but one city, and was long and narrow, and of rugged appearance.] [Footnote 911: The young horse.--Ver. 100. See the Amoves. Book i. El. viii 1. 8, and the Note.] [Footnote 912: The Marsian spells.--Ver. 102. The 'naenia' was a mournful dirge or chaunt uttered by the sorcerer in his incantations. On the Marsi, see the Sixth Book of the Fasti, 1. 142, and the Note to the passage.] [Footnote 913: Causing paleness.--Ver. 105. Philtres were noxious potions, made of venomous or stimulating ingredients, prescribed as a means of gaining the affections of the person to whom they were administered.] [Footnote 914: Nireus.--Ver. 109. See the Pontic Epistles, Book iv. Ep. xiii. 1. 16, and the Note to the passage.] [Footnote 915: Charming Hylas.--Ver. 110. See the Tristia, Book ii. 1.] [Footnote 916: Ocean Goddesses.--Ver. 124. Calypso was really the only sea Goddess that was enamoured of Ulysses. Circe was not a sea Goddess.] [Footnote 917: Blood of Dolon.'--Ver. 135. See the Metamorphoses, Book xiii. line 244.] [Footnote 918: Hjemontan horses--Ver. 136. The steeds of Achilles.] [Footnote 919: The Chaonian bird.--Ver. 150. Chaonia was a district of Epirus, said to have been so called from Chaon, a Trojan. Dodona was in Epirus, and in its forests were said to be doves that had the gift of prophecy. See the Translation of the Metamorphoses pp. 467-8.] [Footnote 920: Resort to law.--Ver. 151. He means to say 'let man and wife be always thinking about resorting to law to procure a divorce.'] [Footnote 921: 1 gave verses.--Ver. 166. He intends a pun here. 'Verba dare' is 'to deceive,' but literally it means 'to give words.' See the Amores, book i. El. viii. 1. 57.] [Footnote 922: Atalanta of Nonacris.--Ver. 185. See the Amores, Book iii. El. ii. 29, and the Note.] [Footnote 923: Bow of Hylceus.--Ver. 191. Hylæus and Rhæcus were Centaurs, who were pierced by Atalanta with her arrows, for making an attempt on her chastity. He alludes to the bow of Cupid in the next line.] [Footnote 924: The ivory cubes.'--Ver. 203. He alludes to throws of the 'tali' and 'tessera,' which were different kinds of dice. See the Note to 1. Footnote 471: of the Second Book of the Tristia. In this line he seems to mean the 'tessera,' which were similar to our dice, while the 'tali,' which he next mentions, had only four flat surfaces, being made in imitation of the knuckle-bones of animals, and having two sides uneven and rounded. The dice were thrown on a table, made for the purpose, with an elevated rim. Some throws, like our doublets, are supposed to have counted for more than the number turned up. The most fortunate throw was called 'Venus.' or 'Venereus jactus'; it is thought to have consisted of a combination, making fourteen, the dice presenting different numbers. Games with dice were only sanctioned by law as a pastime during meals.] [Footnote 925: Make bad moves.--Ver. 204. 'Dare jacta' means 'to move the throws,' in allusion to the game of 'duodecim scripta,' or 'twelve points,' which was played with counters moved according to the throws of the dice, probably in a manner not unlike our game of backgammon. The hoard was marked with twelve lines, on which the pieces moved.] [Footnote 926: Or if you are throwing.--Ver. 205. By the use of the word 'seu, or,' we must suppose that he has, under the word 'numeri,' alluded to the game with the 'tesseræ,' or six-sided dice.] [Footnote 927: The game that imitates.--Ver. 207. He here alludes to the 'ludus latrunculorum,' literally 'the game of theft,' which is supposed to have been somewhat similar to our chess. He refers to its name in the words, 'latrocinii sub imagine.' The game was supposed to imitate the furtive stratagems of warfare: hence the men, which were usually styled 'calculi,' were also called by the name of 'latrones,' 'latrunculi,' 'milites,' 'bella-tores,' 'thieves,' 'little thieves,' 'soldiers,' 'warriors.' As we see by the next line, they were usually made of glass, though sometimes more costly materials were employed. The skill of this game consisted either in taking the pieces of the adversary, or rendering them unable to move. The first was done when the adversary's piece was brought by the other between two of his own. See the Tristia, Book ii. 1.477. The second took place when the pieces were 'ligati,' or 'ad incitas redacti,' brought upon the last line and unable to move. White and red are supposed to have been the colour of the men. This game was much played by the Roman ladies and nobles.] [Footnote 928: Hold the screen.--Ver. 209. The ancients used 'umbracula,' or screens against the weather (resembling our umbrellas), which the Greeks called --------. They were used generally for the same purposes as our parasols, a protection against the heat of the sun. They seem not to have been in general carried by the ladies themselves, but by female slaves, who held them over their mistresses. See the Fasti, Book ii. 1. 209. These screens, or umbrellas, were much used by the Roman ladies in the amphitheatre, to protect them from sun and rain, when the 'velarium,' or awning, was not extended.] [Footnote 929: Tasteful couch.'--Ver. 211. This was probably the 'triclinium' on which they reposed at meals. The shoes were taken off before reclining on it. Female slaves did this office for the ladies, and males for the men.] [Footnote 930: Looking-glass.--Ver. 216. These were generally held by female slaves, when used by their mistresses. See the Metamorphoses, Book iv. 1. 349. and the Note.] [Footnote 931: Held the work-basket.--Ver. 219. Hercules, who Wiled the serpents sent by Juno, is reproached for doing this, by Deianira in her Epistle.] [Footnote 932: As though a servant.--Ver. 228. He is to be ready, if his mistress goes to a party, to act the part of the slave, who was called 'adversitor,' whose duty it was to escort his master home in the evening, if it was dark, with a lighted torch.] [Footnote 933: A vehicle.--Ver. 230. 'Rota,' a wheel, is, by Synecdoche, used to signify 'a vehicle.'] [Footnote 934: Cynthius.--Ver. 240. See the Note to line 51, of the Epistle from Aenone to Paris.] [Footnote 935: Through the open roof.--Ver. 245. He gives a somewhat hazardous piece of advice here; as he instructs him to obtain admission by climbing up the wall, and getting in at the skylight, which extended over the 'atrium,' or 'court,' a room which occupied the middle of the house. The Roman houses had, in general, but one story over the ground-floor.] [Footnote 936: The high window.--Ver. 246. This passage may be illustrated by the Note to 1. 752: of Book xiv. of the Metamorphoses.] [Footnote 937: Day on which.--Ver. 257. He alluded to a festival celebrated by the servants, on the Caprotine Nones, the seventh of July, when they sacrificed to 'Juno Caprotina.' Macrobius says that the servants sacrificed to Juno under a wild fig-tree (called 'caprificus'), in memory of the service done by the female slaves, in exposing themselves to the lust ot the enemy, for the public welfare. The Gauls being driven from the city, the neighbouring nations chose the Dictator of the Fidenates for their chief, and, marching to Rome, demanded of the Senate, that if they would save their city, they should send out to them their wives and daughters The Senate, knowing their own weakness, were much perplexed, when a handmaid, named 'Tutela,' or 'Philotis,' offered, with some others, to go out to the enemy in disguise. Being, accordingly, dressed like free women, they repaired in tears to the camp of the enemy. They soon induced their new acquaintances to drink, on the pretence that they were bound to consider the day as a festival; and when intoxicated, a signal was giver, from a fig tree near, that the Romans should fall on them. The camp of the enemy was assailed, and most of them were slain. In return for their service, the female, slaves were made free, and received marriage portion? at the public expense. Another account, agreeing with the present passage, says, that the Gauls were the enemy who made the demand, and that Retana was the name of the female slave.] [Footnote 938: The lower classes.--Ver. 259. Witness his own appeals in the Amores to Napè, Cypassis. Bagous, and the porter.] [Footnote 939: In the Sacred Street.'--Ver. 266. Presents of game and trout very often follow a similar devolution at the present day.] [Footnote 940: Amaryllis was so fond of.--Ver. 267. He alludes to a line of Virgil, which, doubtless, was then well known to all persons of education. It occurs in the Eclogues: 'Castaneasque nuces, mea quas Amaryllis amabat.' 'Chesnuts, too, which my Amaryllis was so fond of.' In the next line, he hints that the damsels of his day were too greedy to be satisfied with chesnuts only.] [Footnote 941: Thrush and a pigeon.--Ver. 269. Probably live birds of the kind are here alluded to; Pliny tells us that they were trained to imitate the human voice. Thrushes were much esteemed as a delicacy for the table. They were sold tied up in clusters, in the shape of a crown.] [Footnote 942: By these means.--Ver. 271. He alludes to those who continued to slip into dead men's shoes, by making trifling presents of niceties. Juvenal inveighs against this practice.] [Footnote 943: Poetry does not.--Ver. 274. See the remarks of Dipsas in the Amores, Book i. El. viii. 1. 57.] [Footnote 944: Only rich.--Ver. 276. See the Amores, Book iii. El. ii.] [Footnote 945: Tyrian hue.--Ver. 297. See the Fasti, Book ii. 1. 107, and the Note.] [Footnote 946: Of Cos--Ver. 298. See the Epistles of Sabinus, Ep. iii. 1. 45, and the Note.] [Footnote 947: A dress of felt.--Ver. 300. 'Gausape,' 'gausapa,' or 'gausapum,' was a kind of thick woolly cloth, which had a long nap on one side. It was used to cover tables and beds, and as a protection against wind and rain. It was worn both by males and females, and came into use among the Romans about the time of Augustus.] [Footnote 948: You are setting me on fire.--Ver. 301. Burmanu deservedly censures the explanation of 'moves incendia,' given by Crispinus, the Delphin Editor, 'Vous mourrez de chaud,' 'You will die of heat,' applying the observation to the lady, and not, figuratively, to the feelings of her lover.] [Footnote 949: Her very embraces.--Ver. 308. The common reading of this line is clearly corrupt; probably the reading is the one here adopted, 'Et un dat, gaudia, voce proba.'] [Footnote 950: What advice--Ver. 368. These attempts at argument are exhausted by Paris, in his Epistle to Helen.] [Footnote 952: Stinging-nettle.--Ver. 417. Pliny prescribes nettle-seed as a stimulating medicine, mixed with linseed, hyssop, and pepper.] [Footnote 953: White onion.--Ver. 421. The onions of Megara are praised by Cato, the agricultural writer.] [Footnote 954: Alcathous.--Ver. 421. See the Metamorphoses, Book vii. 1.] [Footnote 955: At first.--Ver. 467. See the beginning of the First Book of the Metamorphoses.] [Footnote 956: Unclean mate.--Ver. 486. He alludes to the strong smell of the he-goat.] [Footnote 957: Machaon.--Ver. 491. He was a famous physician, son of Æsculapius, and was slain in the Trojan war. See the Tristia, Book v. El. vi. 1. 11.] [Footnote 958: He came.--Ver. 496. 'Adest' seems a preferable reading to 'agit.'] [Footnote 959: To know himself.--Ver. 600. 'Know thyself,' was a saying of Chilo, the Lacedaemonian, one of the wise men of Greece. This maxim was also inscribed in gold letters in the temple of Apollo at Delphi. 'Too much of nothing' was a second maxim there inscribed; and a third was, 'Misery is the consequence of debt and discord.'] [Footnote 960: Drinks with elegance.--Ver. 506. It is hard to say what art in drinking is here alluded to; whether a graceful air in holding the cup, or the ability of drinking much without shewing any signs of inebriety. Let the old woman come.--Ver. 329. In sickness it was the custom to purify the bed and chamber of the patient, with sulphur and eggs. It seems also to have been done when the patient was pining through unrequited love. Apulius mentions a purification by the priest of Isis, who uses eggs and sulphur while holding a torch and repeating a prayer. The nurse of the patient seems here to be directed to perform the ceremony.] [Footnote 961: The Fasti, Book ii. 1. 19, and Book iv. 1. 728. From a passage of Juvenal, we find that it was a common practice to purify with eggs and sulphur, in the month of September, * On Athos.--Ver. 517. See the Metamorphoses, Book ii. 1. 217, and the Note.] [Footnote 962: On Hybla.--Ver. 517. See the Tristia, Book v. El. xiii. 1. 22.] [Footnote 963: Off your head.--Ver. 528. Iphis, in the fourteenth Book of the Metamorphoses, 1. 732, raises his eyes to the door-posts of his mistress, 'so often adorned by him with wreaths.'] [Footnote 964: The senses.--Ver. 532. He seems to believe, with Nixon d'Enelos, in the existence of a sixth sense.] [Footnote 965: Of mighty Jove.--Ver. 540. He alludes to the triumphal procession to the Capitol.] [Footnote 966: Gentle sleep.--Ver. 546. See the Amores, Book iii. El. i. 1. 51. He means to say that husbands give a certain latitude to their wives, who do not fail to improve upon it.] [Footnote 967: Own husband.--Ver. 551. See the Amores, Book i. El. iv. 1. 38.] [Footnote 968: Other men visit.--Ver. 554. 'Viri' seems to be a better reading than 'viro.'] [Footnote 969: Mars and Venus.--Ver. 562. See the Metamorphoses, Book iv. 1. 173.] [Footnote 970: Says, laughing.--Ver. 585. See a similar passage in the Metamorphoses, Book iv. 1. 187.] [Footnote 971: For Thrace.--Ver. 588. He was much venerated by the warlike Thracians.] [Footnote 972: Paphos.--Ver. 588. See the Metamorphoses, Book x. 1. 298.] [Footnote 973: Fire and water render.--Ver. 598. Among the Romans, when the bride reached her husband's house, he received her with fire and water, which it was the custom for her to touch. This is, by some, supposed to have been symbolical of purification; or it was an expression of welcome, as the interdiction of fire and water was the formula for banishment.] [Footnote 974: My sallies.--Ver. 600. See Book L 1. 31, and the Note. See also the Fasti, Book iv. 1. 866, and the Note.] [Footnote 975: The rites of Ceres.--Ver. 601. He alludes to the mysterious rites of Ceres, in the island of Samothrace.] [Footnote 976: Not enclosed in chests.--Ver. 609. Certain chests were carried in the procession at the festival of Ceres, the contents of which, if there were any, was a mystery to the uninitiated.] [Footnote 977: The left hand.--Ver. 614. This is the attitude of the Venus de Medicis.] [Footnote 978: At a heavy price.--Ver. 626. Men spend their money on debauchery, only for the pleasure of talking of it.] [Footnote 979: Waving wings.--Ver. 644. He refers to Perseus admiring the swarthy Andromeda.] [Footnote 980: Of larger stature.--Ver. 645. She was remarkable for her height.] [Footnote 981: Green bark.--Ver. 639. He speaks of the slip engrafted in the stock.] [Footnote 982: What Consulship.--Ver. 663. The age of persons was reckoned by naming the Consulship in which they were born; the period of which was Known by reference to the 'Fasti Consulares.' See the Introduction to the Fasti.] [Footnote 983: Rigid Censor.--Ver. 664. It was the duty of the Censor to make enquiries into the age of all individuals.] [Footnote 984: Best years.--Ver. 666. Even in those days, it was considered ungallant to make too scrutinizing enquiries into the years of ladies of 'a certain age.'] [Footnote 985: Kind of warfare.--Ver. 674. See the Amores, Book i. El. ix. 1. 1.] [Footnote 986: Besides in these.--Ver. 675. In reference to females of a more advanced age.] [Footnote 987: Seven times five years.--Ver. 694. He probably means, in this passage, a lustrum of five years. Burmann justly observes, that 'cito,' 'quickly,' or 'soon,' can hardly be the proper reading, as it seems to contradict the meaning of the context. He suggests 'nisi,' meaning 'but,' or 'only.' See the Fasti, Book iii. 1. 166, and the Note. Also the Tristia, Book iv. El. xvi. 1. 78.] [Footnote 988: Stored up in the times.--Ver. 696. He uses this metaphorical expression to signify that he admires females when of a ripe and mature age See the Amores, Book ii. El. v. 1. 54, and the Note.] [Footnote 989: The shooting grass.--Ver. 698. In Nisard's translation, the words 'prata novella' are rendered 'l'herbe nouvellement coupée,' 'the grass newly cut.' This is not the meaning of the passage. He intends to say that the grass just shooting up is apt to cut or prick the naked foot.] [Footnote 990: Hermione.--Ver. 699. She was the daughter of Helen and Menelaus.] [Footnote 991: Gorge.--Ver. 700. She was the daughter of Altnea, and sister of Meleager. She married Andræmon.] [Footnote 992: Podalirius.--Ver. 735. The brother of Machaon. See the Tristia Book v. El. xiii. 1. 32.] [Footnote 993: Calchas.--Ver. 737. See the Metamorphoses.] [Footnote 994: Automeden.--Ver. 738. The son of Diores. He was the charioted of Achilles.] [Footnote 995: Upon his spoil--Ver. 744. It was the custom to write inscriptions on the spoil. See the Notes to the Fasti, Book ii. 1. 663.] FOOTNOTES OF BOOK THE THIRD [Footnote 1001: Penthesilea.'--Ver. 2. See the 21st Epistle, 1.118, and the Note.] [Footnote 1002: Dione.--Ver. 3. See the Fasti, Book ii. 1. 461, and the Note.] [Footnote 1003: Son of Atreus.--Ver. 11. 'Helen was unfaithful to Menelaus, while Clytemnestra killed Agamemnon.] [Footnote 1004: Son of Oeclus.--Ver. 13. See the Metamorphoses, Book viii. 1. 317, ind the Note.] [Footnote 1005: From Phylace.--Ver. 17. See the Epistle of Laodamia to Protesilaius.] [Footnote 1006: Son of Pheres.--Ver. 19. See the Pontic Epistles, Book iii. El. i. L 106, and the Note.] [Footnote 1007: And in place of--Ver. 20. See the 111th line of the same Elegy, and the Note. Also the Tristia, Book v. El. xiv. 1. 38.] [Footnote 1008: My skiff.--Ver. 26. 'Cymba.' See the Amores, Book iii. El. vi. 1. 4, and the Note.] [Footnote 1009: Another bride.--Ver. 34. Jason deserted Medea for Creusa.] [Footnote 1010: Nine journies.--Ver. 37. See the Epistle of Phyllis to Demophoon.] [Footnote 1011: Two treatises.--Ver. 47. His former books on the Art of Love.] [Footnote 1012: Who before had uttered.--Ver. 49. He alludes to the Poet Stesichorus, on whose lips a nightingale was said to have perched and sung, when he was a child. Pliny relates that he wrote a poem, inveighing bitterly against Helen, in which he called her the firebrand of Troy, on which he was visited with blindness by her brothers, Castor and Pollux, and did not recover his sight till he had recanted in his Palinodia, which he composed in her praise. Suidas says, that Stesichorus composed thirty, six books of Poems. Helen was born at Therapnæ, a town of Laconia.] [Footnote 1013: Your own privileges.--Ver. 58. 'Sua' seems to mean the privileges sanctioned and conceded by the law, probably to those females who were in the number of the 'professae.'] [Footnote 1014: No door.--Ver. 71. So Horace says, in his address to Lydia, Book i. Ode i. 25; 'Less frequently do the wanton youths shake your joined windows with many a blow, and no longer deprive thee of sleep, and the door adheres to its threshold.'] [Footnote 1015: Bestrewed with roses.--Ver. 72. See line 528: in the last Book Lucretius speaks of the admirers of damsels anointing their doors with M ointment made of sweet marjoram.] [Footnote 1016: Hermione.--Ver. 86. According to Hesiod, Venus was the mother of three children by Mars, of whom Hermione was one.] [Footnote 1017: May take up again.--Ver. 96. This is not the proper translation, of the passage; but the real meaning cannot be presented with a due regard to decorum.] [Footnote 1018: I begin with dress.--Ver. 101. He plays upon the different meanings of the word 'cultus'; which means either 'dress,' or 'cultivation,' according as it is applied, to persons or land.] [Footnote 1019: A great part.--Ver. 104. This is a more ungallant remark than we should have expected Ovid to make.] [Footnote 1020: Of Phoebus.--Ver. 119. He alludes to the temple of Apollo, on the Palatine Hill, where Augustus and Tiberius resided.] [Footnote 1021: And choice shells.--Ver. 124. He alludes to pearls which grow in the shell of the pearl oyster, and are found in the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean.] [Footnote 1022: By the moles.--Ver. 126. He alludes to the stupendous moles which the Romans fabricated, as breakwaters, at their various bathing-places on the coast of Italy. See the Odes of Horace, Book iii. ode 1.] [Footnote 1023: Round features.--Ver. 139. See the Pontic Epistles, Book iii Ep. iii. 1. 15, and the Note.] [Footnote 1024: Figure of the tortoise.--Ver. 147. Salmasius thinks that the 'galerus,' or 'wig of false hair,' is alluded to in this passage. Others think that a coif or fillet of net-work is alluded to. He probably means a mode of dressing the hair in the shape of a lyre, with horns on each side projecting outwards. Mercury, the inventor of the lyre, was born on Mount Cyllene, in Arcadia.] [Footnote 1025: The waves.--Ver. 148. Juvenal mentions a mode of dressing the hair to a great height by rows of false curls.] [Footnote 1026: The herbs from Germany.--Ver. 163. He alludes, probably, to herbs brought from Germany, which were burnt for the purpose of making a soap used in turning the hair of a blonde colour. See the Amores, Book i. El. xiv. 1. 1, and the Note.] [Footnote 1027: For money--Ver. 166. See 1. 45 of the above Elegy.] [Footnote 1028: The eyes of Hercules.--Ver. 168. He means that the wig-makers'] shops were in the neighbourhood of the Temple of Hercules Musagetes, in the Flaminian Circus. See the Sixth Book of the Fasti, 1. 801.] [Footnote 1029: Gold flounces.--Ver. 169. 'Segmenta' are probably broad flounces to the dresses inlaid with plates of gold, or gold threads embroidered on them.] [Footnote 1030: On one's person.--Ver. 127. Like our expression, 'To carry a fortune on one's back.'] [Footnote 1031: That art said.--Ver. 175. He refers to the colour of the Ram with the Golden Fleece, that bore Helle and Phryxus over the Hellespont.] [Footnote 1032: Resembles the waves.--Ver. 177. He evidently alluded to dresses which resemble the surface of the waves, and which we term 'watered'; and which the Romans called 'undulatae,' from 'unda,' a 'wave.' Varro makes mention of 'undulatæ togæ.' Some Commentators, however, fancy that he alludes here to colour, meaning 'glaucus,' or 'sea-green,' which Lucretius also calls ' thalassinus.'] [Footnote 1033: Amaryllis.--Ver. 183. See the last Book, 1. 267, and the Note.] [Footnote 1034: And wax.--Ver. 184. Plautus mentions the 'Carinarii,' who dyed garments of a waxen, or yellow colour] [Footnote 1035: Seriphos.--Ver. 192. See the Metamorphoses, Book v. 1. 242, and the Note.] [Footnote 1036: Shocking goat.--Ver. 193. See the Note to 1. 522: of the First Book.] [Footnote 1037: Application of wax.--Ver. 199. Wax is certainly used as a cosmetic, but 'creta' seems to be a preferable reading, as chalk in a powdered state was much used for adding to the fairness of the complexion. Ovid would hardly recommend a cosmetic of so highly injurious a tendency as melted wax.] [Footnote 1038: The eye-brows.--Ver. 201. We learn from Juvenal, that the colour of them was heightened by punctures with a needle being filled with soot.] [Footnote 1039: And the little patch.--Ver. 202. 'Aluta' means 'skin made soft by means of alum.' It is difficult to discover what it means here, whether 'a patch' made of a substance like gold-beater's skin, somewhat similar to those used in the days of the Spectator; or a liquid cosmetic, such as Pliny calls 'calliblepharum,' 'an aid to the eye-brows.' He seems to use the word 'sinceras' in its primitive sense, 'without wax'; which recommendation certainly would contradict the common reading, 'cera,' in the 199th line.] [Footnote 1040: To mark the eyes.--Ver. 203. To heighten the colour of the eyelashes, ashes (and probably charcoal) were u»ed by the Roman women. Saffron also was used. A black paint, made of pulverized antimony, is used by the women in the East, at the present day, to paint their eyebrows black. It is called 'surme,' and was also used at ancient Rome. Cydnus was a river of Cilicia.] [Footnote 1041: A little treatise.--Ver. 205. He alludes to his book, 'On the care of the Complexion,' of which a fragment remains.] [Footnote 1042: Of the cesypum.--Ver. 213. The filthy cosmetic called 'cesypum,'] was prepared from the wool of those parts of the body where the sheep perspired most; it was much used for embellishing the complexion. Pliny mentions the sheep of Athens as producing the best. It had a strong rank smell. The red colour, which was used by the Roman ladies for giving a bloom to the skin, was prepared from a moss called 'fucus'; from which, in time, all kinds of paint received the name of 'fucus.'] [Footnote 1043: Of the deer.--Ver. 215. Pliny speaks highly of the virtues of stag's marrow. It probably occupied much the same position in estimation, that bear's grease does at the present day.] [Footnote 1044: Myron.--Ver. 219. There were two sculptors of this name: one a native of Lycia, the other of Eleuthera.] [Footnote 1045: Beautiful statue.--Ver. 223. He alludes to that of Venus Anadyomene, or rising from the sea, which was made by Praxiteles, and was often copied by the sculptors of Greece and Rome.] [Footnote 1046: Pierces her arms.--Ver. 240. See a similar passage in the Amores. Book i. El. xiv. 1. 16.] [Footnote 1047: Toilet in the temple.--Ver. 244. He tells those who have not fine heads of hair, to be as careful in admitting any men to see their toilet, as the devotees of Bona Dea were to keep away all males from her solemnities.] [Footnote 1048: Sidonian fair.--Ver. 252. Europa was a Phoenician by birth.] [Footnote 1049: With the clothes.--Ver. 226. See the Amores, Book i. El. iv. 1.48, and the Note.] [Footnote 1050: With purple stripes.'--Ver. 269. Commentators are at a loss to know what 'tingere virgis' means; some suggest, 'to wear garments with red 'virgæ,' or 'stripes,'while others think that it means 'to tint the skin with fine lines of a purple colour.' It is thought by some that vermilion is here alluded to, while others suppose that the juice of the red flowers, or berries of the 'vaccinium,' is meant.] [Footnote 1051: The Pharian fish.--Ver. 270. The intestines and dung of the crocodile, 'the Pharian' or 'Egyptian fish,' are here referred to. We learn from Pliny that these substances were used by the females at Rome as a cosmetic, to add to the fairness of the complexion, and to take away freckles from the skin.] [Footnote 1052: Small pads are suitable.--Ver. 273 'Analectides,' or 'Analectrides,' (the correct reading is doubtful) were pads, or stuffings, of flock, used in cases of high shoulders or prominent shoulder-blades.] [Footnote 1053: And let the girth.--Ver. 274. He alludes to the 'strophium,' which distantly resembled the stays of the present day, and was a girdle, or belt, worn by women round the breast and over the interior tunic or chemise. From an Epigram of Martial, it seems to have been usually made of leather. Becker thinks that there was a difference between the 'fascia' and the 'strophium.'] [Footnote 1054: At a distance.--Ver. 278. One of the very wisest of his suggestions.] [Footnote 1055: Umbrian.--Ver. 303. The Umbrians were a people of the Marsi, in the north of Italy. They were noted for their courage, and the rusticity of their manners.] [Footnote 1056: The son of Sisyphus.--Ver. 313. He here alludes to a scandalous story among the ancients, that Ulysses was the son of Anticlea, by Sisyphus the robber, who had carried her off, and not by Laertes, her husband.] [Footnote 1057: The wax.--Ver. 314. By the advice of Circe, Ulysses filled the ears of his companions with melted wax, that they might not hear the songs of the Sirens.] [Footnote 1058: The measures of the Nile.--Ver. 318. These airs were sung by Egyptian girls, with voluptuous attitudes, and were much esteemed by the dissolute Romans. These Egyptian singers were, no doubt, the forerunners of the 'Alme' of Egypt at the present day. The Nautch girls and Bayaderes of the East Indies are a kindred race.] [Footnote 1059: Plectrum.--Ver. 319. See the Metamorphoses, Book ii. 1. 601, and the Note; also the Epistle of Briseïs, 1. 118, and the Note.] [Footnote 1060: Thy mother.--Ver. 323. Amphion and Zethuswere the sons of Jupiter and Antiope. Being carried off by her uncle Lycus, Antiope was entrusted to his wife Dirce. When her sons grew up, they fastened Dirce to wild oxen, by which she was tom to pieces. Amphion was said to have built the walls of Thebes by the sound of his lyre.] [Footnote 1061: Arion.--Ver. 326. See the Fasti, Book ii. 1. 79.] [Footnote 1062: The festive psaltery.--Ver. 327. Suidas tells us that 'naulium,' or 'nablium,' was a name of the psaltery. Josephus says that it had twelve strings. Strabo remarks that the name was of foreign origin.] [Footnote 1063: Callimachus.--Ver. 329. See the Amores, Book ii. El. iv. 1. 19: and the Pontic Epistles, Book iv. Ep. xvi. 1. 32, and the Notes of the passages.] [Footnote 1064: Poet of Cos.--Ver. 330. The poet Philetas. He flourished in the time of Philip and Alexander the Great. Anacreon was a lyric poet of Teios, and a great admirer of the juice of the grape.] [Footnote 1065: Or him, through whom.--Ver. 332. Some think that he means Menander, from whom Terence borrowed many of his scenes; he probably alludes to the Phormio of Terence, where the old men, Chremes and Demipho, are deceived by Geta, the cunning slave. See the Tristia, Book ii. 1. 359: and 69.] [Footnote 1066: Propertius.'--Ver. 333. See the Tristia, Book ii. 1. 465, and the Note.] [Footnote 1067: Tibullus.--Ver. 334. See the Amores, Book iii. EL ix.] [Footnote 1068: Varro.--Ver. 335. See the Pontic Epistles, Book iv. Ep. xvi. 1. 21; and the Amores, Book i. El. xv. 1. 21, and the Notes to the passages.] [Footnote 1069: Lofty Rome.--Ver. 338. He refers here to the Æneid of Virgil.] [Footnote 1070: Two sides.--Ver. 342. Both the males and the females.] [Footnote 1071: Composition.--Ver. 346. He takes to himself the credit of being the inventor of Epistolary composition.] [Footnote 1072: Masters of posture.--Ver. 351. These persons, who were also called 'ludii,' or 'histrlones,' required great suppleness of the sides, for the purpose of aptly assuming expressive attitudes; for which reason he calls them 'artifices lateris.' See the First Book, 1. 112; and the Tristia, Book ii, 1. 497, and the Note.] [Footnote 1073: Which she must call for.--Ver. 356. Probably at the game of 'duodecim seripta,' or 'twelve points,' like our backgammon; sets of three 'tesseræ,' or dice, were used for throwing; he recommends her to learn the game, and to know on what points to enter when taken up, and what throws to call for. See the last Book, 1. 203; and the Tristia, Book ii. 1. 473, and the Note.] [Footnote 1074: The pieces.--Ver. 357. See the Note to 1. 207, in the last Book.] [Footnote 1075: The warrior, too.--Ver. 359. He alludes to one of the principal pieces, whose fate depends upon another.] [Footnote 1076: Let the smooth balls.--Ver. 361. He seems to allude here to a game played by putting marbles (which seems to be the meaning of 'pilæ leves,' 'smooth balls,') into a net with the month open, and then taking them out one by one without moving any of the others.] [Footnote 1077: Kind of game.--Ver. 363. These two lines do not seem to be connected with the game mentioned in 1. 365, but rather to refer to that mentioned in 1. 355.] [Footnote 1078: A little table receives.}--Ver. 365. This game is mentioned in the Tristia, Book ii. 1. 481. It seems to resemble the simple game played by schoolboys on the slate, and known among them as tit-tat-to.] [Footnote 1079: No trusting.--Ver. 377. On account of the continued run of bad luck.] [Footnote 1080: Flying ball.'--Ver. 380. See the Tristia, Book ii. 1. 485-6, and the Note.] [Footnote 1081: The Virgin.--Ver. 385. This was near the Campus Martius. See the Fasti, Book i. 1. 464; and the Pontic Epistles, Book i. Ep. viii. 1. 38, and the Note.] [Footnote 1082: Etrurian.--Ver. 386. The Tiber flowed through ancient Etruria.] [Footnote 1083: The Virgin.--Ver. 388. He alludes to the heat while the sun is passing through the Constellation Virgo.] [Footnote 1084: Parætonium.--Ver. 390. See the Amores, Book ii. El. xiii. 1. 7, and the Note. He alludes to the victory of Augustus over Antony and Cleopatra, at Actium; on which the conqueror built the temple of Apollo on the Palatine hill.] [Footnote 1085: The suter and the wife.--Ver. 391. Livia, the wife, and Octavia, the sister of Augustus, are referred to.] [Footnote 1086: His son-in-law.--Ver. 392. The allusion is to M. Agrippa, the husband of Julia, the daughter of Augustus; after the defeat of the younger Pompey, Augustus presented him with a naval crown. A Portico built by Augustus was called by his name.] [Footnote 1087: Memphian heifer.--Ver. 393. See the Amores, Book i. El. viii. 1. 74.] [Footnote 1088: Frequent the three Theatres.--Ver. 394. He probably alludes to the theatres of Pompey, Balbus, and Marcellus, as they are mentioned by Suetonius as the 'trina theatra.'] [Footnote 1089: Glowing wheels.--Ver. 396. See the Amores, Book iii. El. ii.] [Footnote 1090: Thamyras.--Ver. 399. He was a Thracian poet, who challenged the Muses to sing, and, according to Homer, was punished with madness. Diodorus Siculus says that he lost his voice, while the Roman poets state that he lost his sight. Amoebeus was a famous lute-player of Athens.] [Footnote 1091: Of Cos.--Ver. 401. See the Pontic Epistles, Book iv. Ep. i. 1. 29.] [Footnote 1092: Poets were.--Ver. 405. Euripides was the guest of Archelaüs king of Macedonia, Anacreon of Polycrates king of Samos, and Pindar and Bacchilides of Hiero king of Sicily.] [Footnote 1093: Placed near to thee.--Ver. 410. According to some accounts, the ashes of Ennius were deposited in the tomb of the Scipios, by the older of his friend Scipio Africanus.] [Footnote 1094: Its own Priam.--Ver. 440. Priam and Antenor advised that Helen should be restored to Menelaus.] [Footnote 1095: Liquid nard.--Ver. 443. There were two kinds of nard, the 'foliated,' and the 'spike' nard. It was much esteemed as a perfume by the Romans.] [Footnote 1096: Narrow belt.--Ver. 444. He probably means a girdle that fitted tightly, and caused the 'toga' to set in many creases. See the Notes to the Fasti, Book v. 1. 675.] [Footnote 1097: And many a ring.--Ver. 446. 'alter et alter.' Literally, one and another.] [Footnote 1098: Some thief.--Ver. 447. Among its other refinements, Rome seems to have had its swell mob.] [Footnote 1099: Thou, Venus--Ver. 451. This temple is referred to in the First Book, 1. 81--87. Its vicinity was much frequented by courtesans.] [Footnote 1101: You, ye Goddesses.--Ver. 452. He probably alludes to the Nymphs whose statues were near the Appian aqueduct, mentioned in the 81st Une of the First Book. The Delphin Editor absolutely thinks that the 'pro-fessæ,' or courtesans, are themselves alluded to as the 'Appiades Deæ.'] [Footnote 1102: Theseus.--Ver. 457. Who deserted Ariadne.] [Footnote 1103: Of Inachus.--Ver. 464. Isis, or To. Seo the Metamorphoses, Bk. i.] [Footnote 1104: To deceive your husbands.--Ver. 484. It is not improbable that 'viros' here means merely 'keepers,' and not 'husbands,' especially as he alludes to their being without the privilege of the 'vitta,' which the matrons wore.] [Footnote 1105: Two hands.--Ver. 496. He means, that the writing of the lover must be quite erased before she pens her answer on the same tablets.] [Footnote 1106: Hence, avaunt.--Ver. 505. See the Fasti, Book vi. 1. 696. * Laying aside his foils.--Ver. 515. The 'rudis' was a stick, which soldiers and persons exercising used in mimic combat, probably like our foil or singlestick.] [Footnote 1107: With Tecmessa.--Ver. 517. She was taken captive by Ajax, and probably had good reason to be sorrowful.] [Footnote 1108: The twig of vine.--Ver. 527. He alludes to the Centurions, who had the power of inflicting corporal punishment, from which circumstance their badge of office was a vine sapling.] [Footnote 1109: Nemesis.--Ver. 536. Nemesis was the mistress of Tibullus. See the Amores, Book iii. El. ix. Cynthia was the mistress of Propertius and Lycoris of Gallus.] [Footnote 1110: Shut your door.--Ver. 587. He addresses the husband, whom he supposes to be wearied with satiety.] [Footnote 1111: Than even Thais.--Ver. 604. Thais seems to have been a common name with the courtesans of ancient times. Terence, in his Eunuchus, introduces one of that name, who is pretty much of the free and unrestrained character here depicted.] [Footnote 1112: Lictor's rod.--Ver. 615. This conferred freedom on the slave who was touched with it. See the Fasti, Book vi. 1. 676, and the Note, lie means, that free-born women are worthy to become wives; but 'libertinæ,' or 'freed-women,' are only fit to become 'professæ,' or 'courtesans,' when they may sin with impunity, so far as the laws are concerned.] [Footnote 1113: Broad girth.--Ver. 622. This seems to be the kind of belt mentioned in line 274.] [Footnote 1114: Stalk of wetted flax.--Ver. 629. According to the common reading, this will mean that the letter is to be written on blank paper, with a stalk of wetted flax; which writing will afterwards appear, when a black substance is thrown upon it. Heinsius insists that the passage is corrupt, and suggests that 'alumine nitri' is the correct reading; in which case it would mean that alum water is to be used instead of ink. Vessius tells us that alum water, mixed with the juice of the plant 'tithymalum,' was used for the purposes of secret correspondence.] [Footnote 1115: Good Goddess.--Ver. 637. The debauched Clodius was detected as being present at these rites, in a female dress.] [Footnote 1116: The false key, too, tells.--Ver. 643. He plays upon the double meaning of the words, 'adultéra clavis,' which properly signifies 'a false key.'] [Footnote 1117: Even though.--Ver. 646. 'Even though you should have to go to the expense of providing the rich wines of Spain for the purpose.'] [Footnote 1118: Even she.--Ver. 663. He alludes to the accommodating lady mentioned in line 641.] [Footnote 1119: Has she filled.--Ver. 666. See his address to Cypassis, in the Amores, Book ii. El. viii.] [Footnote 1120: Lemnian dames.--Ver. 672. See the introduction to the Epistle from Hypsipyle to Jason.] [Footnote 1121: Cephaltis.--Ver. 695. This story is also related in the Seventh Book of the Metamorphoses.] [Footnote 1122: The quinces.--Ver. 705. These are called 'cydonia,' from Cydon, city of Crete.] [Footnote 1123: Cyllenian God.--Ver. 725. Cephalus was said to be the son of Mercury; but, according to one account, which is followed by Ovid in the Metamorphoses, Deioneus was his father.] [Footnote 1124: Her breath.--Ver. 746. See the corresponding passage in the Metamorphoses, Book vii. 1. 861. It was the custom for the nearest relative to catch the breath of the dying person in the mouth.] [Footnote 1125: With your fingers.--Ver. 755.. Perhaps he means in moderato quantities at a time, and not in whole handfuls. See the Note to the First Book, 1. 577.] [Footnote 1126: And do not first.--Ver. 757. He seems to irs two precepts here; first, they are not to eat so much at home as to take away all appetite at the banquet, as that would savour of affectation, and be an act of rudeness to the host. On the other hand, he warns them not to stuff as long as they are able, but rather to leave off with an appetite. The passage, however, is hopelessly corrupt, and is capable of other interpretations.] [Footnote 1127: Perform their duty.--Ver. 764. 'Constent,' literally. 'Will stand together.'] [Footnote 1128: The swans.--Ver. 899. He also alludes to them in the Metamorphoses, as drawing the car of Venus, though that office was more generally assigned by the Poets to doves.] END 
47678	----	provided by the Internet Archive REMEDIA A MORIS; or, THE REMEDY OF LOVE. By Ovid Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes, by Henry T. Riley 1885 REMEDIA A MORIS; or, THE REMEDY OF LOVE. |The God of Love had read the title and the name of this treatise, when he said, "War, I see, war is being meditated against me." Forbear, Cupid, to accuse thy Poet of such a crime; me, who so oft have borne thy standards with thee for my leader. I am no son of Tydeus, wounded by whom, [1201] thy mother returned into the yielding air with the steeds of Mars. Other youths full oft grow cool; I have ever loved; and shouldst thou inquire what I am doing even now, I am still in love. Besides, I have taught by what arts thou mayst be won; and that which is now a system, was an impulse before. Neither thee do I betray, sweet Boy, nor yet my own arts; nor has my more recent Muse unravelled her former work. If any one loves an object which he delights to love, enraptured, in his happiness, let him rejoice, and let him sail with prospering gales. But if any one impatiently endures the sway of some cruel fair, that he may not be undone, let him experience relief from my skill. Why has one person, tying up his neck [1202] by the tightened halter, hung, a sad burden, from the lofty beam? Why, with the hard iron, has another pierced his own entrails? Lover of peace, thou dost bear the blame of their deaths. He, who, unless he desists, is about to perish by a wretched passion, let him desist; and then thou wilt prove the cause of death to none. Besides, thou art a boy; and it becomes thee not to do aught but play. Play on; a sportive sway befits thy years. Far thou mayst use thy arrows, when drawn from the quiver for warfare; but thy weapons are free from deadly blood. Let thy stepfather Mars wage war both with the sword and the sharp lance; and let him go, as victor, blood-stained with plenteous slaughter. Do thou cherish thy mother's arts, which, in safety, we pursue; and by the fault of which no parent he comes bereft. Do thou cause the portals to be burst open in the broils of the night; and let many a chaplet cover the decorated doors. Cause the youths and the bashful damsels to meet in secret; and by any contrivance they can, let them deceive their watchful husbands. And at one moment, let the lover utter blandishments, at another, rebukes, against the obdurate door-posts; and, shut out, let him sing some doleful ditty. Contented with these tears, thou wilt be without the imputation of any death. Thy torch is not deserving to be applied to the consuming pile. These words said I. Beauteous Love waved his resplendent wings, and said to me, "Complete the work that thou dost design." Come, then, ye deceived youths, for my precepts; ye whom your passion has deceived in every way. By him, through whom you have learned how to love, learn how to be cured; for you, the same hand shall cause the wound and the remedy. The earth nourishes wholesome plants, and the same produces injurious ones; and full oft is the nettle the neighbour of the rose. That lance which once made a wound in the enemy, the son of Hercules, afforded a remedy [1203] for that wound. But whatever is addressed to the men, believe, ye fair, to be said to you as well; to both sides am I giving arms. If of these any are not suited to your use, still by their example they may afford much instruction. My useful purpose is to extinguish the raging flames, and not to have the mind the slave of its own imperfections. Phyllis would have survived, if she had employed me as her teacher; and along that road, by which nine times she went,[1204] she would have gone oftener still. And Dido, dying, would not have beheld from the summit of her tower the Dardanian ships giving their sails to the wind. Grief, too, would not have armed Medea, the mother against her own offspring; she who took vengeance on her husband, by the shedding of their united blood. Through my skill, Tereus, although Philomela did captivate him, would not, through his crimes, have been deserving to become a bird. [1204] Give me Pasiphaë for a pupil, at once she shall lay aside her passion for the bull; give me Phædra, the shocking passion of Phædra shall depart. Bring Paris back to us; Menelaus shall possess his Helen, and Pergamus shall not fall, conquered by Grecian hands. If impious Scylla had read my treatise, the purple lock, Nisus, would have remained upon thy head. With me for your guide, ye men, repress your pernicious anxieties; and onward let the bark proceed with the companions, me the pilot. At the time when you were learning how to love, Naso was to be studied; now, too, will the same Naso have to be studied by you. An universal assertor [1206] of liberty, I will relieve the breasts that are oppressed by their tyrants; do you show favour, each of you, to my liberating wand. [1207] Prophetic Phoebus, inventor of song, and of the healing art, I pray that the laurel may afford me its aid. Do thou shew favour both to the poet and to the physician; to thy guardianship is either care consigned. While still you may, and while moderate emotions influence your breast; if you repent, withhold your footsteps upon the very threshold. Tread under foot the hurtful seeds of the sudden malady, while they are still fresh; and let your steed, as he begins to go, refuse to proceed. For time supplies strength, time thoroughly ripens the young grapes; and it makes that into vigorous standing corn, which before was only blades of grass. The tree which affords its extending shade to those who walk beneath, was but a twig at the time when it was first planted. At that time, with the hand it could have been rooted from the surface of the earth; now, increased by its own powers, it is standing upon a large space. Examine with active perception, what sort of object it is, with which you are in love; and withdraw your neck from a yoke that is sure to gall. Resist the first advances; too late is a cure attempted, when through long hesitation the malady has waxed strong. But hasten, and do not postpone to a future moment; that which is not agreeable to-day, will to-morrow be still less so. Every passion is deceiving, and finds nutriment in delay. Each day's morrow is the best suited for liberty. You see but few rivers arise from great sources; most of them are multiplied by a collection of waters. If thou hadst at once perceived how great a sin thou wast meditating, thou wouldst not, Myrrha, have had thy features covered with bark. I have seen a wound, which at first was curable, when neglected receive injury from protracted delay. But because we are delighted to pluck the flowers of Venus, we are continually saying, "This will be done to-morrow just as well." In the meantime, the silent flames are gliding into the entrails; and the hurtful tree is sending its roots more deep. But if the time for early aid has now passed by, and an old passion is seated deeply in your captured breast, a greater labour is provided; but, because I am called in but late to the sick, he shall not be deserted by me. With unerring hand the hero, son of Peeas, [1208] ought at once to have cutout the part in which he was wounded. Still, after many a year, he is supposed, when cured, to have given a finishing hand to the warfare. I, who just now was hastening to dispel maladies at their birth, am now tardy in administering aid to you at a later moment. Either try, if you can, to extinguish the flames when recent; or when they have become exhausted by their own efforts. When frenzy is in full career, yield to frenzy in its career; each impulse presents a difficult access. The swimmer is a fool, who, when he can cross the stream by going down with it sideways, struggles to go straight against the tide. A mind impatient, and not yet manageable by any contrivance, rejects the words of an adviser, and holds them in contempt. More successfully, then, shall I attempt it when he shall now allow his wounds to be touched, and shall be accessible to the words of truthfulness. Who, but one bereft of understanding, would forbid a mother to weep at the death of her son? On such an occasion she is not to be counselled. When she shall have exhausted her tears, and have satisfied her afflicted feelings; that grief of hers will be capable of being soothed with words. The healing art is generally a work of opportunity; wine, administered at the proper time, is beneficial, and administered at an unsuitable time, is injurious. And, besides, you may inflame maladies and irritate them by checking them; if you do not combat them at the fitting moment.' Therefore, when you shall seem to be curable by my skill, take care, and by my precepts shun the first approaches of idleness. 'Tis that which makes you love, 'tis that which supports it, when once it has caused it: that is the cause and the nutriment of the delightful malady. If you remove all idleness, the bow of Cupid is broken, and his torch lies despised and without its light. As much as the plane-tree [1209] delights in wine, the multitude in the stream, and as much as the reed of the marsh in a slimy soil, so much does Venus love idleness. You who seek a termination of your passion, attend to your business; love gives way before business; then you will be safe. Inactivity, and immoderate slumbers under no control, gaming too, and the temples aching through much wine, take away all strength 'from the mind that is free from a wound. Love glides insidiously upon the unwary. That Boy is wont to attend upon slothfulness; he hates the busy. Give to the mind that is unemployed some task with which it may be occupied. There are the Courts, there are the laws, there are your friends for you to defend.[1210] Go into the ranks [1211] white with the civic gown; or else do you take up with the youthful duties of bloodstained Mars; soon will voluptuousness turn its back on you. Lo! the flying Parthian, [1212] a recent cause for a great triumph, is now beholding the arms of Caesar on his own plains. Conquer equally the arrows of Cupid and of the Parthians, and bring back a two-fold trophy to the Gods of your country. After Venus had once been wounded by the Ætolian [1213] spear, she entrusted wars to be waged by her lover. Do you enquire why Ægisthus became an adulterer? The cause is self-evident; he was an idler. Others were fighting at Ilium, with slowly prospering arms: the whole of Greece had transported thither her strength. If he would have given his attention to war, she was nowhere waging it; [1214] or if to the Courts of law, Argos was free from litigation. What he could, he did; that he might not be doing nothing, he fell in love. Thus does that Boy make his approaches, so does that Boy take up his abode. The country, too, soothes the feelings, and the pursuits of agriculture: any anxiety whatever may give way before this employment. Bid the tamed oxen place their necks beneath their burden, that the crooked ploughshare may wound the hard ground. Cover the grain of Ceres with the earth turned up, which the field may restore to you with bounteous interest. Behold the branches bending beneath the weight of the apples; how its own tree can hardly support the weight which it has produced. See the rivulets trickling along with their pleasing murmur; see the sheep, as they crop the fertile mead. Behold how the she-goats climb the rocks, and the steep crags; soon will they be bringing back their distended udders for their kids. The shepherd is tuning his song on the unequal reeds; the dogs, too, a watchful throng, are not far off. In another direction the lofty woods are resounding with lowings; and the dam is complaining that her calf is missing. Why name the time when the swarms fly from the yew trees, [1215] placed beneath them, that the honey-combs removed may relieve the bending osiers [1216] of their weight? Autumn affords its fruit; summer is beauteous with its harvests; spring produces flowers; winter is made cheerful by the fire. At stated periods the rustic pulls the ripened grape, and beneath his naked foot the juice flows out; at stated periods he binds up the dried hay, and clears the mowed ground with the wide toothed rake. You yourself may set the plant in the watered garden; you yourself may form the channels for the trickling stream. The grafting [1217] is now come; make branch adopt branch, and let one tree stand covered with the foliage of another. When once these delights have begun to soothe your mind, Love, robbed of his power, departs with flagging wings. Or do you follow the pursuit of hunting. Full oft has Venus, overcome by the sister of Phoebus, retreated in disgrace. Now follow the fleet hare with the quick-scented hound; now stretch your toils on the shady mountain ridge. Or else, alarm the timid deer with the variegated feather-foils; or let the boar fall, transfixed by the hostile spear. Fatigued, at night sleep takes possession of you, not thoughts of the fair; and with profound rest it refreshes the limbs. 'Tis a more tranquil pursuit, still it is a pursuit, on catching the bird, to win the humble prize, either with the net or with the bird-limed twigs; or else, to hide the crooked hooks of brass in morsels at the end, which the greedy fish may, to its destruction, swallow with its ravenous jaws. Either by these, or by other pursuits, must you by stealth be beguiled by yourself, until you shall have learnt how to cease to love. Only do you go, although you shall be detained by strong ties, go far away, and commence your progress upon a distant journey. You will weep when the name of your forsaken mistress shall recur to you: and many a time will your foot linger in the middle of your path. But the less willing you shall be to go, remember the more surely to go; persist; and compel your feet to hasten, however unwillingly. And don't you fear showers; nor let the Sabbaths [1218] of the stranger detain you; nor yet the Allia, [1219] so well known for its disasters. And don't enquire how many miles you have travelled, but how many are yet remaining for you; and invent no excuses, that you may remain near at hand. Neither do you count the hours, nor oft look back on Rome: but fly; still is [1220] the Parthian secure in flight from his foe. Some one may style my precepts harsh: I confess that they are harsh; but that you may recover, you will have to endure much that is to be lamented. Full oft, when ill, I have drunk of bitter potions, though reluctantly; and when I entreated for it, food has been refused me. To cure your body, you will have to endure iron and fire; and though thirsty, you will not refresh your parched lips with water. That you may be healed in spirit, will you refuse to submit to anything? Inasmuch as that part is ever of greater value than the body. But still, most difficult is the access to my art; and the one labour is how to endure the first moments of separation. Do you perceive how the yoke, at first, galls the oxen when caught? how the new girth hurts the flying steed? Perhaps you will be loth to depart from your paternal home. But still you will depart; then you will be longing to return. No paternal home, but [1221] the love of your mistress, cloaking its own faultiness by specious words, will be calling you back. When once you have gone, the country, and your companions, and the long journey will afford a thousand solaces for your sorrow. And do not think it is enough to depart; be absent for a long time, until the flame has lost its power and the ashes are without their fire. If you shall hasten to return, except with your judgment strengthened, rebellious Love will be wielding his cruel arms against you. Suppose that, although you shall have absented yourself, you return both hungry and thirsty; will not all this delay even act to your detriment? If any one supposes that the noxious herbs of the Hæmonian lands and magic arts can be of avail, let him see to it. That is the old-fashioned method of sorcery; my Apollo, in his hallowed lines, is pointing out an innoxious art. Under my guidance, no ghost shall be summoned to come forth [1222] from the tomb; no hag with her disgusting spells shall cleave the ground. No crops of corn shall remove from one field into another; nor shall the disk of Phoebus suddenly be pale. Tiberinus [1223] shall flow into the waves of the ocean just as he is wont; just as she is wont, shall the Moon be borne by her snow-White steeds. No breasts shall lay aside their cares dispelled by enchantments; vanquished by virgin sulphur, [1224] love shall not take to flight. Colchian damsel, what did the herbs of the Phasian land avail thee, when thou didst desire to remain in thy native home? Of what use, Circe, were the herbs of thy mother Persia to thee, when the favouring breeze bore away the barks of Neritos? [1225] Every thing didst thou do that thy crafty guest might not depart; still did he give his filled sails to an assured flight.. Every thing didst thou do that the fierce flames might not consume thee; still a lasting passion settled deep in thy reluctant breast. Thou, who wast able to change men into a thousand shapes, wast not able to change the bent of thy own inclination. Thou art said to have detained the Lulicillan chief, [1226] when now he wished to depart, even in these words: "I do not now entreat that which, as I remember, I was at first wont to hope for, that thou shouldst consent to be my husband. And still, I did seem worthy to be thy wife, since I was a Goddess, since I was the daughter of the Sun. Hasten not away, I entreat thee; a little delay, as a favour, do I ask. What less can he prayed for by my entreaties? Thou seest, too, that the seas are troubled; and of them thou oughtst to stand in dread. Before long, the winds will be more favourable to thy sails. What is the cause of thy flight? No Troy is rising here anew; no fresh Rhesus is calling his companions to arms. Here love abides, here peace exists; during which I alone am fatally wounded; the whole, too, of my realms shall be under thy sway." She thus spoke; Ulysses unmoored his bark; the South winds bore away her unavailing words together with his sails. Circe was inflamed, and had recourse to her wonted arts; and still by them her passion was not diminished. Come, then, whoever you are, that require aid from my skill, away with all belief in spells and charms. If some weighty reason shall detain you in the City mistress of the world, hear what is my advice in the City. He is the best assertor of his liberties who bursts the chains that gall his breast, and once for all ceases to grieve. If any one has so much courage, even I myself will admire him, and I shall say, "This man stands in no need of my admonitions." You who with difficulty are learning how not to love the object which you love; who are not able, and still would wish to be able, will require to be instructed by me. Full oft recall to your remembrance the deeds of the perfidious fair one, and place all your losses before your eyes.' Say, "This thing and that of mine does she keep; and not content with that spoliation, she has put up for sale [1227] my paternal home. Thus did she swear to me; thus having sworn, did she deceive me. How oft has she suffered me to be before her doors! She herself loves other men; by me she loathes to be loved. Some hawker, [1228] alas! enjoys those nights which she grants not to myself." Let all these points ferment throughout your entire feelings; repeat them over and over hence seek the first germs of your hate. And would that you could be even eloquent upon them! Do' you only grieve; of your own accord you will be fluent. My attentions were lately paid to a certain fair one; to my passion she was not favourably disposed. Sick, like Podalirius, [1229] I cured myself with the proper herbs, and (I confess it) though a physician, to my shame, I was sick. It did me good to be ever dwelling upon the failings of my mistress; and that, when done, often proved wholesome for me. "How ill formed," I used to say, "are the legs of my mistress!" and yet, to confess the truth, they were not. "How far from beautiful are the arms of my mistress!" and yet, to confess the truth, they were. "How short she is!" and yet she was not; "How much does she beg of her lover?" From that arose the greatest cause of my hatred. There are good qualities, too, near akin to bad ones; by reason of confounding one for the other, [1230] a virtue has often borne the blame for a vice. So far as you can, depreciate the endowments of the fair one, and impose upon your own judgment by the narrow line that separates good from bad. If she is embonpoint, let her be called flabby, if she is swarthy, black. Leanness may be charged against her slender form. She, too, who is not coy may be pronounced bold; and if she is discreet, she may be pronounced a prude. Besides, in whatever accomplishment your mistress is deficient, ever be entreating her, in complimentary accents, to turn her attention to the same. If any damsel is without a voice, request her to sing; if any fair one does not know how to move her hands [1231] with gracefulness, make her dance. Is she imeouth in her language, make her talk frequently to you; has she not learnt how to touch the strings, call for the lyre. Does she walk heavily, make her walk; does a swelling bosom cover all her breast, let no stomacher [1232] conceal it. If her teeth are bad, tell her something for her to laugh at: is she tender-eyed, relate something for her to weep at. It will be of use, too, for you, early in the morning suddenly, to turn your hasty steps towards your mistress, when she has dressed for no one. By dress are we enchanted; by gems and gold all things are concealed; the fair one herself is but a very trifling part of herself. Often, amid objects so many, you may inquire what it is that you love. By this Ægis [1233] does Love, amid his riches, deceive the eye. Come unexpectedly; in safety to yourself you will find her unarmed; to her misfortune, through her own failings will she fall. Still, it is not safe to trust too much to this precept, for without the resources of art a graceful form captivates many. At the moment, too, when she shall be smearing her face with the cosmetics laid on it, you may come in the presence of your mistress, and don't let shame prevent you. You will find there boxes, and a thousand colours of objects; and you will see cesypum, the ointment of the fleece, [1234] trickling down and flowing upon her heated bosom. These drugs, Phineus, smell like thy tables; [1235] not once only has sickness been caused by this to my stomach. Now will I disclose to you, what should be done in the moments of your transport; from every quarter must love be put to flight. Many of them, indeed, I am ashamed to mention; but do you conceive in your imagination even more than lies in my words. For, of late, certain persons have been blaming my treatises, in the opinion of whom my Muse is wanton. If I only please, and so long as I am celebrated all the world over, let this person or that attack my work just as he likes. Envy detracts from the genius of mighty Homer; whoever thou art, from him, Zoilus, [1236] dost thou derive thy fame. Sacrilegious hands have also mangled thy poems, [1237] thou, under whose guidance Troy brought hither her conquered Divinities. Envy takes a lofty flight; on high the breezes sweep along; the lightnings hurled by the right hand of Jove take a lofty range. But you, whoever you are, whom my freedom offends, require, if you are wise, each subject for its proper numbers. [1238] Bold warfare delights to be related in the Mæonian measure. What place can there be there for _gentle_ dalliance? The Tragedians speak in lofty tones; anger befits the buskin of Tragedy; the sock _of Comedy_ [1239] must be furnished from the manners of every-day life. The free Iambic measure may be launched against the hostile foe; whether it be rapid, or whether it drag on its foot [1240] at its close. Soft Elegy should sing of the Loves with their quivers, and the sprightly mistress ought to sport according to her own inclination. Achilles is not to be celebrated in the numbers of Callimachus; Cydippe [1241] belongs not, Homer, to thy song. Who could endure Thais performing the part of Andromache? [1242] If any one were to act Thais in the tones of Andromache, he would be making a mistake. Thais belongs to my purse; licence unrestrained belongs to me. Nought have I to do with the fillet _of chastity_; Thais belongs to my pursuit. If my Muse is befitting a sportive subject, I have conquered, and on a false charge she has been accused. Burst thyself, gnawing Envy; now have I gained great fame;'twill be still greater, let it only proceed with the steps with which it has commenced. But you are making too great haste; let me only live, you shall have more to complain of; my intentions, too, embrace full many a poem. For it gives me delight, and my zeal increases with my eagerness for fame; at the beginning of the ascent only is my steed now panting. Elegy acknowledges that to me she is as much indebted as is the noble Epic [1243] to Virgil. Thus far do I give an answer to Envy; tighten the reins with more vigour, and speed onward, Poet, in thy circle.= ```Ergo ubi concubitus, et opus juvenile petetur; ````Et prope promissæ tempora noctis erunt; ```Gaudia ne dominæ, pleno si pectore sûmes, ````Te capiant: ineas quamlibet ante velim. ```Quamlibet invenias, in qua tibi prima voluptas ````Desinat: a primâ proxima segnis erit. ```Sustentata Venus gratissima: frigore soles, ````Sole juvant umbræ: grata fit unda siti. ```Et pu`det, et dicam, Venerem quoque junge figurâ, ````Quâ minime jungi quamque decere putes.= And 'tis no hard matter to do this; few women confess the truth to themselves; and there is no point in which they think that they are unbecoming. Then, too, I recommend you to open all the windows, and to remark in full daylight the limbs that are unsightly. But as soon as your transports have come to a termination, and the body with the mind lies entirely exhausted; while you are feeling regret, and wishing that you had formed a connexion with no female, and are seeming to yourself that for a long time you will have nothing to do with another; then note in your memory whatever blemishes there are in her person; and keep your eyes always fixed upon her faulty points. Perhaps some one will pronounce these matters trivial (for indeed they are so); but things which, singly, are of no avail, when united are of benefit. The little viper kills with its sting the bulky bull; by the dog that is not large, full oft is the boar held fast. Do you only fight with a number of them, and unite my precepts together; from so many there will be a large amount. But since there are so many ways and attitudes, every point is not to be yielded to my recommendations. Perhaps, in the opinion of another, that will be a fault, by the doing of which your feelings may not be hurt. Because this person, perchance, has seen the charms of the naked person exposed, his passion, which was in mid career, stops short: another, when his mistress has received him, has been shocked at some sight which creates disgust. Alas! if these things could influence you, you are trifling; torches but luke-warm have been influencing your breast. That Boy would more strongly draw his bended bow: you, ye wounded throng, will need more a substantial aid. What think you of the man who lies concealed, and beholds sights that usage itself forbids him to see? May the Gods forbid that I should advise any one to adopt such a course! Though it should prove of use, still it should not be tried. I advise you, also, to have two mistresses at the same time. If a person can have still more, he is more secure. When the feelings, sundered into two parts, are wavering in each direction, the one passion diminishes the strength of the other. By many streamlets are great rivers lessened, and the exhausted flame, the fuel withdrawn, goes out. But one anchor does not sufficiently hold the waxed ships; a single hook is not enough for the flowing stream. He who beforehand has provided for himself a twofold solace, has already proved the victor in the lofty citadel. But, by you, who, to your misfortune, have devoted yourself to but one mistress, now, at all events, a new passion must be sought. For Procris [1244] did Minos abandon his flame for Pasiphaë; overcome by the wife from Ida, [1245] the first wife gave way. Calirrhoë, received to a share of his couch, caused the brother of [1246] Amphilochus not always to be in love with the daughter of Phegeus. Oeuone, too, would have retained Paris to her latest years, if she had not been supplanted by her Aebalian rival. The beauty of his wife would have pleased the Odrysian [1247] tyrant, but superior were the charms of her imprisoned sister. Why occupy myself with illustrations, the number of which exhausts me? Every passion is conquered by a fresh successor. With greater fortitude does a mother regret one out of many, than she who, [1248] weeping, exclaims: "Thou wast my only one." But lest, perchance, you should suppose that I am framing new laws for you, (and would that the glory of the discovery were my own!) the son of Atreus perceived this; for what could he not see, under whose command was the whole of Greece? He, victorious, loved Chryseis, captured by his own arms; but her aged parent foolishly went crying in every direction. Why dost thou weep, troublesome old man? They are well suited for each other. By thy affection, foolish man, thou art doing an injury to thy child. After Calchas, secure under the protection of Achilles, had ordered [1249] her to be restored, and she was received back to the house of her father: "There is," said the son of Atreus, "another fair one very closely resembling her beauty; and if the first syllable [1250] would allow of it, the name would, be the same; Achilles, if he were wise, would give her up to me of his own accord; if not, he will experience my might. But if any one of you, ye Greeks, disapproves of this deed;'tis something to wield the sceptre with a powerful hand. For if I am your king, and if she does not pass her nights with me, then let Thersites succeed to my sway." Thus he said; and he had her as his great consolation for her predecessor; and the first passion was entombed in a new passion. By the example, then, of Agamemnon, admit a fresh flame, that your love may be severed in two directions. If you inquire where you are to find them? Go and read through my treatises on the art of Love; then may your bark speed on, well freighted with the fair. But if my precepts are of any avail, if by my lips Apollo teaches aught that is advantageous to mortals; although, to your misfortune, you should be burning in the midst of Ætna, take care to appear to your mistress more cold than ice. Pretend, too, that you are unhurt; if, perchance, you should grieve at all, let her not perceive it; and laugh when, within yourself, you could have wept. I do not bid you to sever your passion in the very midst; the laws of my sway are not so harsh as that. Pretend to be that which you are not, and feign that your ardour is renounced; so, in reality, you will become what you are practising to be. Often, that I might not drink, I have wished to appear asleep; [1251] while I have so seemed, I have surrendered my conquered eyes to slumber. I have laughed at his being deceived, who was pretending that he was in love; and the fowler has fallen into his own nets. Through habit does love enter the mind; through habit is it forgotten. He who will, be able to pretend that he is unhurt, will be unhurt. Does she tell you to come on a night appointed, do you come. Should you come, and the gate be closed; put up with it. Neither utter blandishments, nor yet utter reproaches against the door-post, and do not lay down your sides upon the hard threshold. The next morning comes; let your words be without complaints, and bear no signs of grief upon your features. She will soon lay aside her haughtiness, when she shall see you growing cool: this advantage, too, will you be gaining from my skill. And yet do you deceive yourself as well, and let not this [1252] be the end of your love. Full oft does the horse struggle against the reins when presented. Let your object lie concealed; that will come to pass which you shall not avow. The nets that are too easily seen, the bird avoids. Let her not congratulate herself so much that she can hold you in contempt; take courage, that to your courage she may yield. Her door is open, perchance; though she should call you back, do you go out. A night is named; doubt whether you can come on the night appointed.'Tis an easy thing to be able to endure this; unless you are deficient in wisdom, you may more readily derive amusement from one more condescending. And can any person call my precepts harsh? Why, I am acting the part of a reconciler even. For as some dispositions vary, I am varying my precepts as well. There are a thousand forms of the malady; a thousand forms of cure will there be. Some bodies are with difficulty healed by the sharp iron: potions and herbs have proved an aid to many. You are too weak, and cannot go away, and are held in bonds, and cruel Love is treading your neck beneath his foot. Cease your struggling; let the winds bring back your sails; and whither the tide calls you, thither let your oars proceed. That thirst, parched by which you are perishing, must be satisfied by you; I permit it; now may you drink in the midst of the stream. But drink even more than what your appetite requires; make the water you have swallowed flow back from your filled throat. Always enjoy the company of your mistress, no one preventing it; let her occupy your nights, her your days. Make satiety your object; satiety puts an end to evils even. And even now, when you think you can do without her, do you remain with her. Until you have fully cloyed yourself, and satiety removes your passion, let it not please you to move from the house you loathe. That love, too, which distrust nurtures, is of long endurance; should you wish to lay this aside, lay aside your apprehensions. Who fears that she may not be his own, and that some one may rob him of her, that person will be hardly curable with the skill of Machaon. Of two sons, a mother generally loves him the most, for whose return she feels apprehensions, because he is bearing arms. There is, near the Collinian [1253] gate, a venerable temple; the lofty Ervx gave this temple its name. There, is Lethæan Love, who heals the mind; and in cold water does he place his torches. There, too, in their prayers, do the youths pray for forgetfulness; and any fair one, if she has been smitten by an obdurate man. He thus said to me; (I am in doubt whether it was the real Cupid, or whether a vision; but I think it was a vision.) "O Naso, thou who dost sometimes cause, sometimes relieve, the passion full of anxiety, add this to thy precepts as well. Let each person recall to mind his own mishaps; let him dismiss love; to all has the Deity assigned more or less of woes. He that stands in awe of the Puteal [1244] and of Janus, [1245] and of the Calends swiftly coming, let the borrowed sum of money be his torment. He whose father is harsh, though other things should prove to his wish, before his eyes must his harsh father be placed. Another one is living wretchedly with a wife poorly dowried, let him think that his wife is an obstacle to his fortune. You have a vineyard, on a generous soil, fruitful in choice grapes; be in dread lest the shooting grape should be blighted. Another has à ship on its return home; [1246] let him be always thinking that the sea is boisterous, and that the sea-shore is polluted by his losses. Let a son in service [1247] be the torment of one, a marriageable daughter of yourself. And who is there that has not a thousand causes for anxiety? That, Paris, thou mightst hate thine own _cause of sorrow_, thou oughtst to have placed the deaths of thy brothers before thine eyes." Still more was he saying, when the childish form deserted my placid slumber, if slumber only it was. What am I to do? In the midst of the waves Palinurus [1258] deserts my bark; I am forced to enter on an unknown track. Whoever you are that love, avoid solitary spots; solitary spots are injurious. Whither are you flying? In the throng you may be in greater safety. You have no need of lonely places (lonesome spots increase the frenzy); the multitude will bring you aid. You will be sad, if you are alone; and before your eyes will stand the form of your forsaken mistress, as though her own self. For this reason is the night more melancholy than the hours of sunshine; the throng of your companions is then wanting to moderate your affliction. And fly not from conversation, nor let your door be closed; and do not, in tears, hide your countenance in the shade. Always have a Pylades to console his Orestes; this, too, will prove no slight advantage in friendship. What but the solitary woods injured Phyllis? The cause of her death is well known; she was without a companion. She was going, just as the barbarous multitude celebrating the triennial [1259] sacrifice to the Edonian [1260] Bacchus, is wont to go, with dishevelled locks. And at one time, as far as she could, she looked out upon the wide ocean; at another, in her weariness, she lay her down upon the sandy shore. "Perfidious Demophoon!" she cried aloud to the deaf waves; and her words, as she grieved, were interrupted by sobs. There was a narrow path, a little darkened by the long shadows, along which, full oft, did she turn her steps towards the sea. Her ninth journey was being paced by her in her wretchedness. "See thou to this," says she; and, turning pale, she eyes her girdle. She looks, too, on the boughs; she hesitates, and she recoils at that which she dares to do; and she shudders, and then she raises her fingers to her throat. Sithonian damsel, I would that, then, at least, thou hadst not been alone; ye woods, your foliage lost, [1261] you would not then have lamented Phyllis. Ye men that are offended by your mistresses, ye fair that are affronted by the men, from the example of Phyllis, shun too lonesome spots. A youth had done whatever my Muse recommended him, and was almost in the haven of his safety. When he came amid the eager lovers, he relapsed, and Love resumed the weapons which he had laid aside. If any one of you is loving, and does not wish to do so; do you take care, and avoid the contagion. This is often wont to injure the herds as well. While the eyes are looking on the wounded, they themselves are also wounded; many things, too, injure the body by infection. Sometimes water flows from a river that runs near into a spot parched with its dry clods. Love flows on concealedly, if you do not withdraw from him who loves; and we are all of us a set clever at running that risk. A second one had now been healed; his nearness to her affected him. He proved unable to endure meeting with his mistress. The scar, not sufficiently closed, changed again into the former wound; and my skill met with no success. The fire next door is guarded against with difficulty;'tis prudent to keep away from the neighbouring haunts. Let not that Portico which is wont to receive her as she walks, receive you as well; and let not the same attentions now be paid. Of what use is it to rekindle the feelings, that have cooled, by my advice? Another region must be resorted to, if you can do so. When hungry, you will not be easily restrained, the table being laid; the gushing water, too, provokes excessive thirst.'Tis no easy matter to hold back the bull when he sees the heifer; on seeing the mare, the high-mettled steed is always neighing after her. When this you have done, when at last you reach the shore, 'tis not enough for you to have abandoned her. Both her sister and her mother must bid you farewell, her nurse, too, her confidant, and whatever other connexion there shall be of your mistress. And let no servant come; and let no little handmaid, feigning to weep, say to you in the name of her mistress, "Hail!" [1262] Nor yet, though you should desire to know, should you ask how she is doing. Defer it; the restraint of the tongue will be to its own advantage. You, too, who are telling the cause of your liason being discontinued, and are relating many things to be complained of about your mistress; forbear to complain; so, by being silent, you will be taking a better revenge; until she shall vanish from your regrets. And I would rather that you were silent, than that you should talk about having cut her. The man who is too often saying to many a one, "I love her not," is still in love. But with greater certainty is the flame extinguished by degrees, than all of a sudden; cease gradually, and you will be safe. The torrent is wont to run with greater violence than the uninterrupted river; but yet the one is a short-lived, the other a lasting, stream. Let love escape you, and let it depart vanishing into thin air, and let it die out by degrees imperceptible. But 'tis a crime to hate the fair one so lately loved; such a termination as that is befitting a brutal disposition.'Tis enough not to care for her; he who terminates his love with hate, either still loves on, or with difficulty will cease to be wretched. 'Tis a shocking thing for a man and a woman so lately united to be enemies at once; the Appian [1263] Goddess herself would not approve of such quarrels as those. Full oft do men accuse their mistresses, and still they love them: where no discord arises, Love released, through advice, betakes himself away. By chance I was in the company [1264] of a young man; a litter contained his mistress; all his expressions were shocking from his frightful threats; and now, about to cite her at law, he said, "Let her come out of the litter!" She did come out; on seeing his mistress, he was dumb. His hands both fell, and his two tablets from out of his hands. He rushed into her em braces; and "thus," said he, "do you prove the conqueror.' 'Tis more safe, and more becoming, to depart in peace, than from the chamber to repair to the litigious Courts. The presents which you have given her, request her to keep without litigation; trivial losses are wont to be of great benefit. But if any accident should bring you together, keep those arms of defence which I am giving, firmly fixed in your mind. Then, there is need of arms; here, most valorous man, use your energies. By your weapon must Penthesilea be overcome. Now let the rival, now the obdurate threshold, when you were her lover, recur to you; now your words uttered in vain in presence of the Gods. Neither arrange your hair, because you are about to approach her; nor let your robe be seen with loose folds [1265] upon the bosom. Have no care to be pleasing to the alienated fair one; now make her to be one of the multitude so far as you are concerned. But I will tell what especially stands in the way of my endeavours; his own example instructing each individual. We cease to love by slow degrees, because we hope to be loved ourselves; and while each one is satisfying himself, we are ever a credulous set. But do you believe that, in her oaths, neither words (for what is there more deceptive than them?) nor the immortal Deities have any weight. Take care, too, not to be moved by the tears of the fair; they have instructed their eyes how to weep. By arts innumerable are the feelings of lovers laid siege to; just as the rock that is beaten on every side by the waves of the sea. And do not disclose the reasons why you would prefer a separation, nor tell her what you take amiss; still, to yourself, ever grieve on. And don't recount her failings, lest she should extenuate them. You yourself will prove indulgent; so that her cause will prove better than your own cause. He that is silent, is strong in his resolution; he that utters many reproaches to the fair one, asks for himself to be satisfied by her justification. I would not venture, [1266] after the example of him of Dulichium, to dip the vengeful arrows, nor the glowing torches, in the stream; I shall not clip the empurpled wings of the Boy, the God of Love; nor through my skill shall his hallowed bow be unstrung. 'Tis in accordance with prudence, whatever I sing. Give heed to me as I sing; and Phoebus, giver of health, as thou art wont, be thou propitious to my attempts. Phoebus is propitious; his lyre sounds; his quiver resounds. By his signs do I recognize the God; Phoebus is propitious. Compare the fleece that has been dyed in the cauldrons of Amyclæ [1267] with the Tyrian purple; the former will be but dull. Do you, too, compare your charmers with the beauteous fair; each one will begin to be ashamed of his own mistress. Both Juno and Pallas may have seemed beauteous to Paris: but Venus surpassed them both when compared with herself. And not the appearance only; compare the manners and the accomplishments as well; only let not your passion prejudice your judgment. What I shall henceforth sing is but trifling; but trifling as it is, it has proved of service to many; among whom I myself was one. Take care not to read over again the letters that you have kept of the caressing fair one: letters, when read over again, shake even a firm determination. Put the whole of them (though unwillingly you should put them) into the devouring flames; and say, "May this prove the funeral pile of my passion." The daughter of Thestius [1268] burned her son Meleager afar off by means of the billet. Will you, with hesitation, commit the words of perfidy to the flames? If you can, remove her waxen portrait [1269] as well. Why be moved by a dumb likeness? By this means was Laodamia undone. Many localities, too, have bad effects: fly from the spots that were conscious of your embraces; a thousand grounds for sorrow do they contain. Here she has been; here she has laid; in that chamber have we slept; here, in the voluptuous night, has she yielded to me her embraces. By recollection, love is excited afresh, and the wound renewed is opened; a trifling cause is injurious to the sickly. As, if you were to touch ashes almost cold with sulphur, they would rekindle, and, from a small one, a very great fire would be produced; so, unless you avoid whatever renews love, the flame will be kindled afresh, which just now was not existing. The Argive ships would fain have fled from Caphareus, [1270] and from thee, old man, that didst avenge thy woes with the flames. The daughter of Nisus [1271] past by, the cautious mariner rejoices. Do you avoid the spots which have proved too delightful for you. Let these be your Syrtes; avoid these as your Acroceraunia; [1272] here does the ruthless Charybdis vomit forth and swallow down the waves. Some things there are which cannot be recommended at the bidding of any one; still, the same, if happening by chance, are often wont to be of service. Had Phædra lost her wealth, thou wouldst, Neptune, have spared thy descendant; [1273] nor would the bull, sent by his ancestor, have startled the steeds. Had you made the Gnossian [1274] damsel poor, she would have loved with prudence. Voluptuous passion is nourished by opulence. Why was there no one to court Hecale, [1275] no one to court Iras? [1276] It was because the one was in want, the other a pauper. Poverty has nothing by which to pamper its passion; still, this is not of so much consequence, that you should desire to be poor. But let it be of so much consequence to you, as not to be indulging yourself with the Theatres, until Love has entirely departed from your liberated breast. The harps, and the pipes, and the lyres, soften the feelings; the voices, too, and the arms, moved to their proper time. There, everlastingly, the parts of supposed lovers are being acted [1277] in the dance; by his skill, the actor teaches you what to avoid, and what is serviceable. Unwillingly must I say it: meddle not with the amorous Poets; unnaturally do I myself withhold my own productions. Avoid Callimachus; no enemy is he to Love; and together with Callimachus, thou, too, bard of Cos, [1278] art injurious. Beyond a doubt, Sappho has rendered me more lenient to my mistress; and the Teian Muse has imparted manners far from austere. Who can read in safety the lines of Tibullus, or thine, thou, whose sole subject Cynthia was? Who, after reading Gallus, could retire with obdurate feelings? Even my own lines have tones indescribably sweet. Unless Apollo, the inspirer of my work, is deceiving his bard, a rival is the especial cause of our torments. But do you refrain from conjuring up to yourself any rival; and believe that she lies alone upon her couch. Orestes loved Hermione [1279] more intensely for that very reason; because she had begun to belong to another man. Why, Menelaiis, dost thou grieve? Without thy wife thou didst go to Crete; and thou couldst, at thy ease, be absent from thy spouse. Soon as Paris has carried her off, then at last thou couldst not do without thy wife; through the passion of another was thine own increased. This, too, did Achilles lament, in the case of the daughter of Brises, when taken away from him, that she was administering to the pleasures of the couch of the son of Plisthenes. [1280] And not without reason, [1281] believe me, did he lament. The son of Atreus did that, which if he had not done, he would have been disgracefully torpid. At least, I should have done so, and 1 am not any wiser than he. That was the especial reward for the ill-will he got. For, inasmuch as he swore by his sceptre, that the daughter of Brises had never been touched by him; 'tis clear that he did not think [1282] his sceptre was the Gods. May the Deities grant that you may be able to pass the threshold of the mistress that you have forsaken; and that your feet may aid your determination. And you will be able; do you only wish to adhere to your purpose. Now it is necessary to go with boldness, now to put spur to the swift steed. Believe that in that cave are the Lotophagi, [1283] in that the Syrens; add sail to your oars. The man, too, who being your rival, you formerly took it amiss; I would have you cease to hold him in the place of an enemy. But, at least, though the hatred should still exist, salute him. When now you shall be able to embrace him, you will be cured. That I may perform all the duties of a physician, behold! I will tell you what food to avoid, or what to adopt. The Bauman [1284] onions, or those sent you from the Libyan shores, or whether those that come from Megara, [1285] will all prove injurious. And 'tis no less proper to avoid the lustful rocket, and whatever else provokes our bodies to lust. To more advantage may you use rue that sharpens the sight, [1286] and whatever guards our bodies against lust. Do you enquire what I would advise you about the gifts of Bacchus? You will be satisfied thereon by my precepts sooner than you expect. Wine incites the feelings to lust, unless you take it in great quantities, and, drenched with much liquor, your senses become stupefied. By wind is fire kindled, by wind is it extinguished. A gentle breeze nourishes flame, a stronger one puts it out. Either let there be no drunkenness, or to so great an extent as to remove your anxieties; if there is any medium between the two, it is injurious. This work have I completed; present the garlands to my wearied bark. I have reached the harbour, whither my course was directed. Both females and males, healed by my lays, to the Poet ere long will you be fulfilling your duteous vows. FOOTNOTES [Footnote 1201: Wounded by whom.--Ver. 5. He alludes to the wound received by Venus from Diomedes, the son of Tydeus.] [Footnote 1202: Tying up his neck.--Ver. 17. He probably alludes to the unfortunate end of the passion of Iphis for Anaxarete, which is related at the close of the Fourteenth Book of the Metamorphoses.] [Footnote 1203: A remedy.--Ver. 47. Telephus, the son of Hercules and Autre, having been wounded by the spear of Achilles, was cured by the application of the rust of the same weapon.] [Footnote 1204: Nine times she went.--Ver. 56. See the Epistle of Phyllis to Demophoa.] [Footnote 1205: Become a bird.--Ver. 62. See the Metamorphoses, Book vi.] [Footnote 1206: Assertor.--Ver. 73. This word was properly applied to one who laid his hands on a slave, and asserted his freedom. By the Laws of the 'Twelve Tables,' he was required to give security for his appearance in an action by the master of the slave, to the amount of fifty 'asses,' and no more.] [Footnote 1207: Liberating wand.--Ver. 74. See the Last Book, 1. 615 and the Note.] [Footnote 1208: Son of Poeas.--Ver. 111. See the Metamorphoses, Book x. L 45, and the Note.] [Footnote 1209: Plane-tree.--Ver. 141. The shade of this tree was much valued as a place of resort for convivial parties. Wine was sometimes poured upon its roots.] [Footnote 1210: To defend.--Ver. 151. See the Fasti, Book i. 1. 22, and the Note.] [Footnote 1211: Into the ranks.--Ver. 152. He recommends the idle man to become a candidate for public honours: on which occasion, the party canvassing wore a white 'toga,' whence he was called 'candidatus,' literally, 'one clothed in white.'] [Footnote 1212: Flying Parthian.--Ver. 155. See the Art of Love, Book i. 1. 177, and the Note.] [Footnote 1213: Ætolian.--Ver. 159. Ætolia was the native country of Diomedes.] [Footnote 1214: Waging it.--Ver. 165. He might have gone to Troy, and taken part in that war; unless, indeed, as Ovid hints in another passage, his intrigue did not commence with Clyteinnestra till after Troy had fallen, and Cassandra had become the captive of Agememnon.] [Footnote 1215: Fly from the yew trees.--Ver. 185. 'Fumos,' 'smoke,' is a better reading here than 'taxos,' 'yews,' inasmuch as the swarm of bees would be driven away by smoke, but not by the yew, which was not noxious to the swarm, though it was thought to make the honey of a poisonous nature, or bitter, according to Pliny. See the Amores, B. i. El. xii. 1. 10, and the Note.] [Footnote 1216: Bending osiers.--Ver. 186. The beehives, if stationary, were made of brick, or baked cow dung; if moveable, they were made from a hollow block of wood, cork, bark, earthenware, and, as in the present instance, wicker-work, or osier. Those of cork were deemed the best, and those of earthenware the worst, as being most susceptible to the variations of the temperature.] [Footnote 1217: The grafting.--Ver. 195. The process of engrafting was performed in the spring. * Feather-foils.--Ver. 203. See the Fasti, B. v. L 173, and the Note.] [Footnote 1218: Nor let the Sabbaths.'--Ver. 219. It is supposed that the Romans in some measure imitated the Jews in the observance of their Sabbath, by setting apart every seventh day for the worship of particular Deities. See the Art of Love, Book i. lines 76 and 416, and the Notes.] [Footnote 1219: Allia.--Ver. 220. See the Art of Love, Book i. 1. 413; and the Ibis, 1. 221, and the Notes.] [Footnote 1220: Still is.--Ver. 224. By the use of the word 'adhuc,' 'still,' or 'up to this time,' he intends to pay a compliment to Augustus, by implying that they will not long remain unconquered.] [Footnote 1221: Paternal home.--Ver. 239. Literally, 'paternal Lar.' On the Lares, see the Fasti, Book i. 1. 136; and Book v. 1. 140, and the Notes.] [Footnote 1222: To come forth.--Ver. 250. See the Amores, Book i. El. viii. 1. 17, 18, and the Note. This achievement is similar to that performed by the witch of Endor, if, indeed, she did not impose on the unhappy Saul, and tell him that the spirit of Samuel appeared, when that really was not the case.] [Footnote 1223: Tiberinus.--Ver. 257. See the Fasti, Book ii. L 389, and the Note. Also Book iv. 1. 47; the Ibis, 1. 516; and the Metamorphoses, Book xiv. 1. 614.] [Footnote 1224: Virgin sulphur.--Ver. 260. See the Art of Love, Book ii. 1. 329, and the Note.] [Footnote 1225: Neritos.--Ver; 264. This island formed part of the realms of Ulysses.] [Footnote 1226: Dulichian chief.--Ver. 272. Dulichian was one of the Echinades, a group of islands on the western side of the Peloponnesus, and was subject to Ulysses. See the Metamorphoses, Book viii. 1. 590, and the Note.] [Footnote 1227: Put up for sale.--Ver. 302. Through her extravagance.] [Footnote 1228: Some hawker.--Ver. 306. See the Art of Love, Book i. 1. 421, and the Note. Being mostly liberated slaves, the 'institores' were looked upon with great contempt by the Romans.] [Footnote 1229: Podaurius.--Ver. 313. See the Art of Love, Book ii. 1. 735, and the Note.] [Footnote 1230: Confounding one for the other.--Ver. 323. 'Errore sub illo.' Literally, 'under that mistake.'] [Footnote 1231: Move her hands.--Ver. 334 He alludes to the gestures used in dancing.] [Footnote 1232: Stomacher.--Ver. 338. See the Art of Love, Book iii. 1. 374, and the Note.] [Footnote 1233: This Ægis--Ver. 346. See the Fasti, Book iii. 1. 848, and the Note; also the Metamorphoses, Book iv. 1. 798.] [Footnote 1234: Of the fleece.--Ver. 354. See the Art of Love, Book iii. 1. 213, and the Note. Surely Swift must have borrowed his notion of describing Chloe's dressing-room from these passages. See the Art of Love, Book i. 1. 339, and the Note.] [Footnote 1235: Smell like thy tables.--Ver. 355. He alludes to the defilement of the tables of Phineus by the filthy Harpies.] [Footnote 1236: From him, Zoilus.--Ver. 366. It was unknown of what parentage and country Zoilus was. He compiled a work in dispraise of Homer, and was called by the ancients, 'Horaeromastix,' 'the scourge of Homer.' Zoilus was ultimately accused of parricide, and crucified.] [Footnote 1237: Mangled thy poems.--Ver. 367. He alludes to Virgil, who, he says, had his censurers as well. Carvilius Picto wrote a satire against the Æneid, called Æneidomastix.] [Footnote 1238: Proper numbers.--Ver. 372. He adroitly avows the essence of the charge, by defending the Elegiac measure, in which he had written, and which could not be the object of any censures. He does not say a word in defence of the subject matter, which had incurred these remarks.] [Footnote 1239: The sock of Comedy.--Ver. 376. The 'soccus' was a low shoe, which did not fit closely, and had no tie. These shoes were worn among the Greeks by both men and women. The 'soccus' was worn by comic actors, and was in this respect opposed to the 'cothurnus,' or 'buskin,' of Tragedy.] [Footnote 1240: Drag on its foot.--Ver. 378. He alludes first to a genuine lambic line, ending with an Iambus, and then to a Scazonic line, so called from the Greek word, 'limping,' which was a kind of bastard Iambic line, having a Trochee (or foot of a long and a short syllable) in the last place, instead of an Iambus. Scazonic lines were much used in satirical composition.] [Footnote 1241: Cydippe--Ver. 382. Callimachus wrote a poem on the loves of Acontius and Cydippe. See Epistles xx and xxi.] [Footnote 1242: Andromache.--Ver. 383. She was a heroine of Tragedy, while Thais, the courtesan, figured in the Eunuchus, a Comedy of Terence.] [Footnote 1243: Noble Epic.--Ver. 396. 'Epos'seems preferable here to 'opus,' the common reading. * Disgust.--Ver. 432. This passage and that in 1. 437, are necessarily somewhat modified.] [Footnote 1244: Procris. J--Ver. 453. See the Translation of the Metamorphoses, p 262.] [Footnote 1245: Wife from Ida.'--Ver. 454. He refers to Clytemnestra being supplanted by Cassandra.] [Footnote 1246: The brother of.--Ver. 455 Alcmæon was married to Alphesibea, the daughter of Phegeus, and deserted her for Calirrhoë, the daughter of the river Achelous.] [Footnote 1247: Odrysian.--Ver. 459. He here alludes to the story of Tereus and Progne.] [Footnote 1248: Than she who.--Ver. 464. 'Quæ' seems to be a preferable reading to 'cui though in either case the sense is the same. Ovid had probably the instance of Niobe in his mind, when he wrote this passage. See the Metamorphoses, B. vi. 1. 297.] [Footnote 1249: Had ordered.--Ver. 473. See the Introduction to the Epistle of Briseis to Achilles.] [Footnote 1250: If the first syllable.--Ver. 476. Ovid, with his propensity for playing upon words, remarks upon the similarity of the names, Chryseis and Seis; the one being the daughter of Chryses, and the other of Briser.] [Footnote 1251: Appear asleep.--Ver. 499. See the Amores, B. ii. El. v. 1. 13.] [Footnote 1252: And let not this.--Ver. 513. The reading of this line and the next is probably corrupt. Burmann suggests that 'propositus' should lie substituted for 'propositis,' and that the stop should be removed from the end of 'amàndi,' and a semicolon placed after 'propositus.' In that case, the meaning would be, 'You must, however, act the deceiver to yourself, and must not make any determination to cease altogether from loving her; lest, as the horse struggles against the rein, your affection should rebel against such a determination.'] [Footnote 1253: Collinian.--Ver. 549. See the Fasti, B. iv. 1. 8'2, and the Note.] [Footnote 1254: The Puteal.--Ver. 561. 'Puteal' properly means the enclosure which surrounds the opening of a well, to prevent persons from falling into it. The 'Puteal' here referred to was that called 'Puteal Scribonianum,' or 'Libonis,' and was situate in the Forum, near the Fabian arch. Scribonius Libo erected in its neighbourhood a tribunal for the Prætor, in consequence of which the place was frequented by persons engaged in litigation, especially by debtors and creditors; to which circumstance reference is here made.] [Footnote 1255: And Janus.--Ver. 561. He probably refers to the fact of the temple of Janus being near the Puteal, and the tribunal of the Praetor. The Calends, or first of January, was the time when money lent became due, and on the same day was the Festival of Janus. See the Fasti, B. i. 1. 89.] [Footnote 1256: On its return home.--Ver. 569. 'In reditu' may certainly mean 'upon its return;' but Burmann thinks that 'reditus' here means 'a source of income,' and that the passage alludes to the man whose only property is his ship.] [Footnote 1257: In service.--Ver. 571; Those who were old enough to have sons In service, or marriageable daughters, were certainly unworthy of the Poet's sympathy or advice.] [Footnote 1258: Palinurus.--Ver. 577. The pilot of Æneas, who was drowned off die coast of Italy. See the Æneid of Virgil.] [Footnote 1259: Triennial.--Ver. 593. See the Metamorphoses, Book vi. 1. 587; and the Fasti, Book i. 1. 394, and the Notes.] [Footnote 1260: Edoniatu--Ver. 594. See the Tristia, Book iv. El. i. 1. 42, and the Note.] [Footnote 1261: Your foliage lost.--Ver. 606. He alludes to the story of the woods losing their leaves in their grief for Phyllis.] [Footnote 1262: Hail!'--Ver. 640. Martial tells us that 'ave' was the morning illutation of the Romans.] [Footnote 1263: Appian.'--Ver. 660. See the Art of Love, Book iii. 1. 451.] [Footnote 1264: In the company.--Ver. 663. Heinsius thinks, that by 'aderam,' it is meant that Ovid was acting as the counsel of the youth. The young man had probably summoned his mistress, to restore his property left in her possession. On the two tablets his case was written out.] [Footnote 1265: Loose folds.--Ver. 680. The Roman fops affected to wear the 'toga, tightened into many creases at the waist, and as open as possible at the breast.] [Footnote 1266: Not venture.--Ver. 699. He alludes to the abrupt departure of Ulysses from Calypso and Circe.] [Footnote 1267: Cauldrons of Amyclæ.--Ver. 707. The purple dye of Amyelæ, in Laconia, was of a very fair quality, but could not be compared with that af Tyre.] [Footnote 1268: Thestius.--Ver. 721. See the Metamorphoses, Book viii. 1. 445.] [Footnote 1269: Waxen portrait.--Ver. 723. Waxen profiles seem to have been used by the Romans, as likenesses. They are evidently referred to in the Asinaria of Plautus, Aet iv. se. i. 1. 19, a passage which seems to have puzzled the Commentators. See the Epistle of Laodania, 1. 152, and the Note.] [Footnote 1270: Caphareus.--Ver. 735. Seethe Tristia, Book i. El. i. 1. 83, and the Note.] [Footnote 1271: Of Nmis.--Ver. 737. He falls into his usual error of confounding the daughter of Nisus with the daughter of Phorcys.] [Footnote 1272: Acroceraunia.--Ver. 739. These were tremendous rocks on the coast of Epirus.] [Footnote 1273: Thy descendant.--Ver. 743. He means that the lust of Phædra was engendered by ease and luxury. See the Metamorphoses, Book xv. 1. 498. Neptune was the great grandfather of Hippolytus.] [Footnote 1274: Gnossian.7--Ver. 745. He refers to the love of Pasiphaë for the bull.] [Footnote 1275: Hecale.--Ver. 747. Hecale was a poor old woman, wo entertained Theseus with great hospitality.] [Footnote 1276: Irus--Ver. 747. See the Tristia, Book iii. El. vii. 1. 42, and the Note.] [Footnote 1277: Being acted.--Ver. 755. See the Tristia, Book il. 1. 519, and the Note.] [Footnote 1278: Of Cos.--Ver. 760. See the Art of Love, Book iii. 1. 329, and the Note.] [Footnote 1279: Hermione.--Ver. 772. See the Epistle to Orestes.] [Footnote 1280: Of Plisthenes.--Ver. 778. Agamemnon was said, by some, to have been the son of Plisthenes, and adopted by his uncle Atreus.] [Footnote 1281: Without reason.--Ver. 779. Agamemnon declares the contrary of this in the Iliad; Briseïs, in her Epistle to Achilles, does the same.] [Footnote 1282: He did not think.--Ver. 784. Ovid has no reason or ground for this wretched quibble, but his own imagination. This sceptre of Agamemnon was made by Vulcan, who gave it to Jupiter, he to Mercury, and Mercury to Pelous, who left it to Atreus; by him it was left to Thyestes, who according to Homer, gave it to Agamemnon.] [Footnote 1283: Lotophagi.--Ver. 789. See the Tristia, Book iv. El. i. 1. 31, and the Note.] [Footnote 1284: Daunian.--Ver. 797. Daunia was a name of Apulia, in Italy. See the Metamorphoses, Book xiv. 1. 512, and the Note.] [Footnote 1285: Megara.--Ver. 798. See the Art of Love, Book ii. 1. 422.] [Footnote 1286: Sharpens the sight.--Ver. 801. Pliny says that painters and sculptors were in the habit of using rue, for the purpose of strengthening the sight.] THE END 
47676	----	provided by the Internet Archive THE AMORES; or, AMOURS By Ovid Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes, by Henry T. Riley 1885 BOOK THE FIRST. AN EPIGRAM ON THE AMOURS. |We who of late were five books [001] of Naso, are now but three: this work our author has preferred to the former one. Though it should [002] now be no pleasure to thee to read us; still, the labour will be less, the two being removed. ELEGY I. _He says that he is compelled by Cupid to write of love instead of battles and that the Divinity insists on making each second Hexameter line into a Pentameter._ |I was preparing to write of arms and impetuous warfare in serious numbers, [003] the subject-matter being suited to the measure. [004] The second verse was of equal measure with the first; but Cupid is said to have smiled, and to have abstracted one foot. [005] "Who, cruel boy, has given thee this right over my lines? We poets are the choir of _the Muses,_ the Pierian maids, not thine. What if Venus were to seize the arms of the yellow-haired Minerva, _and_ if the yellow-haired Minerva were to wave the lighted torches _of Love?_ Who would approve of Ceres holding her reign in the woods on the mountain ridges, _or_ of the fields being tilled under the control of the quivered Virgin? Who would arm Phoebus, graceful with his locks, with the sharp spear, while Mars is striking the Aonian lyre? Thy sway, O youth, is great, and far too potent; why, in thy ambition, dost thou attempt a new task? Is that which is everywhere, thine? Is Heliconian Tempe thine? Is even his own lyre hardly safe now for Phoebus? When the new page has made a good beginning in the first line, at that moment does he diminish my energies. [008] I have no subject fitted for _these_ lighter numbers, whether youth, or girl with her flowing locks arranged." _Thus_ was I complaining; when, at once, his quiver loosened, [009] he selected the arrows made for my destruction; and he stoutly bent upon his knee the curving bow, and said, "Poet, receive a subject on which to sing." Ah wretched me! unerring arrows did that youth possess. I burn; and in my heart, _hitherto_ disengaged, does Love hold sway. _Henceforth_, in six feet [010] let my work commence; in five let it close. Farewell, ye ruthless wars, together with your numbers. My Muse, [011] to eleven feet destined to be attuned, bind with the myrtle of the sea shore thy temples encircled with their yellow _locks_. ELEGY II. _He says, that being taken captive by Love, he allows Cupid to lead him away in triumph._ |Why shall I say it is, that my bed appears thus hard to me, and that my clothes rest not upon the couch? The night, too, long as it is, have I passed without sleep; and why do the weary bones of my restless body ache? But were I assailed by any flame, I think I should be sensible of it. Or does _Love_ come unawares and cunningly attack in silent ambush? 'Tis so; his little arrows have pierced my heart; and cruel Love is tormenting the breast he has seized. Am I to yield? Or by struggling _against it_, am I to increase this sudden flame? I must yield; the burden becomes light which is borne contentedly. I have seen the flames increase when agitated by waving the torch; and when no one shook it, I have seen them die away. The galled bulls suffer more blows while at first they refuse the yoke, than those whom experience of the plough avails. The horse which is unbroken bruises his mouth with the hard curb; the one that is acquainted with arms is less sensible of the bit. Love goads more sharply and much more cruelly those who struggle, than those who agree to endure his servitude. Lo! I confess it; I am thy new-made prey, O Cupid; I am extending my conquered hands for thy commands. No war _between us_ is needed; I entreat for peace and for pardon; and no credit shall I be to thee, unarmed, conquered by thy arms. Bind thy locks with myrtle; yoke thy mother's doves; thy stepfather [014] himself will give a chariot which becomes thee. And in the chariot _so_ given thee, thou shalt stand, and with thy skill shalt guide the birds _so_ yoked [015], while the people shout "_Io_ triumphe" [016] aloud. The captured youths and the captive fair shall be led _in triumph_; this procession shall be a splendid triumph for thee. I myself, a recent capture, shall bear my wound _so_ lately made; and with the feelings of a captive shall I endure thy recent chains. Soundness of Understanding shall-be led along with hands bound behind his back, Shame as well, and whatever _beside_ is an enemy to the camp of Love. All things shall stand in awe of thee: towards thee the throng, stretching forth its hands, shall sing "Io triumphe" with loud voice. Caresses shall be thy attendants, Error too, and Madness, a troop that ever follows on thy side. With these for thy soldiers, thou dost overcome both men and Gods; take away from thee these advantages, _and_ thou wilt be helpless. From highest Olympus thy joyous mother will applaud thee in thy triumph, and will sprinkle her roses falling on thy face. While gems bedeck thy wings, _and_ gems thy hair; in thy golden chariot shalt thou go, resplendent thyself with gold. [017] Then too, (if well I know thee) wilt thou influence not a few; then too, as thou passest by, wilt thou inflict many a wound. Thy arrows (even shouldst thou thyself desire it) cannot be at rest. A glowing flame _ever_ injures by the propinquity of its heat. Just such was Bacchus when the Gangetic land [018] was subdued; thou art the burden of the birds; he was _that_ of the tigers. Therefore, since I may be some portion of thy hallowed triumph, forbear, Conqueror, to expend thy strength on me. Look at the prospering arms of thy kinsman Cæsar; [019] with the same hand with which he conquers does he shield the conquered. [020] ELEGY III. _He entreats his mistress to return his affection, and shows that he is deserving of her favour._ |I ask for what is just; let the fair who has so lately captivated me, either love me, or let her give me a cause why I should always love her. Alas! too much have I desired; only let her allow herself to be loved; _and then_ Cytherea will have listened to my prayers so numerous. Accept one who will be your servant through lengthened years; accept one who knows how to love with constant attachment. If the great names of ancient ancestors do not recommend me, or if the Equestrian founder of my family [021] _fails to do so_; and _if_ no field of mine is renewed by ploughs innumerable, and each of my parents [022] with frugal spirit limits my expenditure; still Phoebus and his nine companions and the discoverer of the vine may do so; and Love _besides_, who presents me as a gift to you; a fidelity, too that will yield to none, manners above reproach, ingenuousness without guile, and modesty _ever_ able to blush. A thousand damsels have no charms for me; I am no rover in affection; [023] you will for ever be my choice, if you do but believe me. May it prove my lot to live with you for years as many as the threads of the Sister _Destinies_ shall grant me, and to die with you sorrowing _for me_. Grant me yourself as a delightful theme for my verse; worthy of their matter my lines will flow. Io, frightened by her horns, and she whom the adulterer deceived in _the shape of_ the bird [024] of the stream have a name in song; she, too, who, borne over the seas upon the fictitious bull, held fast the bending horns with her virgin hand. We, too, together shall be celebrated throughout all the world; and my name shall ever be united with thy own. ELEGY IV. _He instructs his mistress what conduct to-observe in the presence of her husband at a feast to which he has been invited._ _Your_ husband is about to come to the same banquet [026] as ourselves: I pray that it may be the last meal [027] for this husband of yours. And am I then only as a guest to look upon the fair so much beloved? And shall there be another, to take pleasure in being touched _by you?_ And will you, conveniently placed below, be keeping warm the bosom of another? [028] _And_ shall he, when he pleases, be placing his hand upon your neck? Cease to be surprised that the beauteous damsel of Atrax [029] excited the two-formed men to combat when the wine was placed _on table_. No wood is my home, and my limbs adhere not to _those of_ a horse; _yet_ I seem to be hardly able to withhold my hands from you. Learn, however, what must be done by you; and do not give my injunctions to be borne away by the Eastern gales, nor on the warm winds of the South. Come before your husband; and yet, I do not see what can be done, if you do come first; but still, do come first. [031] When he presses the couch, with modest air you will be going as his companion, to recline by him; _then_ secretly touch my foot. [032] Keep your eye on me, and my nods and the expression of my features; apprehend my secret signs, [033] and yourself return them. Without utterance will I give expression to words by my eyebrows; [034] you shall read words traced by my fingers, words _traced_ in the wine. [035] When the delights of our dalliance recur to your thoughts, press your blooming cheeks [036] with your beauteous finger. If there shall be anything, of which you may be making complaint about me silently in your mind, let your delicate hand reach from the extremity of your ear. When, my life, I shall either do or say aught which shall give you delight, let your ring be continually twisted on your fingers. [037] Take hold of the table with your hand, in the way in which those who are in prayer [038] take hold _of the altar_, when you shall be wishing many an evil for your husband, who so well deserves it. _The cup_ which he has mixed for you, if you are discreet, [039] bid him drink himself; _then_, in a low voice, do you ask the servant [041] for what _wine_ you wish. I will at once take the cup which you have put down; [042] and where you have sipped, on that side will I drink. If, perchance, he shall give you any morsels, of which he has tasted beforehand, reject them _thus_ touched by his mouth. [043] And do not allow him to press your neck, by putting his arms around it; nor recline your gentle head on his unsightly breast. [044] Let not your bosom, or your breasts so close at hand, [045] admit his fingers; _and_ especially allow him to give you no kisses. If you do give him _any_ kisses, I shall be discovered to be your lover, and I shall say, "Those are my own," and shall be laying hands upon him. Still, this I shall _be able to_ see; but what the clothing carefully conceals, the same will be a cause for me of apprehension full of doubts. Touch not his thigh with yours, and cross not legs with him, and do not unite your delicate foot with his uncouth leg. To my misery, I am apprehensive of many a thing, because many a thing have I done in my wantonness; and I myself am tormented, through fear of my own precedent. Oft _by joining hands_ beneath the cloth, [048] have my mistress and I forestalled our hurried delights. This, I _am sure_, you will not do _for him_; but that you may not _even_ be supposed to do so, take away the conscious covering [049] from your bosom. Bid your husband drink incessantly, but let there be no kisses with your entreaties; and while he is drinking, if you can, add wine by stealth. [050] If he shall be soundly laid asleep with dozing and wine, circumstances and opportunity will give us _fitting_ counsel. When you shall rise to go home, we all will rise as well; _and_ remember that you walk in the middle rank of the throng. In that rank you will either find me, or be found _by me_; _and_ whatever part of me you can there touch, _mind and_ touch. Ah wretched me! I have given advice to be good for _but_ a few hours; _then_, at the bidding of night, I am separated from my mistress. At night her husband will lock her in; I, sad with my gushing tears, will follow her as far as I may, even to her obdurate door. _And_ now will he be snatching a kiss; _and_ now not kisses only will he snatch; you will be compelled to grant him that, which by stealth you grant to me. But grant him this (you can do so) with a bad grace, and like one acting by compulsion; let no caresses be heard; and let Venus prove inauspicious. If my wishes avail, I trust, too, that he will find no satisfaction therein; but if otherwise, still at least let it have no delights for you. But, however, whatever luck may attend upon the night, assure me in positive language to-morrow, that you did not dally with him. ELEGY V. _The beauties of Corinna._ |Twas summer time, [051] and the day had passed the hour of noon; _when_ I threw my limbs to be refreshed on the middle of the couch. A part of the window [053] was thrown open, the other part shut; the light was such as the woods are wont to have; just as the twilight glimmers, when Phoebus is retreating; or _as_ when the night has gone, and still the day is not risen. Such light should be given to the bashful fair, in which coy modesty may hope to have concealment. Behold! Corinna [054] came, clothed in a tunic [055] hanging loose, her flowing hair [056] covering her white neck. Beauteous Semiramis [057] is said to have entered her chamber, and Lais, [058] beloved by many a hero. I drew aside the tunic; in its thinness [059] it was but a small impediment; still, to be covered with the tunic did she strive; and, as she struggled as though she was not desirous to conquer, without difficulty was she overcome, through betrayal of herself. When, her clothing laid aside, she stood before my eyes, throughout her whole body nowhere was there a blemish. What shoulders, what arms I _both_ saw and touched! The contour of her breast, how formed was it to be pressed! How smooth her stomach beneath her faultless bosom! How full and how beauteous her sides! How plump with youthfulness the thigh! _But_ why enlarge on every point? Nothing did I behold not worthy of praise; and I pressed her person even to my own. The rest, who knows not? Wearied, we both reclined. May such a midday often prove my lot. ELEGY VI. _He entreats the porter to open to him the door of his mistress's house._ Porter, fastened (_and_ how unworthily!) with the cruel fetter, [060] throw open the stubborn door with its turning hinge. What I ask, is but a trifle; let the door, half-opened, admit me sideways with its narrow passage. Protracted Love has made my body thin for such an emergency, and by diminishing my bulk, has rendered my limbs _quite_ supple.'Tis he who shows me how to go softly amid the watches of the keepers; [062] 'tis he directs my feet that meet no harm. But, at one time, I used to be afraid of the night and imaginary ghosts; _and_ I used to be surprised if any one was about to go in the dark: Cupid, with his graceful mother, laughed, so that I could hear him, and he softly said, "Thou too wilt become bold." Without delay, love came _upon me_; then, I feared not spectres that flit by night, [063] or hands uplifted for my destruction. I only fear you, _thus_ too tardy; you alone do I court; you hold the lightning by which you can effect my destruction. Look (and that you may see, loosen the obdurate bars) how the door has been made wet with my tears. At all events, 'twas I, who, when, your garment laid aside, you stood ready for the whip, [064] spoke in your behalf to your mistress as you were trembling. Does then, (O shocking thought!) the credit which once prevailed in your behalf, now fail to prevail in my own favour? Give a return for my kindness; you may _now_ be grateful. As you wish, [065] the hours of the night pass on; [066] from the door-post [067] strike away the bar. Strike it away then may you one day be liberated from your long fetters and may the water of the slave [068] be not for ever drunk of by you. Hard-hearted porter! you hear me, as I implore in vain; the door, supported by its hard oaken _posts_, is still unmoved. Let the protection of a closed gate be of value to cities when besieged; _but_ why, in the midst of peace are you dreading warfare? What would you do to an enemy, who thus shut out the lover? The hours of the night pass on; from the door-post strike away the bar. I am not come attended with soldiers and with arms; I should be alone, if ruthless Love were not here. Him, even if I should desire it, I can never send away; first should I be even severed from my limbs. Love then, and a little wine about my temples, [069] are with me, and the chaplet falling from off my anointed hair. Who is to dread arms _such_ as these? Who may not go out to face them? The hours of the night pass on; from the door-post strike away the bar. Are you delaying? or does sleep (who but ill befriends the lover) give to the winds my words, as they are repelled from your ear? But, I remember, when formerly I used to avoid you, you were awake, with the stars of the midnight. Perhaps, too, your own mistress is now asleep with you; alas! how much superior _then_ is your fate to my own! And since 'tis so, pass on to me, ye cruel chains. The hours of the night pass on; from the door-post strike away the bar. Am I mistaken? Or did the door-posts creak with the turning hinge, and did the shaken door give the jarring signal? Yes, I am mistaken; the door was shaken by the boisterous wind. Ah me! how far away has that gust borne my hopes! Boreas, if well thou dost keep in mind the ravished Orithyia, come hither, and with thy blast beat open this relentless door. 'Tis silence throughout all the City; damp with the glassy dew, the hours of the night pass on; from the door-post strike away the bar. Otherwise I, myself, [073] now better prepared _than you_, with my sword, and with the fire which I am holding in my torch, [074] will scale this arrogant abode. Night, and lore, and wine, [075] are persuasive of no moderation; the first is without shame, Bacchus and Love _are without fear_. I have expended every method; neither by entreaties nor by threats have I moved you, O _man, even_ more deaf yourself than your door. It becomes you not to watch the threshold of the beauteous fair; of the anxieties of the prison, [076] are you more deserving. And now Lucifer is moving his wheels beset with rime; and the bird is arousing [077] wretched _mortals_ to their work. But, chaplet taken from my locks joyous no longer, be you the livelong night upon this obdurate threshold. You, when in the morning she shall see you _thus_ exposed, will be a witness of my time thus thrown away. _Porter_, whatever your disposition, good bye, and _one day_ experience the pangs of him who is now departing; sluggish one, and worthless in not admitting the lover, fare you well. And you, ye cruel door-posts, with your stubborn threshold; and _you, ye_ doors, equally slaves, [078] hard-hearted blocks of wood, farewell. ELEGY VII. _He has beaten his mistress, and endeavours to regain her favour._ |Put my hands in manacles (they are deserving of chains), if any friend of mine is present, until all my frenzy has departed. For frenzy has raised my rash arms against my mistress; hurt by my frantic hand, the fair is weeping. In such case could I have done an injury even to my dear parents, or have given unmerciful blows to even the hallowed Gods. Why; did not Ajax, too, [080] the owner of the sevenfold shield, slaughter the flocks that he had caught along the extended plains? And did Orestes, the guilty avenger of his father, the punisher of his mother, dare to ask for weapons against the mystic Goddesses? [081] And could I then tear her tresses so well arranged; and were not her displaced locks unbecoming to my mistress? Even thus was she beauteous; in such guise they say that the daughter of Schoeneus [082] pursued the wild beasts of Mænalus with her bow. 'Twere more fitting for her face to be pale from the impress of kisses, and for her neck to bear the marks of the toying teeth. In such guise did the Cretan damsel [083] weep, that the South winds, in their headlong flight, had borne away both the promises and the sails of the forsworn Theseus. Thus, _too_, chaste Minerva, did Cassandra [084] fall in thy temple, except that her locks were bound with the fillet. Who did not say to me, "You madman!" who did not say _to me_, "You barbarian!" She herself _said_ not a word; her tongue was restrained by timid apprehensions. But still her silent features pronounced my censure; by her tears _and_ by her silent lips did she convict me. First could I wish that my arms had fallen from off my shoulders; to better purpose could I have parted with a portion of myself. To my own disadvantage had I the strength of a madman; and for my own punishment did I stoutly exert my strength. What do I want with you, ye ministers of death and criminality? Impious hands, submit to the chains, your due. Should I not have been punished had I struck the humblest Roman [085] of the multitude? _And_ shall I have a greater privilege against my mistress? The son of Tydeus has left the worst instance of crime: he was the first to strike a Goddess, [086] I, the second. But less guilty was he; by me, she, whom I asserted to be loved _by me_, was injured; against an enemy the son of Tydeus was infuriate. Come now, conqueror, prepare your boastful triumphs; bind your locks with laurel, and pay your vows to Jove, and let the multitude, the train, that escorts your chariot, shout aloud, "Io _triumphe!_ by _this_ valiant man has the fair been conquered!" Let the captive, in her sadness, go before with dishevelled locks, pale all over, if her hurt cheeks [087] may allow. In short, if, after the manner of a swelling torrent, I was impelled, and if impetuous anger did make me its prey; would it not have been enough to have shouted aloud at the trembling girl, and not to have thundered out my threats far too severe? Or else, to my own disgrace, to have torn her tunic from its upper edge down to the middle? Her girdle should, at the middle [089] have come to its aid. But now, in the hardness of my heart, I could dare, seizing her hair on her forehead, to mark her free-born cheeks [090] with my nails. _There_ she stood, amazed, with her features pale and bloodless, just as the marble is cut in the Parian mountains. [091] I saw her fainting limbs, and her palpitating members; just as when the breeze waves the foliage of the poplars; just as the slender reed quivers with the gentle Zephyr; or, as when the surface of the waves is skimmed by the warm South wind. Her tears, too, so long repressed, flowed down her face, just as the water flows from the snow when heaped up. Then, for the first time, did I begin to be sensible that I was guilty; the tears which she was shedding were _as_ my own blood. Yet, thrice was I ready, suppliantly to throw myself before her feet; thrice did she repel my dreaded hands. But, _dearest,_ do not you hesitate, (_for_ revenge will lessen your grief) at once to attack my face with your nails. Spare not my eyes, nor _yet_ my hair; let anger nerve your hands, weak though they may be. And that tokens so shocking of my criminality may no longer exist, put your locks, arranged anew, in their proper order. [092] ELEGY VIII. _He curses a certain procuress, whom he overhears instructing his mistress in the arts of a courtesan._ |There is a certain--(whoever wishes to make acquaintance with a procuress, let him listen.)--There is a certain old hag, Dipsas by name. From fact does she derive [094] her name; never in a sober state does she behold the mother of the swarthy Memnon with her horses of roseate hue. She knows well the magic arts, and the charms of Ææa, [095] and by her skill she turns back to its source [096] the flowing stream. She knows right well what the herbs, what the thrums impelled around the whirling spinning-wheel, [097] _and_ what the venomous exudation [098] from the prurient mare can effect. When she wills it, the clouds are overspread throughout all the sky; when she wills it, the day is bright with a clear atmosphere. I have beheld (if I may be believed) the stars dripping with blood: the face of the moon was empurpled [099] with gore. I believe that she, transformed, [101] was flying amid the shades of night, and that her hag's carcase was covered with feathers. _This_ I believe, and such is the report. A double pupil, too, [102] sparkles in her eyes, and light proceeds from a twofold eyeball. Forth from the ancient sepulchres she calls our great grandsires, and their grandsires [103] as well; and with her long incantations she cleaves the solid ground. She has made it her occupation to violate the chaste bed; and besides, her tongue is not "wanting in guilty advocacy. Chance made me the witness of her language; in such words was she giving her advice; the twofold doors [105] concealed me. "You understand, my life, how greatly you yesterday pleased a wealthy young man; _for_ he stopped short, and stood gazing for some time on your face. And whom do you not please? Your beauty is inferior to no one's. _But_ woe is me! your person has not a fitting dress. I _only_ wish you were as well off, as you are distinguished for beauty; if you became rich, I should not be poor. The adverse star of Mars in opposition [106] was unfortunate for you; Mars has gone; now Venus is befriending you with her planet. See now how favourable she is on her approach; a rich lover is sighing for you, and he makes it his care [107] what are your requirements. He has good looks, too, that may compare with your own; if he did not wish to have you at a price, he were worthy himself to be purchased." _On this the damsel_ blushed: [108] "Blushing," _said the hag_, "suits a faircomplexion indeed; but if you _only_ pretend it, 'tis an advantage; _if_ real, it is wont to be injurious. When, your eyes cast down, [109] you are looking full upon your bosom, each man must _only_ be looked at in the proportion in which he offers. Possibly the sluttish Sabine females, [111] when Tati us was king, were unwilling to be accommodating to more men _than one_. Now-a-days, Mars employs the bravery _of our men_ in foreign warfare; [112] but Venus holds sway in the City of her own Æneas. Enjoy yourselves, my pretty ones; she is chaste, whom nobody has courted; or else, if coyness does not prevent her, she herself is the wooer. Dispel these frowns [113] as well, which you are carrying upon your lofty brow; with those frowns will numerous failings be removed. Penelope used to try [114] the strength of the young men upon the bow; the bow that tested _the strength_ of their sides, was made of horn. Age glides stealthily on, and beguiles us as it flies; just as the swift river glides onward with its flowing waters. Brass grows bright by use; good clothes require to be worn; uninhabited buildings grow white with nasty mould. Unless you entertain _lovers_, beauty _soon_ waxes old, with no one to enjoy it; and _even_ one or two _lovers_ are not sufficiently profitable. From many _of them_, gain is more sure, and not so difficult to be got. An abundant prey falls to the hoary wolves out of a _whole_ flock. "See now! what does this poet of yours make you a present of besides his last verses? You will read many thousands of them by _this_ new lover. The God himself of poets, graceful in his mantle [116] adorned with gold, strikes the harmonious strings of the gilded lyre. He that shall make you presents, let him be to you greater than great Homer; believe me, it is a noble thing to give. And, if there shall be any one redeemed at a price for his person [117], do not you despise him; the fault of having the foot rubbed with chalk [118] is a mere trifle. Neither let the old-fashioned wax busts about the halls [119] take you in; pack off with your forefathers, you needy lover. Nay more, should [120] one, because he is good-looking, ask for a night without a present; _why_, let him first solicit his own admirer for something to present to you. "Be less exacting of presents, while you are laying your nets, _for fear_ lest they should escape you: _once_ caught, tease them at your own pleasure. Pretended affection, too, is not a bad thing; let him fancy he is loved; but have you a care that this affection is not all for nothing. Often refuse your favours; sometimes pretend a head-ache; and sometimes there will be Isis [121] to afford a pretext. _But_ soon admit him again; that he may acquire no habits of endurance, and that his love, so often repulsed, may not begin to flag. Let your door be deaf to him who entreats, open to him who brings. Let the lover that is admitted, hear the remarks of him who is excluded. And, as though you were the first injured, sometimes get in a passion with him when injured _by you_. His censure, when counterbalanced by your censure, [127] may wear away. But do you never afford a long duration for anger; prolonged anger frequently produces hatred. Moreover, let your eyes learn, at discretion, to shed tears; and let this cause or that cause your cheeks to be wet. And do not, if you deceive any one, hesitate to be guilty of perjury; Venus lends _but_ a deaf hearing [128] to deceived _lovers_. "Let a male servant and a crafty handmaid [129] be trained up to their parts; who may instruct him what may be conveniently purchased for you. And let them ask but little for themselves; if they ask a little of many, [130] very soon, great will be the heap from the gleanings. [131] Let your sister, and your mother, and your nurse as well, fleece your admirer. A booty is soon made, that is sought by many hands. When occasions for asking for presents shall fail you, call attention with a cake [132] to your birthday Take care that no one loves you in security, without a rival; love is not very lasting if you remove _all_ rivalry. Let him perceive the traces of _another_ person on the couch; all your neck, too, discoloured by the marks of toying. Especially let him see the presents, which another has sent. If he gives you nothing, the Sacred Street [133] must be talked about. When you have received many things, but yet he has not given you every thing, be continually asking him to lend you something, for you never to return. Let your tongue aid you, and let it conceal your thoughts; [134] caress him, and prove his ruin. [135] Beneath the luscious honey cursed poisons lie concealed. If you observe these precepts, tried by me throughout a long experience; and if the winds and the breezes do not bear away my words; often will you bless me while I live; often will you pray, when I am dead, that in quietude my bones may repose.". She was in the middle of her speech, when my shadow betrayed me; but my hands with difficulty refrained from tearing her grey scanty locks, and her eyes bleared with wine, and her wrinkled cheeks. May the Gods grant you both no home, [136] and a needy old age; prolonged winters as well, and everlasting thirst. ELEGY IX. _He tells Atticus that like the soldier, the lover ought to be on his guard and that Love is a species of warfare._ |Every lover is a soldier, and Cupid has a camp of his own; believe me, Atticus, [138] every lover is a soldier. The age which is fitted for war, is suited to love as well. For an old man to be a soldier, is shocking; amorousness in an old man is shocking. The years which [139] generals require in the valiant soldier, the same does the charming fair require in her husband. Both _soldier and lover_ pass sleepless nights; both rest upon the ground. The one watches at the door of his mistress; but the other _at that_ of his general. [140] Long marches are the duty of the soldier; send the fair _far_ away, _and_ the lover will boldly follow her, without a limit _to his endurance_. Over opposing mountains will he go, and rivers swollen with rains; the accumulating snows will he pace. About to plough the waves, he will not reproach the stormy East winds; nor will he watch for Constellations favourable for scudding over the waves. Who, except either the soldier or the lover, will submit to both the chill of the night, and the snows mingled with the heavy showers? The one is sent as a spy against the hostile foe; the other keeps his eye on his rival, as though upon an enemy. The one lays siege to stubborn cities, the other to the threshold of his obdurate mistress: the one bursts open gates, and the other, doors. [142] Full oft has it answered to attack the enemy when buried in sleep; and to slaughter an unarmed multitude with armed hand. Thus did the fierce troops of the Thracian Rhesus [143] fall; and you, captured steeds, forsook your lord. Full oft do lovers take advantage of the sleep of husbands, and brandish their arms against the slumbering foe. To escape the troops of the sentinels, and the bands of the patrol, is the part _both_ of the soldier, and of the lover always in misery. Mars is wayward, and Venus is uncertain; both the conquered rise again, and those fall whom you would say could never possibly be prostrate. Whoever, then, has pronounced Love _mere_ slothfulness, let him cease _to love_: [144] to the discerning mind does Love belong. The mighty Achilles is inflamed by the captive Briseis. Trojans, while you may, destroy the Argive resources. Hector used to go to battle _fresh_ from the embraces of Andromache; and it was his wife who placed his helmet on his head. The son of Atreus, the first of _all_ the chiefs, on beholding the daughter of Priam, is said to have been smitten with the dishevelled locks of the raving _prophetess_. [146] Mars, too, when caught, was sensible of the chains wrought at the forge; [147] there was no story better known than his, in all the heavens. I myself was of slothful habit, and born for a lazy inactivity; [148] the couch and the shade [149] had enervated my mind. Attentions to the charming fair gave a fillip to me, in my indolence; and _Love_ commanded me to serve [150] in his camp. Hence it is that thou seest me active, and waging the warfare by night. Let him who wishes not to become slothful, fall in love. ELEGY X. _He tells his mistress that she ought not to require presents as a return for her love._ |Such as she, who, borne away from the Eurotas, [151] in the Phrygian ships, was the cause of warfare to her two husbands; such as Leda was, whom her crafty paramour, concealed in his white feathers, deceived under _the form of_ a fictitious bird; such as Amymone [152] used to wander in the parched _fields of_ Argos, when the urn was pressing the locks on the top of her head; such were you; and I was in dread of both the eagle and the bull with respect to you, and whatever _form besides_ Love has created of the mighty Jove. Now, all fears are gone, and the disease of my mind is cured; and now no longer does that form _of yours_ rivet my eyes. Do you inquire why I am changed? _It is_, because you require presents. This reason does not allow of your pleasing me. So long as you were disinterested, I was in love with your mind together with your person; now, _in my estimation_ your appearance is affected by this blemish on your disposition. Love is both a child and naked; he has years without sordidness, and _he wears_ no clothes, that he may be without concealment. Why do you require the son of Venus to be prostituted at a price? He has no fold in his dress, [153] in which to conceal that price. Neither Venus is suited for cruel arms, nor yet the son of Venus; it befits not such unwarlike Divinities to serve for pay. The courtesan stands for hire to any one at a certain price; and with her submissive body, she seeks for wretched pelf. Still, she curses the tyranny of the avaricious procurer; [154] and she does by compulsion [155] what you are doing of your own free will. Take, as an example, the cattle, devoid of reason; it were a shocking thing for there to be a finer feeling in the brutes. The mare asks no gift of the horse, nor the cow of the bull; the ram does not woo the ewe, induced by presents. Woman alone takes pleasure in spoils torn from the man; she alone lets out her nights; alone is she on sale, to be hired at a price. She sells, too, _joys_ that delight them both, _and_ which both covet; and she makes it a _matter_ of pay, at what price she herself is to be gratified. Those joys, which are so equally sweet to both, why does the one sell, and _why_ the other buy them? Why must that delight prove a loss to me, to you a gain, for which the female and the male combine with kindred impulse? Witnesses hired dishonestly, [156] sell their perjuries; the chest [157] of the commissioned judge [158] is disgracefully open _for the bribe_. 'Tis a dishonourable thing to defend the wretched criminals with a tongue that is purchased; [159] 'tis a disgrace for a tribunal to make great acquisitions. 'Tis a disgrace for a woman to increase her patrimonial possessions by the profits of her embraces, and to prostitute her beauty for lucre. Thanks are _justly_ due for things obtained without purchase; there are no thanks for an intercourse disgracefully bartered. He who hires, [160] pays all _his due_; the price _once_ paid, he no longer remains a debtor for your acquiescence. Cease, ye beauties, to bargain for pay for your favours. Sordid gains bring no good results. It was not worth her while to bargain for the Sabine bracelets, [161] in order that the arms should crush the head of the sacred maiden. The son pierced [163] with the sword those entrails from which he had sprung, and a simple necklace [164] was the cause of the punishment. But yet it is not unbecoming for a present to be asked of the wealthy man; he has something to give to her who does ask for a present. Pluck the grapes that hang from the loaded vines; let the fruitful soil of Alcinous [165] afford the apples. Let the needy man proffer duty, zeal, and fidelity; what each one possesses, let him bestow it all upon his mistress. My endowments, too, are in my lines to shig the praises of those fair who deserve them; she, whom I choose, becomes celebrated through my skill. Vestments will rend, gems and gold will spoil; the fame which poesy confers is everlasting. _Still_ I do not detest giving and revolt at it, but at being asked for a price. Cease to demand it, _and_ I will give you that which I refuse you while you ask. ELEGY XI. _He begs Nape to deliver his letter to her mistress, and commences by praising her neatness and dexterity, and the interest she has hitherto manifested in his behalf._ |Nape, skilled at binding the straggling locks [166] and arranging them in order, and not deserving to be reckoned [167] among the female slaves; _known_, too, _by experience_ to be successful in the contrivances of the stealthy night, and clever in giving the signals; [168] you who have so oft entreated Corinna, when hesitating, to come to me; who have been found so often faithful by me in my difficulties; take and carry these tablets, [169] so well-filled, [170] this morning to your mistress; and by your diligence dispel _all_ impeding delay. Neither veins of flint, nor hard iron is in your breast, nor have you a simplicity greater than that of your _clever_ class. There is no doubt that you, too, have experienced the bow of Cupid; in my behalf defend the banner of your service. If _Corinna_ asks what I am doing, you will say that I am living in expectation of the night. The wax inscribed with my persuasive hand is carrying the rest. While I am speaking, time is flying; opportunely give her my tablets, when she is at leisure; but still, make her read them at once. I bid you watch her eyes and her forehead as she reads; from the silent features we may know the future. And _be there_ no delay; when she has read them through, request her to write a long answer; [172] I hate it, when the bleached wax is empty, with a margin on every side. Let her write the lines close as they run, and let the letters traced in the extreme margin long detain my eyes. _But_ what need is there for wearying her fingers with holding the pen? [175] Let the whole of her letter contain this one word, "Come." Then, I should not delay to crown my victorious tablets with laurel, nor to place them in the midst of the temple of Venus. Beneath them I would inscribe "Naso consecrates these faithful servants of his to Venus; but lately, you were pieces of worthless maple." [176] ELEGY XII. _He curses the tablets which he has sent, because his mistress has written an answer on them, in which she refuses to grant his request._ |Lament my misfortune; my tablets have returned to me with sad intelligence. Her unlucky letter announces that she cannot _be seen_ to-day. There is something in omens; just now, when she was preparing to go, Napè stopped short, having struck her foot [178] against the threshold. When sent out of doors another time, remember to pass the threshold more carefully, and _like_ a sober woman lift your foot high _enough._ Away with you; obdurate tablets, fatal bits of board; and you wax, as well, crammed with the lines of denial. I doubt the Corsican bee [180] has sent you collected from the blossom of the tall hemlock, beneath its abominable honey. Besides, you were red, as though you had been thoroughly dyed in vermilion; [181] such a colour is exactly that of blood. Useless bits of board, thrown out in the street, _there_ may you lie; and may the weight of the wheel crush you, as it passes along. I could even prove that he who formed you to shape from the tree, had not the hands of innocence. That tree surely has afforded a gibbet for some wretched neck, _and_ has supplied the dreadful crosses [182] for the executioner. It has given a disgusting shelter to the screeching owls; in its branches it has borne the eggs of the vulture and of the screech-owl. [183] In my madness, have I entrusted my courtship to these, and have I given soft words to be _thus_ carried to my mistress? These tablets would more becomingly hold the prosy summons, [184] which some judge [185] pronounces, with his sour face. ELEGY XIII. _He entreats the morning not to hasten on with its usual speed._ |Now over the Ocean does she come from her aged husband _Tithonus_, who, with her yellow locks, brings on the day with her frosty chariot. Whither, Aurora, art thou hastening? Stay; _and_ then may the yearly bird, with its wonted death, honour the shades [189] of thy Memnon, its parent. Now do I delight to recline in the soft arms of my mistress; now, if ever, is she deliciously united to my side. Now, too, slumbers are sound, and now the moisture is cooling the birds, too, are sweetly waronng with their little throats. Whither art thou hastening, hated by the men, detested by the fair? Check thy dewy reins with thy rosy hand. [190] Before thy rising, the sailor better observes his Constellations; and he wanders not in ignorance, in the midst of the waves. On thy approach, the wayfarer arises, weary though he be; the soldier lays upon his arms the hands used to bear them. Thou art the first to look upon the tillers of the fields laden with the two-pronged fork; thou art the first to summon the lagging oxen to the crooked yoke. 'Tis thou who dost deprive boys of their sleep, and dost hand them over to their masters; [192], that their tender hands may suffer the cruel stripes. [193] 'Tis thou, too, who dost send the man before the vestibule of the attorney, [194] when about to become bail; [195] that he may submit to the great risks of a single word. Thou art no source of pleasure to the pleader, [198] nor yet to the counsel; for fresh combats each is forced to rise. Thou, when the labours of the females might have had a pause, dost recal the hand of the worker in wool to its task. All _this_ I could endure; but who could allow the fair to arise _thus_ early, except _the man_ who has no mistress of his own? How often have I wished that night would not make way for thee; and that the stars when put to flight would not fly from thy countenance. Many a time have I wished that either the wind would break thy chariot to pieces, or that thy steed would fall, overtaken by _some_ dense cloud. Remorseless one, whither dost thou hasten? Inasmuch as thy son was black, such was the colour of his mother's heart. What if [199] she had not once burned with passion for Cephalus? Or does she fancy that her escapade was not known? I _only_ wish it was allowed Tithonus to tell of thee; there would not be a more coarse tale in _all_ the heavens. While thou art avoiding him, because he is chilled by length of years, thou dost rise early in the morning from _the bed of_ the old man to thy odious chariot. But if thou wast _only_ holding some Cephalus embraced in thy arms; _then_ wouldst thou be crying out, "Run slowly on, ye horses of the night." Why should I be punished in my affections, if thy husband does decay through _length of_ years? Wast thou married to the old fellow by my contrivance? See how many hours of sleep the Moon gave [201] to the youth beloved by _her_; and yet her beauty is not inferior to thine. The parent of the Gods himself, that he might not see thee so often, joined two nights together [202] for _the attainment of_ his desires. I had finished my reproaches; you might be sure she heard them; _for_ she blushed'. However, no later than usual did the day arise. ELEGY XIV. _His mistress having been in the habit of dyeing her hair with noxious compositions, she has nearly lost it, becoming almost bald. He reminds her of his former advice, and entreats her to abstain from the practice, on which there may be a chance of her recovering it._ |I always used to say; "Do leave off doctoring your hair." [203] _And_ now you have no hair _left_, that you can be dyeing. But, if you had let it alone, what was more plenteous than it? It used to reach down your sides, so far as ever [204] they extend. And besides: Was it not so fine, that you were afraid to dress [205] it; just like the veils [206] which the swarthy Seres use? Or _like_ the thread which the spider draws out with her slender legs, when she fastens her light work beneath the neglected beam? And yet its colour was not black, nor yet was it golden, but though it was neither, it was a mixture of them both. A _colour_, such as the tall cedar has in the moist vallies of craggy Ida, when its bark is stript off. Besides, it was _quite_ tractable, and falling into a thousand ringlets; and it was the cause of no trouble to you. Neither the bodkin, [208] nor the tooth of the comb _ever_ tore it; your tire woman always had a whole skin. Many a time was it dressed before my eyes; and _yet_, never did the bodkin [210] seized make wounds in her arms. Many a time too, in the morning, her locks not yet arranged, was she lying on the purple couch, with her face half upturned. Then even, unadorned, was she beauteous; as when the Thracian Bacchanal, in her weariness, throws herself carelessly upon the green grass. Still, fine as it was, and just like down, what evils, alas! did her tortured hair endure! How patiently did it submit itself to the iron and the fire; [211] that the curls might become crisp with their twisting circlets. "'Tis a shame," I used to cry, "'tis a shame, to be burning that hair; naturally it is becoming; do, cruel one, be merciful to your own head. Away with all violence from it; it is not _hair_ that deserves to be scorched; the very locks instruct [212] the bodkins when applied." Those beauteous locks are gone; which Apollo might have longed for, _and_ which Bacchus might have wished to be on his own head. With them I might compare those, which naked Dione is painted [213] as once having held up with her dripping hand. Why are you complaining that hair so badly treated is gone? Why, silly girl, do you lay down the mirror [214] with disconsolate hand? You are not seen to advantage by yourself with eyes accustomed _to your former self._ For you to please, you ought to be forgetful of your _former_ self. No enchanted herbs of a rival [215] have done you this injury; no treacherous hag has been washing you with Itæmonian water. The effects, too, of no disease have injured you; (far away be all _bad_ omens; [216]) nor has an envious tongue thinned your abundant locks;'twas your own self who gave the prepared poison to your head. Now Germany will be sending [217] for you her captured locks; by the favour of a conquered race you will be adorned. Ah! how many a time will you have to blush, as any one admires your hair; and _then_ you will say, "Now I am receiving praise for a bought commodity! In place of myself, he is now bepraising some Sygambrian girl [218] unknown to me; still, I remember _the time_ when that glory was my own." Wretch that I am! with difficulty does she restrain her tears; and she covers her face with her hand, having her delicate cheeks suffused with blushes. She is venturing to look at her former locks, _placed_ in her bosom; a treasure, alas! not fitted for that spot. [219] Calm your feelings with your features; the loss may still be repaired. Before long, you will become beauteous with your natural hair. ELEGY XV. _He tells the envious that the fame of Poets is immortal, and that theirs is not a life devoted to idleness._ |Why, gnawing Envy, dost thou blame me for years of slothfulness; and _why_ dost thou call poesy the employment of an idle mind? _Thou sayest_ that I do not, after the manner of my ancestors, while vigorous years allow me, seek the prizes of warfare covered with dust; that I do not make myself acquainted with the prosy law, and that I have not let my tongue for hire [221] in the disagreeable courts of justice. The pursuits of which thou art speaking, are perishable; by me, everlasting fame is sought; that to all time I may be celebrated throughout the whole world. The Mæonian bard [222] will live, so long as Tenedos and Ida [223] shall stand; so long as Simois shall roll down to the sea his rapid waves. The Ascræan, too, [224] will live, so long as the grape shall swell with its juices; [225] so long as the corn shall fall, reaped by the curving sickle. The son of Battus [226] will to all time be sung throughout the whole world; although he is not powerful in genius, in his skill he shows his might. No mischance will _ever_ come to the _tragic_ buskin [227] of Sophocles; with the Sun and Moon Aratus [228] will ever exist. So long as the deceitful slave, [229] the harsh father, the roguish procuress, and the cozening courtesan shall endure, Menander will exist. Ennius, [230] without any _art_, and Accius, [231] with his spirited language, have a name that will perish with no lapse of time. What age is to be forgetful of Varro, [232] and the first ship _that sailed_, and of the golden fleece sought by the chief, the son of Æson? Then will the verses perish of the sublime Lucretius, [233] when the same day shall give the world to destruction. Tityrus, [234] and the harvests, and the arms of Æneas, will be read of, so long as thou, Rome, [235] shalt be the ruler of the conquered earth. So long as the flames and the bow shall be the arms of Cupid, thy numbers, polished Tibullus, [236] will be repeated. Gallus [237] _will be known_ by the West, and Gallus _known_ by the East, [238] and with Gallus will his Lycoris be known. Though flint-stones, then, _and_ though the share of the enduring plough perish by lapse of time, _yet_ poetry is exempt from death. Let monarchs and the triumphs of monarchs yield to poesy, and let the wealthy shores of the golden Tagus [239] yield. Let the vulgar throng admire worthless things; let the yellow-haired Apollo supply for me cups filled from the Castalian stream; let me bear, too, on my locks the myrtle that dreads the cold; and let me often be read by the anxious lover. Envy feeds upon the living; after death it is at rest, when his own reward protects each according to his merit. Still then, when the closing fire [240] shall have consumed me, shall I live on; and a great portion of myself will _ever_ be surviving. BOOK THE SECOND ELEGY I. _He says that he is obliged by Cupid to write of Love instead of the Wars, of the Giants, upon which subject he had already commenced._ |This work, also, I, Naso, born among the watery Peligni, [301] have composed, the Poet of my own failings. This work, too, has Love demanded. Afar hence, be afar hence, ye prudish matrons; you are not a fitting audience for my wanton lines. Let the maiden that is not cold, read me in the presence of her betrothed; the inexperienced boy, too, wounded by a passion hitherto unknown; and may some youth, now wounded by the bow by which I am, recognise the conscious symptoms of his flame; and after long wondering, may he exclaim, "Taught by what informant, has this Poet been composing my own story?" I was (I remember) venturing to sing of the battles of the heavens, and Gyges [302] with his hundred hands; and I had sufficient power of expression; what time the Earth so disgracefully avenged herself, and lofty Ossa, heaped upon Olympus, bore Pelion headlong downwards. Having the clouds in my hands, and wielding the lightnings with Jove, which with success he was to hurl in behalf of his realms of the heavens, my mistress shut her door against me; the lightnings together with Jove did I forsake. Jupiter himself disappeared from my thoughts. Pardon me, O Jove; no aid did thy weapons afford me; the shut door was a more potent thunderbolt than thine. I forthwith resumed the language of endearment and trifling Elegies, those weapons of my own; and gentle words prevailed upon the obdurate door. Verses bring down [303] the horns of the blood-stained Moon; and they recall the snow-white steeds of the Sun in his career. Through verses do serpents burst, their jaws rent asunder, and the water turned back flows upward to its source. Through verses have doors given way; and by verses [304] was the bar, inserted in the door-post, although 'twas made of oak, overcome. Of what use is the swift Achilles celebrated by me? What can this or that son of Atreus do for me? He, too, who wasted as many of his years in wandering as in warfare? And the wretched Hector, dragged by the Hæmonian steeds? But the charms of the beauteous fair being ofttimes sung, she presents herself to the Poet as the reward of his verse. This great recompense is given; farewell, then, ye illustrious names of heroes; your favour is of no use to me. Ye charming fair, turn your eyes to my lines, which blushing Cupid dictates to me. ELEGY II. _He has seen a lady walking in the portico of the temple of Apollo, and has sent to know if he may wait upon her. She has replied that it is quite impossible, as the eunuch Bagous is set to watch her. Ovid here addresses Bagous, and endeavours to persuade him to relax his watch over the fair; and shows him how he can do so with safety._ |Bagous, [305] with whom is the duty of watching over your mistress, give me your attention, while I say a few but suitable words to you. Yesterday morning I saw a young lady walking in that portico which contains the choir _of the daughters_ of Danaus. [306] At once, as she pleased me, I sent _to her_, and in my letter I proffered my request; with trembling hand, she answered me, "I cannot." And to my inquiry, why she could not, the cause was announced; _namely_, that your surveillance over your mistress is too strict. O keeper, if you are wise (believe me _now_), cease to deserve my hatred; every one wishes him gone, of whom he stands in dread. Her husband, too, is not in his senses; for who would toil at taking care of that of which no part is lost, even if you do not watch it? But _still_, in his madness, let him indulge his passion; and let him believe that the object is chaste which pleases universally. By your favour, liberty may by stealth be given to her; that _one day_ she may return to you what you have given her. Are you ready to be a confidant; the mistress is obedient to the slave. You fear to be an accomplice; you may shut your eyes. Does she read a letter by herself; suppose her mother to have sent it. Does a stranger come; bye and bye let him go, [307] _as though_ an _old_ acquaintance. Should she go to visit a sick female friend, who is not sick; in your opinion, let her be unwell. If she shall be a long time at the sacrifice, [308] let not the long waiting tire you; putting your head on your breast, you can snore away. And don't be enquiring what can be going on at _the temple of_ the linen-clad Isis; [309] nor do you stand in any fear _whatever_ of the curving theatres. An accomplice in the escapade will receive everlasting honour; and what is less trouble than _merely_ to hold your tongue? He is in favour; he turns the house [310] upside down _at his pleasure_, and he feels no stripes; he is omnipotent; the rest, a scrubby lot, are grovelling on. By him, that the real circumstances may be concealed, false ones are coined; and both the masters approve [311] of, what one, _and that the mistress_, Approves of. When the husband has quite contracted his brow, and has pursed up his wrinkles, the caressing fair makes him become just as she pleases. But still, let her sometimes contrive some fault against you even, and let her pretend tears, and call you an executioner. [312] Do you, on the other hand, making some charge which she may easily explain; by a feigned accusation remove all suspicion of the truth. [313] In such case, may your honours, then may your limited savings [314] increase; _only_ do this, and in a short time you shall be a free man. You behold the chains bound around the necks of informers; [315] the loathsome gaol receives the hearts that are unworthy of belief. In the midst of water Tantalus is in want of water, and catches at the apples as they escape him; 'twas his blabbing tongue caused this. [325] While the keeper appointed by Juno, [326] is watching Io too carefully, he dies before his time; she becomes a Goddess. I have seen him wearing fetters on his bruised legs, through whom a husband was obliged to know of an intrigue. The punishment was less than his deserts; an unruly tongue was the injury of the two; the husband was grieved; the female suffered the loss of her character. Believe me; accusations are pleasing to no husband, and no one do they delight, even though he should listen to them. If he is indifferent, then you are wasting your information upon ears that care nothing for it; if he dotes _on her_, by your officiousness is he made wretched. Besides, a faux pas, although discovered, is not so easily proved; she comes _before him_, protected by the prejudices of her judge. Should even he himself see it, still he himself will believe her as she denies it; and he will condemn his own eyesight, and will impose upon himself. Let him _but_ see the tears of his spouse, and he himself will weep, and he will say, "That blabbing fellow shall be punished." How unequal the contest in which you embark! if conquered, stripes are ready for you; _while_ she is reposing in the bosom of the judge. No crime do we meditate; we meet not for mixing poisons; my hand is not glittering with the drawn sword. We ask that through you we may be enabled to love in safety; what can there be more harmless than these our prayers? ELEGY III. _He again addresses Bagous, who has proved obdurate to his request, and tries to effect his object by sympathising with his unhappy fate._ |Alas! that, [327] neither man nor woman, you are watching your mistress, and that you cannot experience the mutual transports of love! He who was the first to mutilate boys, [328] ought himself to have suffered those wounds which he made. You would be ready to accommodate, and obliging to those who entreat you, had your own passion been before inflamed by any fair. You were not born for _managing_ the steed, nor _are you_ skilful in valorous arms; for your right hand the warlike spear is not adapted. With these let males meddle; do you resign _all_ manly aspirations; may the standard be borne [329] by you in the cause of your mistress. Overwhelm her with your favours; her gratitude may be of use to you. If you should miss that, what good fortune will there be for you? She has both beauty, _and_ her years are fitted for dalliance; her charms are not deserving to fade in listless neglect. Ever watchful though you are deemed, _still_ she may deceive you; what two persons will, does not fail of accomplishment. Still, as it is more convenient to try you with our entreaties, we do implore you, while you have _still_ the opportunity of conferring your favours to advantage. [330] ELEGY IV. _He confesses that he is an universal admirer of the fair sex._ |I would not presume to defend my faulty morals, and to wield deceiving arms in behalf of my frailties. I confess them, if there is any use in confessing one's errors; and now, having confessed, I am foolishly proceeding to my own accusation. I hate _this state_; nor, though I wish, can I be otherwise than what I hate. Alas! how hard it is to bear _a lot_ which you wish to lay aside! For strength and self-control fail me for ruling myself; just like a ship carried along the rapid tide, am I hurried away. There is no single style of beauty which inflames my passion; there are a hundred causes for me always to be in love. Is there any fair one that casts down her modest eyes? I am on fire; and that very modesty becomes an ambush against me. Is another one forward; _then_ I am enchanted, because she is not coy; and her liveliness raises all my expectations. If another seems to be prudish, and to imitate the repulsive Sabine dames; [332] I think that she is kindly disposed, but that she conceals it in her stateliness. [333] Or if you are a learned fair, you please me, _thus_ endowed with rare acquirements; or if ignorant, you are charming for your simplicity. Is there one who says that the lines of Callimachus are uncouth in comparison with mine; at once she, to whom I am _so_ pleasing, pleases me. Is there even one who abuses both myself, the Poet, and my lines; I could wish to have her who so abuses me, upon my knee. Does this one walk leisurely, she enchants me with her gait; is another uncouth, still, she may become more gentle, on being more intimate with the other sex. Because this one sings _so_ sweetly, and modulates her voice [334] with such extreme case, I could wish to steal a kiss from her as she sings. Another is running through the complaining strings with active finger; who could not fall in love with hands so skilled? _And now_, one pleases by her gestures, and moves her arms to time, [335] and moves her graceful sides with languishing art _in the dance_; to say nothing about myself, who am excited on every occasion, put Hippolytus [336] there; he would become a Priapus. You, because you are so tall, equal the Heroines of old; [337] and, of large size, you can fill the entire couch as you lie. Another is active from her shortness; by both I am enchanted; both tall and short suit my taste. Is one unadorned; it occurs what addition there might be if she was adorned. Is one decked out; she sets out her endowments to advantage. The blonde will charm me; the brunette [338] will charm me _too_; a Venus is pleasing, even of a swarthy colour. Does black hair fall upon a neck of snow; Leda was sightly, with her raven locks. Is the hair flaxen; with her saffron locks, Aurora was charming. To every traditional story does my passion adapt itself. A youthful age charms me; _an age_ more mature captivates me; the former is superior in the charms of person, the latter excels in spirit. In fine, whatever the fair any person approves of in all the City, to all these does my passion aspire. ELEGY V. _He addresses his mistress, whom he has detected acting falsely towards him._ |Away with thee, quivered Cupid: no passion is of a value so great, that it should so often be my extreme wish to die. It is my wish to die, as oft as I call to mind your guilt. Fair one, born, alas! to be a never-ceasing cause of trouble! It is no tablets rubbed out [339] that discover your doings; no presents stealthily sent reveal your criminality. Oh! would that I might so accuse you, that, _after all_, I could not convict you! Ah wretched me! _and_ why is my case so stare? Happy _the man_ who boldly dares to defend the object which he loves; to whom his mistress is able to say, "I have done nothing _wrong_." Hard-hearted _is he_, and too much does he encourage his own grief, by whom a blood-stained victory is sought in the conviction of the accused. To my sorrow, in my sober moments, with the wine on table, [342] I myself was witness of your criminality, when you thought I was asleep. I saw you _both_ uttering many an expression by moving your eyebrows; [343] in your nods there was a considerable amount of language. Your eyes were not silent, [344] the table, too, traced over with wine; [345] nor was the language of the fingers wanting; I understood your discourse, [346] which treated of that which it did not appear to do; the words, too, preconcerted to stand for certain meanings. And now, the tables removed, many a guest had gone away; a couple of youths _only_ were _there_ dead drunk. But then I saw you _both_ giving wanton kisses; I am sure that there was billing enough on your part; such, _in fact_, as no sister gives to a brother of correct conduct, but _rather such_ as some voluptuous mistress gives to the eager lover; such as we may suppose that Phoebus did not give to Diana, but that Venus many a time save to her own _dear_ Mars. "What are you doing?" I cried out; "whither are you taking those transports that belong to me? On what belongs to myself, I will lay the hand of a master, [347] These _delights_ must be in common with you and me, _and_ with me and you; _but_ why does any third person take a share in them?" This did I say; and what, _besides_, sorrow prompted my tongue to say; but the red blush of shame rose on her conscious features; just as the sky, streaked by the wife of Tithonus, is tinted with red, or the maiden when beheld by her new-made husband; [348] just as the roses are beauteous when mingled among their _encircling_ lilies; or when the Moon is suffering from the enchantment of her steeds; [349] or the Assyrian ivory [350] which the Mæonian woman has stained, [351] that from length of time it may not turn yellow. That complexion _of hers_ was extremely like to these, or to some one of these; and, as it happened, she never was more beauteous _than then_. She looked towards the ground; to look upon the ground, added a charm; sad were her features, in her sorrow was she graceful. I had been tempted to tear her locks just as they were, (and nicely dressed they were) and to make an attack upon her tender cheeks. When I looked on her face, my strong arms fell powerless; by arms of her own was my mistress defended. I, who the moment before had been so savage, _now_, as a suppliant and of my own accord, entreated that she would give me kisses not inferior _to those given-to my rival_. She smiled, and with heartiness she gave me her best _kisses_; such as might have snatched his three-forked bolts from Jove. To my misery I am _now_ tormented, lest that other person received them in equal perfection; and I hope that those were not of this quality. [352] Those _kisses,_ too, were far better than those which I taught her; and she seemed to have learned something new. That they were too delightful, is a bad sign; that so lovingly were your lips joined to mine, _and_ mine to yours. And yet, it is not at this alone that I am grieved; I do not only complain that kisses were given; although I do complain as well that they were given; such could never have been taught but on a closer acquaintanceship. I know not who is the master that has received a remuneration so ample. ELEGY VI. _He laments the death of the parrot which he had given to Corinna._ |The parrot, the imitative bird [353] sent from the Indians of the East, is dead; come in flocks to his obsequies, ye birds. Come, affectionate denizens of air, and beat your breasts with your wings; and with your hard claws disfigure your delicate features. Let your rough feathers be torn in place of your sorrowing hair; instead of the long trumpet, [354] let your songs resound. Why, Philomela, are you complaining of the cruelty of _Tereus,_ the Ismarian tyrant? _Surely,_ that grievance is worn out by its _length of_ years. Turn your attention to the sad end of a bird so prized. It is is a great cause of sorrow, but, _still,_ that so old. All, who poise yourselves in your career in the liquid air; but you, above the rest, affectionate turtle-dove, [360] lament him. Throughout life there was a firm attachment between you, and your prolonged and lasting friendship endured to the end. What the Phocian youth [361] was to the Argive Orestes, the same, parrot, was the turtle-dove to you, so long as it was allowed _by fate._ But what _matters_ that friendship? What the beauty of your rare plumage? What your voice so ingenious at imitating sounds? What avails it that _ever_ since you were given, you pleased my mistress? Unfortunate pride of _all_ birds, you are indeed laid low. With your feathers you could outvie the green emerald, having your purple beak tinted with the ruddy saffron. There was no bird on earth more skilled at imitating sounds; so prettily [362] did you utter words with your lisping notes. Through envy, you were snatched away _from us_: you were the cause of no cruel wars; you were a chatterer, and the lover of peaceful concord. See, the quails, amid _all_ their battles, [363] live on; perhaps, too, for that reason, they become old. With a very little you were satisfied; and, through your love of talking, you could not give time to your mouth for much food. A nut was your food, and poppies the cause of sleep; and a drop of pure water used to dispel your thirst. The gluttonous vulture lives on, the kite, too, that forms its circles in the air, and the jackdaw, the foreboder [364] of the shower of rain. The crow, too, lives on, hateful to the armed Minerva; [366] it, indeed, will hardly die after nine ages. [367] The prattling parrot is dead, the mimic of the human voice, sent as a gift from the ends of the earth. What is best, is generally first carried off by greedy hands; what is worthless, fills its _destined_ numbers. [368] Thersites was the witness of the lamented death of him from Phylax; and now Hector became ashes, while his brothers _yet_ lived. Why should I mention the affectionate prayers of my anxious mistress in your behalf; prayers borne over the seas by the stormy North wind? The seventh day was come, [369] that was doomed to give no morrow; and now stood your Destiny, with her distaff all uncovered. And yet your words did not die away, in your faltering mouth; as you died, your tongue cried aloud, "Corinna, farewell!" [370] At the foot of the Elysian hill [371] a grove, overshaded with dark holm oaks, and the earth, moist with never-dying grass, is green. If there is any believing in matters of doubt, that is said to be the abode of innocent birds, from which obscene ones are expelled. There range far and wide the guiltless swans; the long-lived Phoenix, too, ever the sole bird _of its kind. There_ the bird itself of Juno unfolds her feathers; the gentle dove gives kisses to its loving mate. Received in this home in the groves, amid these the Parrot attracts the guileless birds by his words. [372] A sepulchre covers his bones; a sepulchre small as his body; on which a little stone has _this_ inscription, well suited to itself: "From this very tomb [377] I may be judged to have been the favorite of my mistress. I had a tongue more skilled at talking than other birds." ELEGY VII. _He attempts to convince his mistress, who suspects the contrary, that he is not in love with her handmaid Cypassis._ |Am I then [378] 'to be for ever made the object of accusation by new charges? Though I should conquer, _yet_ I am tired of entering the combat so oft. Do I look up to the _very_ top of the marble theatre, from the multitude, you choose some woman, from whom to receive a cause of grief. Or does some beauteous fair look on me with inexpressive features; you find out that there are secret signs on the features. Do I praise any one; with your nails you attack her ill-starred locks; if I blame any one, you think I am hiding some fault. If my colour is healthy, _then I am pronounced_ to be indifferent towards you; if unhealthy, _then_ I am said to be dying with love for another. But I _only_ wish I was conscious to myself of some fault; those endure punishment with equanimity, who are deserving of it. Now you accuse me without cause; and by believing every thing at random, you yourself forbid your anger to be of any consequence. See how the long-eared ass, [379] in his wretched lot, walks leisurely along, _although_ tyrannized over with everlasting blows. _And_ lo! a fresh charge; Cypassis, so skilled at tiring, [380] is blamed for having been the supplanter of her mistress. May the Gods prove more favourable, than that if I should have any inclination for a faux pas, a low-born mistress of a despised class should attract me! What free man would wish to have amorous intercourse with a bondwoman, and to embrace a body mangled with the whip? [387] Add, _too_, that she is skilled in arranging your hair, and is a valuable servant to you for the skill of her hands. And would I, forsooth, ask _such a thing_ of a servant, who is so faithful to you? _And_ for why? Only that a refusal might be united to a betrayal? I swear by Venus, and by the bow of the winged boy, that I am accused of a crime which I never committed. ELEGY VIII. _He wonders how Corinna has discovered his intrigue with Cypassis, her handmaid, and tells the latter how ably he has defended her and himself to her mistress._ |Cypassis, perfect in arranging the hair in a thousand fashions, but deserving to adorn the Goddesses alone; discovered, too, by me, in our delightful intrigue, to be no novice; useful, indeed, to your mistress, but still more serviceable to myself; who, _I wonder_, was the informant of our stolen caresses? "Whence was Corinna made acquainted with your escapade? Is it that I have blushed? Is it that, making a slip in any expression, I have given any guilty sign of our stealthy amours? And have I _not_, too, declared that if any one can commit the sin with a bondwoman, that man must want a sound mind? The Thessalian was inflamed by the beauty of the captive daughter of Brises; the slave priestess of Phoebus was beloved by the general from Mycenæ. I am not greater than the descendant of Tantalus, nor greater than Achilles; why should I deem that a disgrace to me, which was becoming for monarchs? But when she fixed her angry eyes upon you, I saw you blushing all over your cheeks. But, if, perchance, you remember, with how much more presence of mind did I myself make oath by the great Godhead of Venus! Do thou, Goddess, do thou order the warm South winds to bear away over the Carpathian ocean [388] the perjuries of a mind unsullied. In return for these services, swarthy Cypassis, [389] give me a sweet reward, your company to-day. Why refuse me, ungrateful one, and why invent new apprehensions? 'Tis enough to have laid one of your superiors under an obligation. But if, in your folly, you refuse me, as the informer, I will tell what has taken place before; and I myself will be the betrayer of my own failing. And I will tell Cypassis, in what spots I have met you, and how often, and in ways how many and what. ELEGY IX. _To Cupid._ O Cupid, never angered enough against me, O boy, that hast taken up thy abode in my heart! why dost thou torment me, who, _thy_ soldier, have never deserted thy standards? And _why_, in my own camp, am I _thus_ wounded? Why does thy torch burn, thy bow pierce, thy friends? 'Twere a greater glory to conquer those who war _with thee_. Nay more, did not the Hæmonian hero, afterwards, relieve him, when wounded, with his healing aid, whom he had struck with his spear. [390] The hunter follows _the prey_ that flies, that which is caught he leaves behind; and he is ever on the search for still more than he has found. We, a multitude devoted to thee, are _too well_ acquainted with thy arms; _yet_ thy tardy hand slackens against the foe that resists. Of what use is it to be blunting thy barbed darts against bare bones? _for_ Love has left my bones _quite_ bare. Many a man is there free from Love, many a damsel, too, free from Love; from these, with great glory, may a triumph be obtained by thee. Rome, had she not displayed her strength over the boundless earth, would, even to this day, have been planted thick with cottages of thatch. [391] The invalid soldier is drafted off to the fields [392] that he has received; the horse, when free from the race, [393] is sent into the pastures; the lengthened docks conceal the ship laid up; and the wand of repose [394] is demanded, the sword laid by. It were time for me, too, who have served so oft in love for the fair, now discharged, to be living in quiet. _And yet_, if any Divinity were to say to me, 'Live on, resigning love I should decline it; so sweet an evil are the fair. When I am quite exhausted, and the passion has faded from my mind, I know not by what perturbation of my wretched feelings I am bewildered. Just as the horse that is hard of mouth bears his master headlong, as he vainly pulls in the reins covered with foam; just as a sudden gale, the land now nearly made, carries out to sea the vessel, as she is entering harbour; so, many a time, does the uncertain gale of Cupid bear me away, and rosy Love resumes his well-known weapons. Pierce me, boy; naked am I exposed to thee, my arms laid aside; hither let thy strength be _directed_: here thy right hand tells _with effect_. Here, as though bidden, do thy arrows now spontaneously come; in comparison to myself, their own quiver is hardly so well known to them. Wretched is he who endures to rest the whole night, and who calls slumber a great good. Fool, what is slumber but the image of cold death? The Fates will give abundance of time for taking rest. Only let the words of my deceiving mistress beguile me; in hoping, at least, great joys shall I experience. And sometimes let her use caresses; sometimes let her find fault; oft may I enjoy _the favour_ of my mistress; often may I be repulsed. That Mars is one so dubious, is through thee, his step-son, Cupid; and after thy example does thy step-father wield his arms. Thou art fickle, and much more wavering than thy own wings; and thou both dost give and refuse thy joys at thy uncertain caprice. Still if thou dost listen to me, as I entreat thee, with thy beauteous mother; hold a sway never to be relinquished in my heart. May the damsels, a throng too flighty _by far_, be added to thy realms; then by two peoples wilt thou be revered. ELEGY X. _He tells Græcinus how he is in love with two mistresses at the same time._ |Thou wast wont to tell me, Græcinus [395] (I remember well), 'twas thou, I am sure, that a person cannot be in love with two females at the same time. Through thee have I been deceived; through thee have I been caught without my arms. [396] Lo! to my shame, I am in love with two at the same moment. Both of them are charming; both most attentive to their dress; in skill, 'tis a matter of doubt, whether the one or the other is superior. That one is more beauteous than this; this one, too, is more beauteous than that; and this one pleases me the most, and that one the most. The one passion and the other fluctuate, like the skiff, [397] impelled by the discordant breezes, and keep me distracted. Why, Erycina, dost thou everlastingly double my pangs? Was not one damsel sufficient for my anxiety? Why add leaves to the trees, why stars to the heavens filled _with them?_ Why additional waters to the vast ocean? But still this is better, than if I were languishing without a flame; may a life of seriousness be the lot of my foes. May it be the lot of my foes to sleep in the couch of solitude, and to recline their limbs outstretched in the midst of the bed. But, for me, may cruel Love _ever_ disturb my sluggish slumbers; and may I be not the solitary burden of my couch. May my mistress, with no one to hinder it, make me die _with love_, if one is enough to be able to do so; _but_ if one is not enough, _then_ two. Limbs that are thin, [401] but not without strength, may suffice; flesh it is, not sinew that my body is in want of. Delight, too, will give resources for vigour to my sides; through me has no fair ever been deceived. Often, robust through the hours of delicious night, have I proved of stalwart body, even in the mom. Happy the man, who proves the delights of Love? Oh that the Gods would grant that to be the cause of my end! Let the soldier arm his breast [402] that faces the opposing darts, and with his blood let him purchase eternal fame. Let the greedy man seek wealth; and with forsworn mouth, let the shipwrecked man drink of the seas which he has wearied with ploughing them. But may it be my lot to perish in the service of Love: _and_, when I die, may I depart in the midst of his battles; [403] and may some one say, when weeping at my funeral rites: "Such was a fitting death for his life." ELEGY XI. _He endeavours to dissuade Corinna from her voyage to Baiæ._ |The pine, cut on the heights of Pelion, was the first to teach the voyage full of danger, as the waves of the ocean wondered: which, boldly amid the meeting rocks, [404] bore away the ram remarkable for his yellow fleece. Oh! would that, overwhelmed, the Argo had drunk of the fatal waves, so that no one might plough the wide main with the oar. Lo! Corinna flies from both the well-known couch, and the Penates of her home, and prepares to go upon the deceitful paths _of the ocean_. Ah wretched me! why, for you, must I dread the Zephyrs, and the Eastern gales, and the cold Boreas, and the warm wind of the South? There no cities will you admire, _there_ no groves; _ever_ the same is the azure appearance of the perfidious main. The midst of the ocean has no tiny shells, or tinted pebbles; [405] that is the recreation [406] of the sandy shore. The shore _alone_, ye fair, should be pressed with your marble feet. Thus far is it safe; the rest of _that_ path is full of hazard. And let others tell you of the warfare of the winds: the waves which Scylla infests, or those which Charybdis _haunts_: from what rocky range the deadly Ceraunia projects: in what gulf the Syrtes, or in what Malea [407] lies concealed. Of these let others tell: but do you believe what each of them relates: no storm injures the person who credits them. After a length of time _only_ is the land beheld once more, when, the cable loosened, the curving ship runs out upon the boundless main: where the anxious sailor dreads the stormy winds, and _sees_ death as near him, as he sees the waves. What if Triton arouses the agitated waves? How parts the colour, then, from all your face! Then you may invoke the gracious stars of the fruitful Leda: [409] and may say, 'Happy she, whom her own _dry_ land receives!'Tis far more safe to lie snug in the couch, [410] to read amusing books, [411] _and_ to sound with one's fingers the Thracian lyre. But if the headlong gales bear away my unavailing words, still may Galatea be propitious to your ship. The loss of such a damsel, both ye Goddesses, daughters of Nereus, and thou, father of the Nereids, would be a reproach to you. Go, mindful of me, on your way, _soon_ to return with favouring breezes: may that, a stronger gale, fill your sails. Then may the mighty Nereus roll the ocean towards this shore: in this direction may the breezes blow: hither may the tide impel the waves. Do you yourself entreat, that the Zephyrs may come full upon your canvass: do you let out the swelling sails with your own hand. I shall be the first, from the shore, to see the well-known ship, and I shall exclaim, "'Tis she that carries my Divinities: [412] and I will receive you in my arms, and will ravish, indiscriminately, many a kiss; the victim, promised for your return, shall fall; the soft sand shall be heaped, too, in the form of a couch; and some sand-heap shall be as a table [413] _for us_. There, with wine placed before us, you shall tell many a story, how your bark was nearly overwhelmed in the midst of the waves: and how, while you were hastening to me, you dreaded neither the hours of the dangerous night, nor yet the stormy Southern gales. Though they be fictions, [414] _yet_ all will I believe as truth; why should I not myself encourage what is my own wish? May Lucifer, the most brilliant in the lofty skies, speedily bring me that day, spurring on his steed." ELEGY XII. _He rejoices in the possession of his mistress, having triumphed over every obstacle._ |Come, triumphant laurels, around my temples; I am victorious: lo! in my bosom Corinna is; she, whom her husband, whom a keeper, whom a door _so_ strong, (so many foes!) were watching, that she might by no stratagem be taken. This victory is deserving of an especial triumph: in which the prize, such as it is, is _gained_ without bloodshed. Not lowly walls, not towns surrounded with diminutive trenches, but a _fair_ damsel has been taken by my contrivance. When Pergamus fell, conquered in a war of twice five years: [415] out of so many, how great was the share of renown for the son of Atreus? But my glory is undivided, and shared in by no soldier: and no other has the credit of the exploit. Myself the general, myself the troops, I have attained this end of my desires: I, myself, have been the cavalry, I the infantry, I, the standard-bearer _too_. Fortune, too, has mingled no hazard with my feats. Come hither, _then_, thou Triumph, gained by exertions _entirely_ my own. And the cause [416] of my warfare is no new one; had not the daughter of Tyndarus been carried off, there would have been peace between Europe and Asia. A female disgracefully set the wild Lapithæ and the two-formed race in arms, when the wine circulated. A female again, [417] good Latinus, forced the Trojans to engage in ruthless warfare, in thy realms. 'Twas the females, [421] when even now the City was but new, that sent against the Romans their fathers-in-law, and gave them cruel arms. I have beheld the bulls fighting for a snow-white mate: the heifer, herself the spectator, afforded fresh courage. Me, too, with many others, but still without bloodshed, has Cupid ordered to bear the standard in his service. ELEGY XIII. _He entreats the aid of Isis and Lucina in behalf of Corinna, in her labour._ |While Corinna, in her imprudence, is trying to disengage the burden of her pregnant womb, exhausted, she lies prostrate in danger of her life. She, in truth, who incurred so great a risk unknown to me, is worthy of my wrath; but anger falls before apprehension. But yet, by me it was that she conceived; or so I think. That is often as a fact to me, which is possible. Isis, thou who dost [422] inhabit Parætonium, [423] and the genial fields of Canopus, [424] and Memphis, [425] and palm-bearing Pharos, [426] and where the rapid. Nile, discharged from its vast bed, rushes through its seven channels into the ocean waves; by thy 'sistra' [428] do I entreat thee; by the faces, _too_, of revered Anubis; [429] and then may the benignant Osiris [430] ever love thy rites, and may the sluggish serpent [431] ever wreath around thy altars, and may the horned Apis [432] walk in the procession as thy attendant; turn hither thy features, [433] and in one have mercy upon two; for to my mistress wilt thou be giving life, she to me. Full many a time in thy honour has she sat on thy appointed days, [434] on which [435] the throng of the Galli [436] wreathe _themselves_ with thy laurels. [437] Thou, too, who dost have compassion on the females who are in labour, whose latent burden distends their bodies slowly moving; come, propitious Ilithyia, [438] and listen to my prayers. She is worthy for thee to command to become indebted to thee. I, myself, in white array, will offer frankincense at thy smoking altars; I, myself, will offer before thy feet the gifts that I have vowed. I will add _this_ inscription too; "Naso, for the preservation of Corinna, _offers these_." But if, amid apprehensions so great, I may be allowed to give you advice, let it suffice for you, Corinna, to have struggled in this _one_ combat. ELEGY XIV. _He reproaches his mistress for having attempted to procure abortion._ |Of what use is it for damsels to live at ease, exempt from war, and not with their bucklers, [439] to have any inclination to follow the bloodstained troops; if, without warfare, they endure wounds from weapons of their own, and arm their imprudent hands for their own destruction? She who was the first to teach how to destroy the tender embryo, was deserving to perish by those arms of her own. That the stomach, forsooth, may be without the reproach of wrinkles, the sand must [440] be lamentably strewed for this struggle of yours. If the same custom had pleased the matrons of old, through _such_ criminality mankind would have perished; and he would be required, who should again throw stones [441] on the empty earth, for the second time the original of our kind. Who would have destroyed the resources of Priam, if Thetis, the Goddess of the waves, had refused to bear _Achilles_, her due burden? If Ilia had destroyed [442] the twins in her swelling womb, the founder of the all-ruling City would have perished. If Venus had laid violent hands on Æneas in her pregnant womb, the earth would have been destitute of _its_ Cæsars. You, too, beauteous one, might have died at the moment you might have been born, if your mother had tried the same experiment which you have done. I, myself, though destined as I am, to die a more pleasing death by love, should have beheld no days, had my mother slain me. Why do you deprive the loaded vine of its growing grapes? And why pluck the sour apples with relentless hand? When ripe, let them fall of their own accord; _once_ put forth, let them grow. Life is no slight reward for a little waiting. Why pierce [443] your own entrails, by applying instruments, and _why_ give dreadful poisons to the _yet_ unborn? People blame the Colchian damsel, stained with the blood of her sons; and they grieve for Itys, Slaughtered by his own mother. Each mother was cruel; but each, for sad reasons, took vengeance on her husband, by shedding their common blood. Tell me what Tereus, or what Jason excites you to pierce your body with an anxious hand? This neither the tigers do in their Armenian dens, [444] nor does the lioness dare to destroy an offspring of her own. But, delicate females do this, not, however, with impunity; many a time [445] does she die herself, who kills her _offspring_ in the womb. She dies herself, and, with her loosened hair, is borne upon the bier; and those whoever only catch a sight of her, cry "She deserved it." [446] But let these words vanish in the air of the heavens, and may there be no weight in _these_ presages of mine. Ye forgiving Deities, allow her this once to do wrong with safety _to herself_; that is enough; let a second transgression bring _its own_ punishment. ELEGY XV. _He addresses a ring which he has presented to his mistress, and envi its happy lot._ |O ring, [447] about to encircle the finger of the beauteous fair, in which there is nothing of value but the affection of the giver; go as a pleasing gift; _and_ receiving you with joyous feelings, may she at once place you upon her finger. May you serve her as well as she is constant to me; and nicely fitting, may you embrace her finger in your easy circle. Happy ring, by my mistress will you be handled. To my sorrow, I am now envying my own presents. O! that I could suddenly be changed into my own present, by the arts of her of Ææa, or of the Carpathian old man! [448] Then could I wish you to touch the bosom of my mistress, and for her to place her left hand within her dress. Though light and fitting well, I would escape from her finger; and loosened by _some_ wondrous contrivance, into her bosom would I fall. I too, _as well_, that I might be able to seal [449] her secret tablets, and that the seal, neither sticky nor dry, might not drag the wax, should first have to touch the lips [450] of the charming fair. Only I would not seal a note, the cause of grief to myself. Should I be given, to be put away in her desk, [459] I would refuse to depart, sticking fast to your fingers with ray contracted circle. To you, my life, I would never be a cause of disgrace, or a burden which your delicate fingers would refuse to carry. Wear me, when you are bathing your limbs in the tepid stream; and put up with the inconvenience of the water getting beneath the stone. But, I doubt, that _on seeing you_ naked, my passion would be aroused; and that, a ring, I should enact the part of the lover. _But_ why wish for impossibilities? Go, my little gift; let her understand that my constancy is proffered with you. ELEGY XVI. _He enlarges on the beauties of his native place, where he is now staying; but, notwithstanding the delights of the country, he says that he cannot feel happy in the absence of his mistress, whom he invites to visit him._ |Sulmo, [460] the third part of the Pelignian land, [461] _now_ receives me; a little spot, but salubrious with its flowing streams. Though the Sun should cleave the earth with his approaching rays, and though the oppressive Constellation [462] of the Dog of Icarus should shine, the Pelignian fields are traversed by flowing streams, and the shooting grass is verdant on the soft ground. The earth is fertile in corn, and much more fruitful in the grape; the thin soil [463] produces, too, the olive, that bears its berries. [464] The rivers also trickling amid the shooting blades, the grassy turfs cover the moistened ground. But my flame is far away. In one word, I am mistaken; she who excites my flame is far off; my flame is here. I would not choose, could I be placed between Pollux and Castor, to be in a portion of the heavens without yourself. Let them lie with their anxious cares, and let them be pressed with the heavy weight of the earth, who have measured out the earth into lengthened tracks. [465] Or else they should have bid the fair to go as the companions of the youths, if the earth must be measured out into lengthened tracks. Then, had I, shivering, had to pace the stormy Alps, [466] the journey would have been pleasant, so that _I had been_ with my love. With my love, I could venture to rush through the Libyan quicksands, and to spread my sails to be borne along by the fitful Southern gales. _Then_, I would not dread the monsters which bark beneath the thigh of the virgin _Scylla_; nor winding Malea, thy bays; nor where Charybdis, sated with ships swallowed up, disgorges them, and sucks up again the water which she has discharged. And if the sway of the winds prevails, and the waves bear away the Deities about to come to our aid; do you throw your snow-white arms around my shoulders; with active body will I support the beauteous burden. The youth who visited Hero, had often swam across the waves; then, too, would he have crossed them, but the way was dark. But without you, although the fields affording employment with their vines detain me; although the meadows be overflowed by the streams, and _though_ the husbandman invite the obedient stream [467] into channels, and the cool air refresh the foliage of the trees, I should not seem to be among the healthy Peliguians; I _should_ not _seem to be in_ the place of my birth--my paternal fields; but in Scythia, and among the fierce Cilicians, [468] and the Britons _painted_ green, [469] and the rocks which are red with the gore of Prometheus. The elm loves the vine, [471] the vine forsakes not the elm: why am I _so_ often torn away from my love? But you used to swear, _both_ by myself, and by your eyes, my stars, that you would ever be my companion. The winds and the waves carry away, whither they choose, the empty words of the fair, more worthless than the falling leaves. Still, if there is any affectionate regard in you for me _thus_ deserted: _now_ commence to add deeds to your promises: and forthwith do you, as the nags [472] whirl your little chaise [473] along, shake the reins over their manes at full speed. But you, rugged hills, subside, wherever she shall come; and you paths in the winding vales, be smooth. ELEGY XVII. _He says that he is the slave of Corinna, and complains of the tyranny which she exercises over him._ |If there shall be any one who thinks it inglorious to serve a damsel: in his opinion I shall be convicted of such baseness. Let me be disgraced; if only she, who possesses Paphos, and Cythera, beaten by the waves, torments me with less violence. And would that I had been the prize, too, of some indulgent mistress; since I was destined to be the prize of some fair. Beauty begets pride; through her charms Corinna is disdainful. Ah wretched me! why is she so well known to herself? Pride, forsooth, is caught from the reflection of the mirror: and _there_ she sees not herself, unless she is first adorned. If your beauty gives you a sway not too great over all things, face born to fascinate my eyes, still, you ought not, on that account, to despise me comparatively with yourself. That which is inferior must be united with what is great. The Nymph Calypso, seized with passion for a mortal, is believed to have detained the hero against his will. It is believed that the ocean-daughter of Nereus was united to the king of Plithia, [474] _and_ that Egeria was to the just Numa: that Venus was to Vulcan: although, his anvil [475] left, he limped with a distorted foot. This same kind of verse is unequal; but still the heroic is becomingly united [476] with the shorter measure. You, too, my life, receive me upon any terms. May it become you to impose conditions in the midst of your caresses. I will be no disgrace to you, nor one for you to rejoice at my removal. This affection will not be one to be disavowed by you. [477] May my cheerful lines be to you in place of great wealth: even many a fair wishes to gain fame through me. I know of one who publishes it that she is Corinna. [478] What would she not be ready to give to be so? But neither do the cool Eurotas, and the poplar-bearing Padus, far asunder, roll along the same banks; nor shall any one but yourself be celebrated in my poems. You, alone, shall afford subject-matter for my genius. ELEGY XVIII. _He tells Macer that he ought to write on Love._ |While thou art tracing thy poem onwards [479] to the wrath of Achilles, and art giving their first arms to the heroes, after taking the oaths; I, Macer, [480] am reposing in the shade of Venus, unused to toil; and tender Love attacks me, when about to attempt a mighty subject. Many a time have I said to my mistress, "At length, away with you:" _and_ forthwith she has seated herself in my lap. Many a time have I said, "I am ashamed _of myself:" when,_ with difficulty, her tears repressed, she has said, "Ah wretched me! Now you are ashamed to love." And _then_ she has thrown her arms around my neck: and has given me a thousand kisses, which _quite_ overpowered me. I am overcome: and my genius is called away from the arms it has assumed; and I _forthwith_ sing the exploits of my home, and my own warfare. Still did I wield the sceptre: and by my care my Tragedy grew apace; [481] and for this pursuit I was well prepared. Love smiled both at my tragic pall, and my coloured buskins, and the sceptre wielded so well by a private hand. From this pursuit, too, did the influence of my cruel mistress draw me away, and Love triumphed over the Poet with his buskins. As I am allowed _to do_, either I teach the art of tender love, (alas! by my own precepts am I myself tormented:) or I write what was delivered to Ulysses in the words of Penelope, or thy tears, deserted Phyllis. What, _too_, Paris and Macareus, and the ungrateful Jason, and the parent of Hip-polytus, and Hippolytus _himself_ read: and what the wretched Dido says, brandishing the drawn sword, and what the Lesbian mistress of the Æolian lyre. How swiftly did my friend, Sabinus, return [482] from all quarters of the world, and bring back letters [483] from different spots! The fair Penelope recognized the seal of Ulysses: the stepmother read what was written by her own Hippolytus. Then did the dutiful Æneas write an answer to the afflicted Elissa; and Phyllis, if she only survives, has something to read. The sad letter came to Hypsipyle from Jason: the Lesbian damsel, beloved _by Apollo_, may give the lyre that she has vowed to Phoebus. [484] Nor, Macer, so far as it is safe for a poet who sings of wars, is beauteous Love unsung of by thee, in the midst of warfare. Both Paris is there, and the adultress, the far-famed cause of guilt: and Laodamia, who attends her husband in death. If well I know thee; thou singest not of wars with greater pleasure than these; and from thy own camp thou comest back to mine. ELEGY XIX. _He tells a husband who does not care for his wife to watch her a little more carefully._ |If, fool, thou dost not need the fair to be well watched; still have her watched for my sake: that I may be pleased with her the more. What one may have is worthless; what one may not have, gives the more edge to the desires. If a man falls in love with that which another permits him _to love_, he is a man without feeling. Let us that love, both hope and fear in equal degree; and let an occasional repulse make room for our desires. Why should I _think of_ Fortune, should she never care to deceive me? I value nothing that does not sometimes cause me pain. The clever Corinna saw this failing in me; and she cunningly found out the means by which I might be enthralled. Oh, how many a time, feigning a pain in her head [485] that was quite well, has she ordered me, as I lingered with tardy foot, to take my departure! Oh, how many a time has she feigned a fault, and guilty _herself,_ has made there to be an appearance of innocence, just as she pleased! When thus she had tormented me and had rekindled the languid flame, again was she kind and obliging to my wishes. What caresses, what delightful words did she have ready for me! What kisses, ye great Gods, and how many, used she to give me! You, too, who have so lately ravished my eyes, often stand in dread of treachery, often, when entreated, refuse; and let me, lying prostrate on the threshold before your door-posts, endure the prolonged cold throughout the frosty night. Thus is my love made lasting, and it grows up in lengthened experience; this is for my advantage, this forms food for my affection. A surfeit of love, [486] and facilities too great, become a cause of weariness to me, just as sweet food cloys the appetite. If the brazen tower had never enclosed Danaë, [487] Danaë had never been made a mother by Jove. While Juno is watching Io 'with her curving horns, she becomes still more pleasing to Jove than she has been _before_. Whoever desires what he may have, and what is easily obtained, let him pluck leaves from the trees, and take water from the ample stream. If any damsel wishes long to hold her sway, let her play with her lover. Alas! that I, myself, am tormented through my own advice. Let _constant_ indulgence be the lot of whom it may, it does injury to me: that which pursues, _from it_ I fly; that which flies, I ever pursue. But do thou, too sure of the beauteous fair, begin now at nightfall to close thy house. Begin to enquire who it is that so often stealthily paces thy threshold? Why, _too_, the dogs bark [488] in the silent night. Whither the careful handmaid is carrying, or whence bringing back, the tablets? Why so oft she lies in her couch apart? Let this anxiety sometimes gnaw into thy very marrow; and give some scope and some opportunity for my stratagems. If one could fall in love with the wife of a fool, that man could rob the barren sea-shore of its sand. And now I give thee notice; unless thou begin to watch this fair, she shall begin to cease to be a flame of mine. I have put up with much, and that for a long time; I have often hoped that it would come to pass, that I should adroitly deceive thee, when thou hadst watched her well. Thou art careless, and dost endure what should be endured by no husband; but an end there shall be of an amour that is allowed to me. And shall I then, to my sorrow, forsooth, never be forbidden admission? Will it ever be night for me, with no one for an avenger? Am I to dread nothing? Shall I heave no sighs in my sleep? What have I to do with one so easy, what with such a pander of a husband? By thy own faultiness thou dost mar my joys. Why, then, dost thou not choose some one else, for so great long-suffering to please? If it pleases thee for me to be thy rival, forbid me _to be so_.---- BOOK THE THIRD. ELEGY I. _The Poet deliberates whether he shall continue to write Elegies, or whether he shall turn to Tragedy._ |There stands an ancient grove, and one uncut for many a year; 'tis worthy of belief that a Deity inhabits that spot. In the midst there is a holy spring, and a grotto arched with pumice; and on every side the birds pour forth their sweet complaints. Here, as I was walking, protected by the shade of the trees, I was considering upon what work my Muse should commence. Elegy came up, having her perfumed hair wreathed; and, if I mistake not, one of her feet was longer _than the other_. [501] Her figure was beauteous; her robe of the humblest texture, her garb that of one in love; the fault of her foot was one cause of her gracefulness. Ruthless Tragedy, too, came with her mighty stride; on her scowling brow were her locks; her pall swept the ground. Her left hand held aloft the royal sceptre; the Lydian buskin [502] was the high sandal for her feet. And first she spoke; "And when will there be an end of thy loving? O Poet, so slow at thy subject matter! Drunken revels [503] tell of thy wanton course of life; the cross roads, as they divide in their many ways, tell of it. Many a time does a person point with his finger at the Poet as he goes along, and say, 'That, that is the man whom cruel Love torments.' Thou art talked of as the story of the whole City, and yet thou dost not perceive it; while, all shame laid aside, thou art boasting of thy feats. 'Twere time to be influenced, touched by a more mighty inspiration; [505] long enough hast thou delayed; commence a greater task. By thy subject thou dost cramp thy genius; sing of the exploits of heroes; then thou wilt say, 'This is the field that is worthy of my genius.' Thy Muse has sportively indited what the charming fair may sing; and thy early youth has been passed amidst its own numbers. Now may I, Roman Tragedy, gain a celebrity by thy means; thy conceptions will satisfy my requirements." Thus far _did she speak_; and, supported on her tinted buskins, three or four times she shook her head with its flowing locks. The other one, if rightly I remember, smiled with eyes askance. Am I mistaken, or was there a branch of myrtle in her right hand? "Why, haughty Tragedy," said she, "dost thou attack me with high-sounding words? And canst thou never be other than severe? Still, thou thyself hast deigned to be excited in unequal numbers! [506] Against me hast thou strived, making use of my own verse. I should not compare heroic measures with my own; thy palaces quite overwhelm my humble abodes. I am a trifler; and with myself, Cupid, my care, is a trifler too; I am no more substantial myself than is my subject-matter. Without myself, the mother of wanton Love were coy; of that Goddess do I show myself the patroness [507] and the confidant. The door which thou with thy rigid buskin canst not unlock, the same is open to my caressing words. And yet I have deserved more power than thou, by putting up with many a thing that would not have been endured by thy haughtiness. "Through me Corinna learned how, deceiving her keeper, to shake the constancy of the fastened door, [508] and to slip away from her couch, clad in a loose tunic, [509] and in the night to move her feet without a stumble. Or how often, cut in _the wood_, [510] have I been hanging up at her obdurate doors, not fearing to be read by the people as they passed! I remember besides, how, when sent, I have been concealed in the bosom of the handmaid, until the strict keeper had taken his departure. Still further--when thou didst send me as a present on her birthday [511] --but she tore me to pieces, and barbarously threw me in the water close by. I was the first to cause the prospering germs of thy genius to shoot; it has, as my gift, that for which she is now asking thee." They had now ceased; on which I began: "By your own selves, I conjure you both; let my words, as I tremble, be received by unprejudiced ears. Thou, the one, dost grace me with the sceptre and the lofty buskin; already, even by thy contact with my lips, have I spoken in mighty accents. Thou, the other, dost offer a lasting fame to my loves; be propitious, then, and with the long lines unite the short. "Do, Tragedy, grant a little respite to the Poet. Thou art an everlasting task; the time which she demands is but short." Moved by my entreaties, she gave me leave; let tender Love be sketched with hurried hand, while still there is time; from behind [514] a more weighty undertaking presses on. ELEGY II. _To his mistress, in whose company he is present at the chariot races in the Circus Maximus. He describes the race._ |I am not sitting here [515] an admirer of the spirited steeds; [516] still I pray that he who is your favourite may win. I have come here to chat with you, and to be seated by you, [517] that the passion which yea cause may not be unknown to you. You are looking at the race, I _am looking_ at you; let us each look at what pleases us, and so let us each feast our eyes. O, happy the driver [518] of the steeds, whoever he is, that is your favourite; it is then his lot to be the object of your care; might such be my lot; with ardent zeal to be borne along would I press over the steeds as they start from the sacred barrier. [519] And now I would give rein; [520] now with my whip would I lash their backs; now with my inside wheel would I graze the turning-place. [521] If you should be seen by me in my course, then I should stop; and the reins, let go, would fall from my hands. Ah! how nearly was Pelops [522] falling by the lance of him of Pisa, while, Hippodamia, he was gazing on thy face! Still did he prove the conqueror through the favour of his mistress; [523] let us each prove victor through the favour of his charmer. Why do you shrink away in vain? [524] The partition forces us to sit close; the Circus has this advantage [525] in the arrangement of its space. But do you [526] on the right hand, whoever you are, be accommodating to the fair; she is being hurt by the pressure of your side. And you as well, [527] who are looking on behind us; draw in your legs, if you have _any_ decency, and don't press her back with your hard knees. But your mantle, hanging too low, is dragging on the ground; gather it up; or see, I am taking it up [528] in my hands. A disobliging garment you are, who are thus concealing ancles so pretty; and the more you gaze upon them, the more disobliging garment you are. Such were the ancles of the fleet Atalanta, [529] which Milanion longed to touch with his hands. Such are painted the ancles of the swift Diana, when, herself _still_ bolder, she pursues the bold beasts of prey. On not seeing them, I am on fire; what would be the consequence if they _were seen?_ You are heaping flames upon flames, water upon the sea. From them I suspect that the rest may prove charming, which is so well hidden, concealed beneath the thin dress. But, meanwhile, should you like to receive the gentle breeze which the fan may cause, [530] when waved by my hand? Or is the heat I feel, rather that of my own passion, and not of the weather, and is the love of the fair burning my inflamed breast? While I am talking, your white clothes are sprinkled with the black dust; nasty dust, away from a body like the snow. But now the procession [531] is approaching; give good omens both in words and feelings. The time is come to applaud; the procession approaches, glistening with gold. First in place is Victory borne [532] with expanded wings; [533] come hither, Goddess, and grant that this passion of mine may prove victorious. "Salute Neptune, [534] you who put too much confidence in the waves; I have nought to do with the sea; my own dry land engages me. Soldier, salute thy own Mars; arms I detest [535] Peace delights me, and Love found in the midst of Peace. Let Phoebus be propitious to the augurs, Phoebe to the huntsmen; turn, Minerva, towards thyself the hands of the artisan. [536] Ye husbandmen, arise in honour of Ceres and the youthful Bacchus; let the boxers [537] render Pollux, the horseman Castor propitious. Thee, genial Venus, and _the Loves_, the boys so potent with the bow, do I salute; be propitious, Goddess, to my aspirations. Inspire, too, kindly feelings in my new mistress; let her permit herself to be loved." She has assented; and with her nod she has given a favourable sign. What the Goddess has promised, I entreat yourself to promise. With the leave of Venus I will say it, you shall be the greater Goddess. By these many witnesses do I swear to you, and by this array of the Gods, that for all time you have been sighed for by me. But your legs have no support; you can, if perchance you like, rest the extremities of your feet in the lattice work. [538] Now the Prætor, [539] the Circus emptied, has sent from the even barriers [540] the chariots with their four steeds, the greatest sight of all. I see who is your favourite; whoever you wish well to, he will prove the conqueror. The very horses appear to understand what it is you wish for. Oh shocking! around the turning-place he goes with a circuit _far too_ wide. [541] What art thou about? The next is overtaking thee with his wheel in contact. What, wretched man, art thou about? Thou art wasting the good wishes of the fair; pull in the reins, I entreat, to the left, [542] with a strong hand. We have been resting ourselves in a blockhead; but still, Romans, call him back again, [543] and by waving the garments, [544] give the signal on every side. See! they are calling him back; but that the waving of the garments may not disarrange your hair, [545] you may hide yourself quite down in my bosom. And now, the barrier [546] unbarred once more, the side posts are open wide; with the horses at full speed the variegated throng [547] bursts forth. This time, at all events, [548] do prove victorious, and bound over the wide expanse; let my wishes, let those of my mistress, meet with success. The wishes of my mistress are fulfilled; my wishes still exist. He bears away the palm; [549] the palm is yet to be sought by me. She smiles, and she gives me a promise of something with her expressive eye. That is enough for this spot; grant the rest in another place. ELEGY III. _He complains of his mistress, whom he has found to be forsworn._ |Go to, believe that the Gods exist; she who had sworn has broken her faith, and still her beauty remains [550] just as it was before. Not yet forsworn, flowing locks had she; after she has deceived the Gods, she has them just as long. Before, she was pale, having her fair complexion suffused with the blush of the rose; the blush is still beauteous on her complexion of snow. Her foot was small; still most diminutive is the size of that foot. Tall was she, and graceful; tall and graceful does she still remain. Expressive eyes had she, which shone like stars; many a time through them has the treacherous fair proved false to me. [551] Even the Gods, forsooth, for ever permit the fair to be forsworn, and beauty has its divine sway. [552] I remember that of late she swore both by her own eyes and by mine, and mine felt pain. [553] Tell me, ye Gods, if with impunity she has proved false to you, why have I suffered, punishment for the deserts of another? But the virgin daughter of Cepheus is no reproach, _forsooth_, to you, [554] who was commanded to die for her mother, so inopportunely beauteous. 'Tis not enough that I had you for witnesses to no purpose; unpunished, she laughs at even the Gods together with myself; that by my punishment she may atone for her perjuries, am I, the deceived, to be the victim of the deceiver? Either a Divinity is a name without reality, and he is revered in vain, and influences people with a silly credulity; or else, _if there is any_ God, he is fond of the charming fair, and gives them alone too much licence to be able to do any thing. Against us Mavors is girded with the fatal sword; against us the lance is directed by the invincible hand of Pallas; against us the flexible bow of Apollo is bent; against us the lofty right hand of Jove wields the lightnings. The offended Gods of heaven fear to hurt the fair; and they spontaneously dread those who dread them not. And who, then, would take care to place the frankincense in his devotion upon the altars? At least, there ought to be more spirit in men. Jupiter, with his fires, hurls at the groves [555] and the towers, and yet he forbids his weapons, thus darted, to strike the perjured female. Many a one has deserved to be struck. The unfortunate Semele [556] perished by the flames; that punishment was found for her by her own compliant disposition. But if she had betaken herself off, on the approach of her lover, his father would not have had for Bacchus the duties of a mother to perform. Why do I complain, and why blame all the heavens? The Gods have eyes as well as we; the Gods have hearts as well. Were I a Divinity myself, I would allow a woman with impunity to swear falsely by my Godhead. I myself would swear that the fair ever swear the truth; and I would not be pronounced one of the morose Divinities. Still, do you, fair one, use their favour with more moderation, or, at least, do have some regard [557] for my eyes. ELEGY IV. _He tells a jealous husband, who watches his wife, that the greater his precautions, the greater are the temptations to sin._ |Cruel husband, by setting a guard over the charming fair, thou dost avail nothing; by her own feelings must each be kept. If, all apprehensions removed, any woman is chaste, she, in fact, is chaste; she who sins not, because she cannot, _still_ sins. [558] However well you may have guarded the person, the mind is still unchaste; and, unless it chooses, it cannot be constrained. You cannot confine the mind, should you lock up every thing; when all is closed, the unchaste one will be within. The one who can sin, errs less frequently; the very opportunity makes the impulse to wantonness to be the less powerful. Be persuaded by me, and leave off instigating to criminality by constraint; by indulgence thou mayst restrain it much more effectually. I have sometimes seen the horse, struggling against his reins, rush on like lightning with his resisting mouth. Soon as ever he felt that rein was given, he stopped, and the loosened bridle lay upon his flowing mane. We are ever striving for what is forbidden, and are desiring what is denied us; even so does the sick man hanker after the water that is forbidden him. Argus used to carry a hundred eyes in his forehead, a hundred in his neck; [559] and these Love alone many a time evaded. Danaë, who, a maid, had been placed in the chamber which was to last for ever with its stone and its iron, [560] became a mother. Penelope, although she was without a keeper, amid so many youthful suitors, remained undefiled. Whatever is hoarded up, we long for it the more, and the very pains invite the thief; few care for what another giants. Not through her beauty is she captivating, but through the fondness of her husband; people suppose it to be something unusual which has so captivated thee. Suppose she is not chaste whom her husband is guarding, but faithless; she is beloved; but this apprehension itself causes her value, rather than her beauty. Be indignant if thou dost please; forbidden pleasures delight me: if any woman can only say, "I am afraid, that woman alone pleases me. Nor yet is it legal [561] to confine a free-born woman; let these fears harass the bodies of those from foreign parts. That the keeper, forsooth, may be able to say, 'I caused it she must be chaste for the credit of thy slave. He is too much of a churl whom a faithless wife injures, and is not sufficiently acquainted with the ways of the City; in which Romulus, the son of Ilia, and Remus, the son of Ilia, both begotten by Mars, were not born without a crime being committed. Why didst thou choose a beauty for thyself, if she was not pleasing unless chaste? Those two qualities [562] cannot by any means be united.'" If thou art wise, show indulgence to thy spouse, and lay aside thy morose looks; and assert not the rights of a severe husband. Show courtesy, too, to the friends thy wife shall find thee, and many a one will she find. 'Tis thus that great credit accrues at a very small outlay of labour. Thus wilt thou be able always to take part in the festivities of the young men, and to see many a thing at home, [563] which you have not presented to her. ELEGY V. _A vision, and its explanation._ |Twas night, and sleep weighed down my wearied eyes. Such a vision as this terrified my mind. Beneath a sunny hill, a grove was standing, thick set with holm oaks; and in its branches lurked full many a bird. A level spot there was beneath, most verdant with the grassy mead, moistened with the drops of the gently trickling stream. Beneath the foliage of the trees, I was seeking shelter from the heat; still, under the foliage of the trees it was hot. Lo! seeking for the grass mingled with the variegated flowers, a white cow was standing before my eyes; more white than the snows at the moment when they have just fallen, which, time has not yet turned into flowing water. More white than the milk which is white with its bubbling foam, [564] and at that moment leaves the ewe when milked. [565] A bull there was, her companion, he, in his happiness, eas her mate; and with his own one he pressed the tender grass. While he was lying, and slowly ruminating upon the grass chewed once again; and once again was feeding on the food eaten by him before; he seemed, as sleep took away his strength, to lay his horned head upon the ground that supported it. Hither came a crow, gliding through the air on light wings; and chattering, took her seat upon the green sward; and thrice with her annoying beak did she peck at the breast of the snow-white cow; and with her bill she took away the white hair. Having remained awhile, she left the spot and the bull; but black envy was in the breast of the cow. And when she saw the bulls afar browsing upon the pastures (bulls were browsing afar upon the verdant pastures), thither did she betake herself, and she mingled among those herds, and sought out a spot of more fertile grass. "Come, tell me, whoever thou art, thou interpreter of the dreams of the night, what (if it has any truth) this vision means." Thus said I: thus spoke the interpreter of the dreams of the night, as he weighed in his mind each particular that was seen; "The heat which thou didst wish to avoid beneath the rustling leaves, but didst but poorly avoid, was that of Love. The cow is thy mistress; that complexion is suited to the fair. Thou wast the male, and the bull with the fitting mate. Inasmuch as the crow pecked at her breast with her sharp beak; an old hag of a procuress [566] will tempt the affections of thy mistress. In that, after hesitating long, his heifer left the bull, thou wilt be left to be chilled in a deserted couch. Envy and the black spots below the front of her breast, show that she is not free from the reproach of inconstancy." Thus spoke the interpreter; the blood retreated from my chilled face; and profound night stood before my eyes. ELEGY VI. _He addresses a river which has obstructed his passage while he is going to his mistress._ |River that hast [567] thy slimy banks planted with reeds, to my mistress I am hastening; stay thy waters for a moment. No bridges hast thou, nor yet a hollow boat [568] to carry one over without the stroke of the oar, by means of the rope thrown across. Thou wast a small stream, I recollect; and I did not hesitate to pass across thee; and the surface of thy waves then hardly reached to my ancles. Now, from the opposite mountain [569] thou dost rush, the snows being melted, and in thy turbid stream thou dost pour thy muddied waters. What avails it me thus to have hastened? What to have given so little time to rest? What to have made the night all one with the day? 569* If still I must be standing here; if, by no contrivance, thy opposite banks are granted to be trodden by my foot. Now do I long for the wings which the hero, the son of Danaë, [570] possessed, when he bore away the head, thickset with the dreadful serpents; now do I wish for the chariot, [571] from which the seed of Ceres first came, thrown upon the uncultivated ground. Of the wondrous fictions of the ancient poets do I speak; no time has produced, nor does produce, nor will produce these wonders. Rather, do thou, stream that dost overflow thy wide banks, flow within thy limits, then for ever mayst thou run on. Torrent, thou wilt not, believe me, be able to endure the reproaches, if perchance I should be mentioned as detained by thee in my love. Rivers ought rather to aid youths in their loves; rivers themselves have experienced what love is. Inachus [572] is said to have flowed pale with love for Melie, [573] the Bithynian Nymph, and to have warmed throughout his cold fords. Not yet was Troy besieged for twice five years, when, Xanthus, Neæra attracted thy eyes. Besides; did not enduring love for the Arcadian maid force Alpheus [574] to run through various lands? They say, too, that thou, Peneus, didst conceal, in the lands of the Phthiotians, Creüsa, [575] already betrothed to Xanthus. Why should I mention Asopus, whom Thebe, beloved by Mars, [576] received, Thebe, destined to be the parent of five daughters? Should I ask of Achelous, "Where now are thy horns?" thou wouldst complain that they were broken away by the wrathful hand of Hercules. [577] Not of such value was Calydon, [578] nor of such value was the whole of Ætolia; still, of such value was Deianira alone. The enriching Nile, that flows through his seven mouths, who so well conceals the native spot [579] of waters so vast, is said not to have been able to overpower by his stream the flame that was kindled by Evadne, the daughter of Asopus. [580] Enipeus, dried up, [581] that he might be enabled to embrace the daughter of Salmoneus, bade his waters to depart; his waters, so ordered, did depart. Nor do I pass thee by, who as thou dost roll amid the hollow rocks, foaming, dost water the fields of Argive Tibur [582] whom Ilia [583] captivated, although she was unsightly in her garb, bearing the marks of her nails on her locks, the marks of her nails on her cheeks. Bewailing both the crimes of her uncle, and the fault of Mars, she was wandering along the solitary spots with naked feet. Her the impetuous stream beheld from his rapid waves, and raised his hoarse mouth from the midst of his fords, and thus he said: "Why, in sorrow, art thou pacing my banks, Ilia, the descendant of Laomedon [584] of Ida? Whither have gone thy vestments? Why wandering thus alone? And why does no white fillet [585] bind thy hair tied up? Why weepest thou, and why spoil thy eyes wet with tears? And why beat thy open breast with frenzied hand? That man has both flints and ore of iron in his breast, who, unconcerned, beholds the tears on thy delicate face. Ilia, lay aside thy fears; my palace shall be opened unto thee; the streams, too, shall obey thee; Ilia, lay aside thy fears. Among a hundred Nymphs or more, thou shalt hold the sway; for a hundred or more does my stream contain. Only, descendant of Troy, despise me not, I pray; gifts more abundant than my promises shalt thou receive." _Thus_ he said; she casting on the ground her modest eyes, as she wept, besprinkled her warm breast with her tears. Thrice did she attempt to fly; thrice did she stop short at the deep waves, as fear deprived her of the power of running. Still, at last, as with hostile fingers she tore her hair, with quivering lips she uttered these bitter words; "Oh! would that my bones had been gathered up, and hidden in the tomb of my fathers, while yet they could be gathered, belonging to me a virgin! Why now, am I courted [586] for any nuptials, a Vestal disgraced, and to be driven from the altars of Ilium? Why do I hesitate? See! by the fingers of the multitude am I pointed at as unchaste. Let this disgrace be ended, which marks my features." Thus far _did she speak_, and before her swollen eyes she extended her robe; and so, in her despair, did she throw herself [587] into the rapid waters. The flowing stream is said to have placed his hands beneath her breast, and to have conferred on her the privilege of his nuptial couch. 'Tis worthy of belief, too, that thou hast been inflamed _with love_ for some maiden; but the groves and woods conceal thy failings. While I have been talking, it has become more swollen with its extending waves, and the deep channel contains not the rushing waters. What, furious torrent, hast thou against me? Why thus delay our mutual transports? Why, churlish river, interrupt the journey once commenced? What if thou didst flow according to some fixed rule, [588] a river of some note? What if thy fame was mighty throughout the earth? But no name hast thou collected from the exhausted rivulets; thou hast no springs, no certain abode hast thou. In place of spring, thou hast rain and melted snow; resources which the sluggish winter supplies to thee. Either in muddy guise, in winter time, thou dost speed onward in thy course; or filled with dust, thou dost pass over the parched ground. What thirsty traveller has been able to drink of thee then? Who has said, with grateful lips, "Mayst thou flow on for ever?" _Onward_ thou dost run, injurious to the flocks, [589] still more injurious to the fields. Perhaps these _mischiefs may move_ others; my own evils move me. And, oh shocking! did I in my madness relate to this stream the loves of the rivers? I am ashamed unworthily to have pronounced names so great. Gazing on I know not what, could I speak of the rivers [590] Acheloüs and Inachus, and could I, Nile, talk of thy name? But for thy deserts, torrent far from clear, I wish that for thee there may be scorching heat, and winter always dry. ELEGY VII. ```At non formosa est, at non bene culta puella; ````At, puto, non votis sæpe petita meis. ```Hanc tamen in nullos tenui male languidus usus, ````Sed jacui pigro crimen onusque toro. ```Nec potui cupiens, pariter cupiente puella, ````Inguinis effoeti parte juvante frui. ```Ilia quidem nostro subjecit ebumea collo ````Brachia, Sithonia candidiora nive; ```Osculaque inseruit cupidæ lactantia linguæ, ````Lascivum femori Supposuitque femur; ```Et mihi blanditias dixit, Dominumque vocavit, ````Et quæ præterea publica verba juvant. ```Tacta tamen veluti gelidâ mea membra cicutâ, ````Segnia propositum destituere suum. ```Truncus iners jacui, species, et inutile pondus: ````Nec satis exactum est, corpus an umbra forem, ```Quæ mihi ventura est, (siquidem ventura), senectus, ````Cum desit numeris ipsa juventa suis? ```Ah pudet annorum! quo me juvenemque virumque, ````Nec juvenem, nec me sensit arnica virum. ```Sic flammas aditura pias æterna sacerdos ````Surgit, et a caro fratre verenda soror. ```At nuper bis flava Chlide, ter Candida Pitho, ````Ter Libas officio continuata meo. ```Exigere a nobis angustâ nocte Corinnam, ````Me memini numéros sustinuisse uovem. ```Num mea Thessalico languent tlevota veneno Co ````rpora? num misero carmen et herba nocent? ```Sagave Puniceâ defixit nomina cerâ, ````Et medium tenues in jecur egit acus? ```Carmine læsa Ceres sterüem vanescit in herbam: ````Deficiunt læsæ carmine fontis aquæ: ```Ilicibus glandes, cantataque vitibus uva ````Decidit; et nullo poma movente fluunt. ```Quid vetat et nervos magicas torpere per arteg ````Forsitan impatiens sit latus inde meum. ```Hue pudor accessit: facti pudor ipse nocebat ````Ille fuit vitii causa secunda mei. ```At qualem vidi tantum tetigique puellam, ````Sic etiam tunicâ tangitur ipsa sua. ```Illius ad tactum Pylius juvenescere possit, ````Tithonusque annis fortior esse suis.= ```Hæc mihi contigerat; scd vir non contigit illi. ````Quas nunc concipiam per nova vota preces? ```Credo etiam magnos, quo sum tam turpiter usus, ````Muneris oblati pcenituisse Deos. ```Optabam certe recipi; sum nempe receptus: ````Oscula ferre; tuii: proximus esse; fui. ```Quo mihi fortunæ tantum? quo régna sine usu? ````Quid, nisi possedi dives avarus opes? ```Sic aret mediis taciti vulgator in undis; ````Pomaque, quæ nullo tempore tangat, habet. ```A tenerâ quisquam sic surgit mane puellâ, ```Protinus ut sanctos possit adiré Deos. ```Sed non blanda, puto, non optima perdidit in me ````Oscula, non omni sohcitavit ope. ```Ilia graves potuit quercus, adamantaque durum, ````Surdaque blanditiis saxa movere suis. ```Digna movere fuit certe vivosque virosque; ````Sed neque turn vixi, nec vir, ut ante, fui. ```Quid juvet, ad surdas si cantet Phemius aures? ````Quid miserum Thamyran picta tabeba juvet?7` ```At quæ non tacitâ formavi gaudia mente! ````Quos ego non finxi disposuique modos! ```Nostra tamen jacuere, velut præmortua, membra ````Turpiter, hesternâ languidiora rosâ. ```Quæ nunc ecce rigent intempestiva, valentque; ````Nunc opus exposcunt, mihtiamque suam. ```Quin istic pudibunda jaces, pars pessima nostri? ````Sic sum polhcitis captus et ante tuis. ```Tu dominam falbs; per te deprensus inermis ````Tristia cum magno damna pudore tub. ```Hanc etiam non est mea dedignata puella ````Molbter admotâ sobcitare manu. ```Sed postquam nullas consurgere posse per artes, ````Immemoremque sui procubuisse videt; ```Quid me ludis? ait; quis te, male sane, jubebat ````Invxtum nostro ponere membra toro? ```Aut te trajectis Ææa venefica lanis ````Devovet, aut abo lassus amore venis. ```Nec mora; desiluit tunicâ velata recinctâ: ````Et decuit nudos proripuisse pedes. ```Neve suæ possent intactam scire ministrae, ````Dedecus hoc sumtâ dissimulavit aquâ. ELEGY VIII. _He laments that he is not received by his mistress, and complains that she gives the preference to a wealthy rival._ |And does any one still venerate the liberal arts, or suppose that soft verses have any merit? Genius once was more precious than gold; but now, to be possessed of nought is the height of ignorance. After my poems [591] have proved very pleasing to my mistress, it is not allowed me to go where it has been allowed my books. When she has much bepraised me, her door is shut on him who is praised; talented _though I be_, I disgracefully wander up and down. Behold! a Knight gorged with blood, lately enriched, his wealth acquired [592] through his wounds, [593] is preferred before myself. And can you, my life, enfold him in your charming arms? Can you, my life, rush into his embrace? If you know it not, that head used to wear a helmet; that side which is so at your service, was girded with a sword. That left hand, which thus late [594] the golden ring so badly suits, used to bear the shield; touch his right, it has been stained with blood. And can you touch that right hand, by which some person has met his death? Alas! where is that tenderness of heart of yours? Look at his scars, the traces of his former fights; whatever he possesses, by that body was it acquired. [595] Perhaps, too, he will tell how often he has stabbed a man; covetous one, will you touch the hand that confesses this? I, unstained, the priest of the Muses and of Phoebus, am he who is singing his bootless song before your obdurate doors. Learn, you who are wise, not what we idlers know, but how to follow the anxious troops, and the ruthless camp; instead of good verses hold sway over [596] the first rank; through this, Homer, hadst thou wished it, she might have proved kind to thee. Jupiter, well aware that nothing is more potent than gold, was himself the reward of the ravished damsel. [597] So long as the bribe was wanting, the father was obdurate, she herself prudish, the door-posts bound with brass, the tower made of iron; but after the knowing seducer resorted to presents, [598] she herself opened her lap; and, requested to surrender, she did surrender. But when the aged Saturn held the realms of the heavens, the ground kept all money deep in its recesses. To the shades below had he removed brass and silver, and, together with gold, the weight of iron; and no ingots were there _in those times_. But she used to give what was better, corn without the crooked plough-share, apples too, and honey found in the hollow oak. And no one used with sturdy plough to cleave the soil; with no boundaries [599] did the surveyor mark out the ground. The oars dipped down did not skim the upturned waves; then was the shore [601] the limit of the paths of men. Human nature, against thyself hast thou been so clever; and for thy own destruction too ingenious. To what purpose surround cities with turreted fortifications? [602] To what purpose turn hostile hands to arms? What hast thou to do with the sea? With the earth thou mightst have been content. Why not seek the heavens [603] as well, for a third realm? To the heavens, too, dost thou aspire, so far as thou mayst. Quirinus, Liber, and Alcides, and Caesar but recently, [604] have their temples. Instead of corn, we dig the solid gold from the earth; the soldier possesses riches acquired by blood. To the poor is the Senate-house [605] shut; wealth alone confers honours; [606] hence, the judge so grave; hence the knight so proud. Let them possess it all; let the field of Mars [607] and the Forum [608] obey them; let these administer peace and cruel warfare. Only, in their greediness, let them not tear away my mistress; and 'tis enough, so they but allow something to belong to the poor. But now-a-days, he that is able to give away plenty, rules it _over a woman_ like a slave, even should she equal the prudish Sabine dames. The keeper is in my way; with regard to me, [609] she dreads her husband. If I were to make presents, both of them would entirely disappear from the house. Oh! if any God is the avenger of the neglected lover, may he change riches, so ill-gotten, into dust. ELEGY IX. _He laments the death of the Poet Tibullus._ |If his mother has lamented Memnon, his mother Achilles, and if sad deaths influence the great Goddesses; plaintive Elegy, unbind thy sorrowing tresses; alas! too nearly will thy name be derived from fact! The Poet of thy own inspiration, [610] Tibullus, thy glory, is burning, a lifeless body, on the erected pile. [611] Lo! the son of Venus bears both his quiver inverted, and his bow broken, and his torch without a flame; behold how wretched with drooping wings he goes: and how he beats his naked breast with cruel hand. His locks dishevelled about his neck receive his tears, and his mouth resounds with sobs that convulse his body. 'Twas thus, beauteous Iulus, they say that thou didst go forth from thy abode, at the funeral of his brother Æneas. Not less was Venus afflicted when Tibullus died, than when the cruel boar [612] tore the groin of the youth. And yet we Poets are called 'hallowed,' and the care of the Deities; there are some, too, who believe that we possess inspiration. [613] Inexorable Death, forsooth, profanes all that is hallowed; upon all she lays her [614] dusky hands. What availed his father, what, his mother, for Ismarian Orpheus [615] What, with his songs to have lulled the astounded wild beasts? The same father is said, in the lofty woods, to have sung 'Linus! Alas! Linus! Alas! [616] to his reluctant lyre. Add the son of Mæon, [617] too, by whom, as though an everlasting stream, the mouths of the poets are refreshed by the waters of Piëria: him, too, has his last day overwhelmed in black Avernus; his verse alone escapes the all-consuming pile. The fame of the Trojan toils, the work of the Poets is lasting, and the slow web woven [618] again through the stratagem of the night. So shall Nemesis, so Delia, [619] have a lasting name; the one, his recent choice, the other his first love. What does sacrifice avail thee? [620] Of what use are now the 'sistra' of Egypt? What, lying apart [621] in a forsaken bed? When the cruel Destinies snatch away the good, (pardon the confession) I am tempted to think that there are no Deities. Live piously; pious _though you be_, you shall die; attend the sacred worship; _still_ ruthless Death shall drag the worshipper from the temples to the yawning tomb. [622] Put your trust in the excellence of your verse; see! Tibullus lies prostrate; of so much, there hardly remains _enough_ for a little urn to receive. And, hallowed Poet, have the flames of the pile consumed thee, and have they not been afraid to feed upon that heart of thine? They could have burned the golden temples of the holy Gods, that have dared a crime so great. She turned away her face, who holds the towers of Eryx; [623] there are some, too, who affirm that she did not withhold her tears. But still, this is better than if the Phæacian land [624] had buried him a stranger, in an ignoble spot. Here, [625] at least, a mother pressed his tearful eyes [626] as he fled, and presented the last gifts [627] to his ashes; here a sister came to share the grief with her wretched mother, tearing her unadorned locks. And with thy relatives, both Nemesis and thy first love [628] joined their kisses; and they left not the pile in solitude. Delia, as she departed, said, "More fortunately was I beloved by thee; so long as I was thy flame, thou didst live." To her said Nemesis: "What dost thou say? Are my sufferings a pain to thee? When dying, he grasped me with his failing hand." [629] If, however, aught of us remains, but name and spirit, Tibullus will exist in the Elysian vales. Go to meet him, learned Catullus, [630] with thy Calvus, having thy youthful temples bound with ivy. Thou too, Gallus, (if the accusation of the injury of thy friend is false) prodigal of thy blood [631] and of thy life. Of these, thy shade is the companion; if only there is any shade of the body, polished Tibullus; thou hast swelled the blessed throng. Rest, bones, I pray, in quiet, in the untouched urn; and may the earth prove not heavy for thy ashes. ELEGY X. _He complains to Ceres that during her rites he is separated from his mistress._ |The yearly season of the rites of Ceres [632] is come: my mistress lies apart on a solitary couch. Yellow Ceres, having thy floating locks crowned with ears of corn, why dost thou interfere with my pleasures by thy rites? Thee, Goddess, nations speak of as bounteous everywhere: and no one is less unfavorable to the blessings of mankind. In former times the uncouth peasants did not parch the corn; and the threshing floor was a name unknown on earth. But the oaks, the early oracles, [633] used to bear acorns; these, and the grass of the shooting sod, were the food of men. Ceres was the first to teach the seed to swell in the fields, and with the sickle did she cut her coloured locks; she first forced the bulls to place their necks beneath the yoke; and she with crooked tooth turned up the fallow ground. Can any one believe that she takes delight in the tears of lovers, and is duly propitiated with misery and single-blessedness? Nor yet (although she loves the fruitful fields) is she a coy one; nor lias she a breast devoid of love. The Cretans shall be my witnesses; and the Cretans do not feign everything; the Cretans, a nation proud of having nurtured Jove. [634] There, he who rules the starry citadel of the world, a little child, drank milk with tender lips. There is full confidence in the witness; by its foster-child the witness is recommended I think that Ceres will confess her frailties, so well known. The Goddess had beheld Iasius [635] at the foot of Cretan Ida, as he pierced the backs of the wild beasts with unerring hand. She beheld, and when her tender marrow caught the flame; on the one side Shame, on the other Love, inflamed her. Shame was conquered by Love; you might see the furrows lying dry, and the crops coming up with a very small proportion of their wheat. [636] When the mattocks stoutly wielded had turned up the land, and the crooked plough had broken the hard earth, and the seed had fallen equally scattered over the wide fields; the hopes of the deceived husbandman were vain. The Goddess, the guardian of corn, was lingering in the lofty woods; the wreaths of com had fallen from her flowing locks. Crete alone was fertile in its fruitful year; all places, whither the Goddess had betaken herself, were one continued harvest. Ida, the locality itself for groves, grew white with corn, and the wild boar cropped the ears in the woods. The law-giving Minos [637] wished for himself many like years; he wished that the love of Ceres might prove lasting. Whereas, yellow-haired Goddess, single-blessedness would have been sad to thee; this am I now compelled by thy rites to endure. Why should I be sad, when thy daughter has been found again by thee, and rules over realms, only less than Juno in rank? This festive day calls for both Venus, and songs, and wine. These gifts is it fitting to bear to the ruling Gods. ELEGY XI. _He tells his mistress that he cannot help loving her._ |Much and long time have I suffered; by your faults is my patience overcome. Depart from my wearied breast, disgraceful Love. In truth I have now liberated myself, and I have burst my chains; and I am ashamed to have borne what it shamed me not to endure. I have conquered; and Love subdued I have trodden under foot; late have the horns [638] come upon my head. Have patience, and endure, [639] this pain will one day avail thee; often has the bitter potion given refreshment to the sick. And could I then endure, repulsed so oft from thy doors, to lay a free-born body upon the hard ground? [640] And did I then, like a slave, keep watch before thy street door, for some stranger I know not whom, that you were holding in your embrace? And did I behold it, when the wearied paramour came out of your door, carrying off his jaded and exhausted sides? Still, this is more endurable than the fact that I was beheld by him; [641] may that disgrace be the lot of my foes. When have I not kept close fastened to your side as you walked, [642] myself your keeper, myself your husband, myself your companion? And, celebrated by me forsooth, did you please the public: my passion was the cause of passion in many. Why mention the base perjuries of your perfidious tongue? and why the Gods forsworn [643] for my destruction? Why the silent nods of young men at banquets, [644] and words concealed in signs arranged _beforehand?_ She was reported to me to be ill; headlong and distracted I ran; I arrived; and, to my rival she was not ill. [645] Bearing these things, and others on which I am silent, I have oft endured them; find another in my stead, who could put up with these things. Now my ship, crowned with the votive chaplet, listens in safety to the swelling waves of the ocean. Cease to lavish your blandishments and the words which once availed; I am not a fool, as once I was. Love on this side, Hatred on that, are struggling, and are dragging my tender heart in opposite directions; but Love, I think, still gets the better. I will hate, [646] if I can; if not, reluctantly will I love; the bull loves not his yoke; still, that which he hates he bears. I fly from treachery; your beauty, as I fly, brings me back; I abhor the failings of your morals; your person I love. Thus, I can neither live without you, nor yet with you; and I appear to be unacquainted with my own wishes. I wish that either you were less handsome, or less unprincipled. So beauteous a form does not suit morals so bad. Your actions excite hatred; your beauty demands love. Ah wretched me! she is more potent than her frailties. O pardon me, by the common rites of our bed, by all the Gods who so often allow themselves to be deceived by you, and by your beauty, equal to a great Divinity with me, and by your eyes, which have captivated my own; whatever you shall be, ever shall you be mine; only do you make choice whether you will wish me to wish as well to love you, or whether I am to love you by compulsion. I would rather spread my sails and use propitious gales; since, though I should refuse, I shall still be forced to love. ELEGY XII. _He complains that he has rendered his mistress so celebrated by his verses, as to have thereby raised for himself many rivals._ |What day was that, on which, ye birds of no white hue, you sent forth your ominous notes, ever sad to me in my loves? Or what star must I consider to be the enemy of my destiny? Or what Deities am I to complain of, as waging war against me? She, who but lately [647] was called my own, whom I commenced alone to love, I fear that with many she must be shared by me. Am I mistaken? Or has she gained fame by my poems? 'Tis so; by my genius has she been made public. And justly; for why have I made proclamation [648] of her charms? Through my fault has the fair been put up for sale. She pleases, and I the procurer; by my guidance is the lover introduced; by my hands has her door been opened. Whether verses are of any use, is matter of doubt; at all events, they have injured me; they have been envious of my happiness. While Thebes, [649] while Troy, while the exploits of Caesar existed; Corinna alone warmed my genius. Would that I had meddled with verses against the will of the Muses; and that Phoebus had deserted the work commenced! And yet, it is not the custom to listen to Poets as witnesses; [650] I would have preferred all weight to be wanting to my words. Through us, Scylla, who robbed her father of his white hair, bears the raging dogs [651] beneath her thigh and loins. We have given wings to the feet, serpents to the hair; the victorious descendant of Abas [652] is borne upon the winged steed. We, too, have extended Tityus [653] over the vast space, and have formed the three mouths for the dog bristling -with snakes. We have described Enceladus, [654] hurling with his thousand arms; and the heroes captivated by the voice of the two-shaped damsels. [655] In the Ithacan bags [656] have we enclosed the winds of Æolus; the treacherous Tantalus thirsts in the middle of the stream. Of Niobe we have made the rock, of the damsel, the she-bear; the Cecropian [657] bird sings of Odrysian Itys. Jupiter transforms himself, either into a bird, or into gold [658] or, as a bull, with the virgin placed upon him, he cleaves the waves. Why mention Proteus, and the Theban seed, [659] the teeth? Why that there were bulls, which vomited flames from their mouths? Why, charioteer, that thy sisters distil amber tears? [660] Why that they are now Goddesses of the sea, who once were ships? [661] Why that the light of day fled from the hellish banquet [662] of Atreus? And why that the hard stones followed the lyre [663] as it was struck? The fertile license of the Poets ranges over an immense space; and it ties not its words to the accuracy of history. So, too, ought my mistress to have been deemed to be falsely praised; now is your credulity a mischief to me. ELEGY XIII. _He describes the Festival of Juno, as celebrated at Falisci, the native place of his wife._ As my wife was born at Falisci, so fruitful in apples, we repaired to the walls that were conquered, Camillus, by thee. [664] The priestesses were preparing the chaste festival of Juno, with distinguished games, and the heifer of the country. 'Twas a great remuneration for my stay, to be acquainted with the ceremony; although a path, difficult from the ascent, leads the way thither. There stands a grove, ancient, and shaded with numberless trees; look at it, you must confess that a Divinity exists in the spot. An altar receives the prayers, and the votive incense of the pious; an altar made without skill, by ancient hands. When, from this spot, the pipe has given the signal with its usual note, the yearly procession moves along the covered paths. [665] Snow-white heifers [666] are led, as the crowd applauds, which the Faliscan grass has fed on its own plains; calves, too, not yet threatening with the forehead to inspire fear; and the pig, a smaller victim, from its lowly sty; the leader too, of the flock, with his horns bending back over his hardy temples; the goat alone is odious to the Goddess queen. By her betrayal, discovered in the lofty woods, [667] she is said to have desisted from the flight she had commenced. Even now, by the boys, is she aimed at as a mark; [668] and she is given, as a prize, to the author of her wound. Where the Goddess is to come, the youths and bashful girls sweep the roads before her, with garments [669] as they lie. Their virgin hair is adorned with gold and gems; and the proud mantle conceals their feet, bedecked with gold. After the Grecian manner [670] of their ancestors, clad in white garments, they bear the sacred vessels entrusted to them on their heads, placed beneath. The people hold religious silence, [671] at the moment when the resplendent procession comes up; and she herself follows after her priestesses. Argive is the appearance of the procession; Agamemnon slain, Halesus [672] fled from both his crime and his father's wealth. And now, an exile, having wandered over both land and sea, he erected lofty walls with prospering hand. He taught his own Falisci the rites of Juno. May they be ever propitious to myself, may they be ever so to her own people. ELEGY XIV. _He entreats his mistress, if she will not be constant, at least, to conceal her intrigues from him._ |Beauteous since you are, I do not forbid your being frail; but let it not be a matter of course, that wretched I should know it. Nor does any severity of mine command you to be quite correct; but it only entreats you to try to conceal the truth. She is not culpable, whoever can deny that she has been culpable; and 'tis only the confession of error that makes a woman disgraced. What madness is it to confess in light of day what lies concealed in night? And what you do in secret, to say openly that it is done? The strumpet about to entertain some obscure Roman, first keeps out the public by fastening up the bar. And will you make known your frailties to malicious report? And will you make proof of your own criminality? May your mind be more sound, or, at least, may you imitate the chaste; and although you are not, let me suppose that you are chaste. What you do, still do the same; only deny that you do so; and be not ashamed in public to speak the language of chastity. There is the occasion which demands wantonness; sate it with every delight; far thence be all modesty. Soon as you take your departure thence; away at once with all lasciviousness, and leave your frailties in your chamber= ```Illic nec tunicam tibi sit posuisse rubori, ````Nec femori impositum sustinuisse femur: ```Illic purpureis condatur lingua labellis: ````Inque modos Venerem mille figuret amor; ```Illic nec voces, nec verba juvantia cessent; ````Spondaque lascivâ mobilitate tremat.= With your garments put on looks that dread accusation; and let modesty disavow improper pursuits. Deceive the public, deceive me, too; in my ignorance, let me be mistaken, and allow me to enjoy my silly credulity. Why do I so often espy letters sent and received? Why one side and the other [673] tumbled, of your couch? Why do I see your hair disarranged more than happens in sleep, and your neck bearing the marks of teeth? The fading itself alone you do not bring before my eyes; if you hesitate consulting your own reputation, still, spare me. My senses fail me, and I am expiring, oft as you confess your failings; and the drops flow, chilled throughout my limbs. Then do I love you; then, in vain, do I hate what I am forced to love; 673* then I could wish myself to be dead, but together with you. No enquiries, for my part, will I make, nor will I try to know what you shall attempt to conceal; and to me it shall be the same as a false charge. If, however, you shall be found detected in the midst of your guilt, and if criminality shall be beheld by my eyes; what has been plainly seen, do you deny to have been plainly seen; my own eyes shall give way to your assertions.'Tis an easy conquest for you to vanquish me, who desire to be vanquished. Let your tongue only be mindful to say--"I did not do it!" since it is your lot to conquer with two words; although not by the merit of your cause, still conquer through your judge. ELEGY X. _He tells Venus that he now ceases to write Elegies._ |Seek a new Poet, mother of the tender Loves; here the extreme turning-place is grazed [674] by my Elegies, which I, a foster-child of the Pelignian fields, have composed; nor have my sportive lays disgraced me. _Me, I say, who_, if that is aught, am the heir to my rank, [675] even through a long line of ancestors, and not lately made a Knight in the hurly-burly of warfare. Mantua delights in Virgil, Verona in Catullus; I shall be called the glory of the Pelignian race; which its own liberties summon to glorious arms, [676] when trembling Rome dreaded [677] the allied bands. And some stranger will say, as he looks on the walls of the watery Sulmo, which occupy but a few acres of land, "Small as you are, I will call you great, who were able to produce a Poet so great." Beauteous boy, and thou, Amathusian parent [678] of the beauteous boy, raise your golden standard from my fields. The horned [679] Lyæus [680] has struck me with a thyrsus more potent; with mighty steeds must a more extended plain be paced. Unwarlike Elegies, my sportive [681] Muse, farewell; a work destined to survive long after I am dead and gone.---- FOOTNOTES BOOK ONE: [Footnote 001: Were five books.--Ver. 1. From this it is clear, that the first edition which Ovid gave to the public of his 'Amores' was in five Books; but that on revising his work, he preferred (praetulit) these three books to the former five. It is supposed that he rejected many of those Elegies which were of too free a nature and were likely to embroil him with the authorities, by reason of their licentiousness.] [Footnote 002: Though it should.--Ver. 3. Burmann has rightly observed, that 'ut jam,' in this line, has exactly the force of 'quamvis,' 'although.'] [Footnote 003: In serious numbers.--Ver. 1. By the 'graves numeri,' he means Heroic or Hexameter verses. It is supposed that he alludes to the battle of the Giants or the Titans, on which subject he had begun to write an heroic poem. In these lines Ovid seems to have had in view the commencement of the first Ode of Anacreon.] [Footnote 004: Suited to the measure.--Ver. 2. The subject being of a grave character, and, as such, suited to Heroic measure.] [Footnote 005: Abstracted one foot.--Ver. 4. He says that every second line (as is the case in Heroic verse) had as many feet as the first, namely, six : but that Cupid stole a foot from the Hexameter, and reduced it to a Pentameter, whereby the Poet was forced to recur to the Elegiac measure.] [Footnote 008: Diminish my energies.--Ver. 18. See the Note to the fourth line.] [Footnote 009: His quiver loosened.--Ver. 21. The 'pharetra,' or quiver, filled with arrows, was used by most of the nations that excelled in archery, among whom were the Scythians, Persians, Lycians, Thracians, and Cretans. It was made of leather, and was sometimes adorned with gold or painting. It had a lid, and was suspended by a belt from the right shoulder. Its usual position was on the left hip, and it was thus worn by the Scythians and Egyptians. The Cretans, however, wore it behind the back, and Diana, in her statues, is represented as so doing. This must have been the method in which Cupid is intended in the present instance to wear it, as he has to unloose the quiver before he takes out the arrow. Some Commentators, however, would have 'solutâ' to refer simply to the act of opening the quiver.] [Footnote 010: In six feet.--Ver. 27. He says that he must henceforth write in Hexameters and Pentameters, or, in other words, in the Elegiac measure.] [Footnote 011: My Muse.--Ver. 30. The Muse addressed by him would be Erato, under whose protection were those Poets whose theme was Love. He bids her wreathe her hair with myrtle, because it was sacred to Venus; while, on the other hand, laurels would be better adapted to the Heroic Muse. The myrtle is said to love the moisture and coolness of the sea-shore.] [Footnote 014: Thy step-father.--Ver. 24. He calls Mars the step-father of Cupid, in consequence of his intrigue with Venus.] [Footnote 015: Birds so yoked.--Ver. 26. These are the doves which were sacred to Venus and Cupid. By yoking them to the chariot of Mars, the Poe* wishes to show the skill and power of Cupid.] [Footnote 016: Io triumphe.--Ver. 25. 'Clamare triumphum,' means 'to shout Io triumphe,' as the procession moves along. Lactantius speaks of a poem called 'the Triumph of Cupid,' in which Jupiter and the other Gods were represented as following him in the triumphal procession.] [Footnote 017: Thyself with gold.--Ver. 42. The poet Mosehus represents Cupid as having wings of gold.] [Footnote 018: The Gangetic land.--Ver. 47. He alludes to the Indian triumphs of Bacchus, which extended to the river Ganges.] [Footnote 019: Thy kinsman Cæsar--Ver. 51. Because Augustus, as the adopted son of Julius Cæsar, was said to be descended from Venus, through the line of Æneas.] [Footnote 020: Shield the conquered.--Ver. 52. Although Augustus had many faults, it must be admitted that he was, like Julius, a most merciful conqueror, and was generally averse to bloodshed.] [Footnote 021: Founder of my family. --Ver. 8. See the Life of Ovid prefixed to the Fasti; and the Second Book of the Tristia.] [Footnote 022: Each of my parents.--Ver. 10. From this it appears that this Elegy was composed during the life-time of both of his parents, and while, probably, he was still dependent on his father.] [Footnote 023: No rover in affection.--Ver. 15. 'Desuitor,' literally means 'one who leaps off.' The figure is derived from those equestrians who rode upon several horses, or guided several chariots, passing from the one to the other. This sport was very frequently exhibited in the Roman Circus. Among the Romans, the 'desuitor' generally wore a 'pileus,' or cap of felt. The Numidian, Scythian, and Armenian soldiers, were said to have been skilled in the same art.] [Footnote 024: Of the bird.--Ver. 22. He alludes to Leda and Europa.] [Footnote 026: The same banquet.--Ver. 1. He says that they are about to meet at 'coena,' at the house of a common friend.] [Footnote 027: The last meal.--Ver. 2. The 'coena' of the Romans is usually translated by the word 'supper'; but as being the chief meal of the day, and being in general, (at least during the Augustan age) taken at about three o'clock, it really corresponds to our 'dinner.'] [Footnote 028: Warm the bosom of another.--Ver. 5. As each guest while reclining on the couch at the entertainment, mostly leaned on his left elbow during the meal, and as two or more persons lay on the same couch, the head of one person reached to the breast of him who lay above him, and the lower person was said to lie on the bosom of the other. Among the Romans, the usual number of persons occupying each couch was three. Sometimes, however, four occupied one couch; while, among the Greeks, only two reclined upon it. In this instance, he describes the lady as occupying the place below her husband, and consequently warming his breast with her head. For a considerable time after the fashion of reclining at meals had been introduced into Rome, the Roman ladies sat at meals while the other sex was recumbent. Indeed, it was generally considered more becoming for females to be seated, especially if it was a party where many persons were present. Juvenal, however, represents a bride as reclining at the marriage supper on the bosom of her husband. On the present occasion, it is not very likely that the ladies were particular about the more rigid rules of etiquette. It must be remembered that before lying down, the shoes or sandals were taken off.] [Footnote 029: Damsel of Atrax.--Ver. 8. He alludes to the marriage of Hippodamia to Pirithous, and the battle between the Centaurs and the Lapithæ, described in the Twelfth-. Book of the Metamorphoses.] [Footnote 031: Do come first.--Ver. 14. He hardly knows why he asks her to do so, but still she must come before her husband; perhaps, that he may have the pleasure of gazing upon her without the chance of detection; the more especially as she would not recline till her husband had arrived, and would, till then, probably be seated.] [Footnote 032: Touch my foot.--Ver. 16. This would show that she had safely received his letter.] [Footnote 033: My secret signs.--Ver. 18. See the Note in this Volume, to the 90th line of the 17th Epistle.] [Footnote 034: By my eye-brows.--Ver. 19. See the 82nd line of the 17th Epistle.] [Footnote 035: Traced in the wine.--Ver. 20. See the 88th line of the 17th Epistle.] [Footnote 036: Your blooming cheeks.--Ver. 22. Probably by way of check to his want of caution.] [Footnote 037: Twisted on your fingers.--Ver. 26. The Sabines were the first to introduce the practice of wearing rings among the Romans. The Romans generally wore one ring, at least, and mostly upon the fourth finger of the left hand. Down to the latest period of the Republic, the rings were mostly of iron, and answered the'purpose of a signet. The right of wearing a gold ring remained for several centuries the exclusive privilege of Senators, Magistrates, and Knights. The emperors were not very scrupulous on whom they conferred the privilege of wearing the gold ring, and Severus and Aurelian gave the right to all Roman soldiers. Vain persons who had the privilege, literally covered their fingers with rings, so much so, that Quintilian thinks it necessary to warn the orator not to have them above the middle joint of the fingers. The rings and the gems set in them, were often of extreme beauty and value. From Juvenal and Martial we learn that the coxcombs of the day had rings for both winter and summer wear. They were kept in 'dactyliothecæ,' or ring boxes, where they were ranged in a row.] [Footnote 038: Who are in prayer.--Ver. 27. It was the custom to hold the altar while the suppliant was praying to the Deities; he here directs her, while she is mentally uttering imprecations against her husband, to fancy that the table is the altar, and to take hold of it accordingly.] [Footnote 039: If you are discreet.--Ver. 29. Sapias' is put for 'si sapias,' 'if you are discreet,' 'if you would act sensibly.'] [Footnote 041: Ask the servant.--Ver. 30. This would be the slave, whose office it was to mix the wine and water to the taste of the guests. He was called [oivôxooç] by the Greeks, 'pincerna' by the Romans.] [Footnote 042: Which you have put down.--Ver. 31. That is, which she either puts upon the table, or gives back to the servant, when she has drunk.] [Footnote 043: Touched by his mouth.--Ver. 34. This would appear to refer to some choice morsel picked out of the husband's plate, which, as a mark of attention, he might present to her.] [Footnote 044: On his unsightly breast.--Ver. 36. This, from her position, if she reclined below her husband, she would be almost obliged to do.] [Footnote 045: So close at hand.--Ver. 37. A breach of these injunctions would imply either a very lax state of etiquette at the Reman parties, or, what is more probable, that the present company was not of a very select character.] [Footnote 048: Beneath the cloth.--Ver. 48. 'Vestis' means a covering, or clothing for anything, as for a couch, or for tapestry. Let us charitably suppose it here to mean the table cloth; as the passage will not admit of further examination, and has of necessity been somewhat modified in the translation.] [Footnote 049: The conscious covering.--Ver. 50. The 'pallia,' here mentioned, are clearly the coverlets of the couch which he has before mentioned in the 41st line; and from this it is evident, that during the repast the guests were covered with them.] [Footnote 050: Add wine by stealth.--Ver. 52. To make him fall asleep the sooner] [Footnote 051: 'Twas summer time.--Ver. 1. In all hot climates it is the custom to repose in the middle of the day. This the Spaniards call the 'siesta.'] [Footnote 053: A part of the window.--Ver. 3. On the 'fenestræ,' or windows of the ancients, see the Notes to the Pontic Epistles, Book iii. Ep. iii. 1. 5, and to the Metamorphoses, Book xiv. 1. 752. He means that one leaf of the window was open, and one shut.] [Footnote 054: Corinna.--Ver. 9. In the Fourth Book of the Tristia, Elegy x. 1. GO, he says, 'Corinna, (so called by a fictitious name) the subject of song through the whole city, had imparted a stimulus to my geuius.' It has been supposed by some Commentators, that under this name he meant Julia, either the daughter or the grand-daughter of the emperor Augustus, but there seems really to be no ground for such a belief; indeed, the daughter of Augustus had passed middle age, when Ovid was still in boyhood. It is most probable that Corinna was ouly an ideal personage, existing in the imagination of the Poet; and that he intended the name to apply to his favourite mistress for the time being, as, though he occasionally denies it, still, at other times, he admits that his passion was of the roving kind. There are two females mentioned in history of the name of Coriuna. One was a Theban poetess, who excelled in Lyric composition, and was said to have vanquished Pindar himself in a Lyric contest; while the other was a native of Thespiæ, in Bceotia. 'The former, who was famous for both her personal charms and her mental endowments, is supposed to have suggested the use of the name to Ovid.] [Footnote 055: Clothed in a tunic.--Ver. 9. 'Tunica' was the name of the under-garment with both sexes among the Romans. When the wearer was out of doors, or away from home, it was fastened round the waist with a belt or girdle, but when at home and wishing to be entirely at ease, it was, as in the present instance, loose or ungirded. Both sexes usually wore two tunics. In female dress, Varro seems to call the outer tunic 'subucula,' and the 'interior tunica' by the name also of 'indusium.' The outer tunic was also called 'stola,' and, with the 'palla' completed the female dress. The 'tunica interior,' or what is here called tunica,' was a simple shift, and in early times had no sleeves. According to Nonius, it fitted loosely on the body, and was not girded when the 'stola' or outer tunic was put on. Poor people, who could not afford to purchase a 'toga,' wore the tunic alone; whence we find the lower classes called by the name of 'tunicati.'] [Footnote 056: Her flowing hair.--Ver. 10. 'Dividuis,' here means, that her hair was scattered, flowing over her shoulders and not arranged on the head in a knot.] [Footnote 057: Semiramis.--Ver. 11. Semiramis was the wife of Ninus, king of Babylon, and was famous for her extreme beauty, and the talent which she displayed as a ruler. She was also as unscrupulous in her morals as the fair one whom the Poet is now describing.] [Footnote 058: And Lais.--Ver. 12. There are generally supposed to have beén two famous courtesans of the name of Lais. The first was carried captive, when a child, from Sicily, in the second year of the 91st Olympiad, and being taken to Corinth, became famous throughout Greece for her extreme beauty, and the high price she put upon her favours. Many of the richest and most learned men resorted to her, and became smitten by her charms. The second Lais was the daughter of Alcibiades, by his mistress, Timandra. When Demosthenes applied for a share of her favours, she made the extravagant demand of ten thousand drachmae, upon which, regaining his wisdom (which had certainly forsaken him for a time) he said that he would not purchase repentance at so high a price.] [Footnote 059: In its thinness.--Ver. 13. Possibly it was made of Coan cloth, if Corinna was as extravagant as she was vicious.] [Footnote 060: The cruel fetter--Ver. 1. Among the Romans, the porter was frequently bound by a chain to his post, that he might not forsake it.] [Footnote 062: Watches of the keepers.--Ver. 7. Properly, the 'excubiæ' were the military watches that were kept on guard, either by night or day, while the term 'vigiliæ,' was only applied to the watch by night. He here alludes to the watch kept by jealous men over their wives.] [Footnote 063: Spectres that flit by night.--Ver. 13. The dread of the ghosts of the departed entered largely among the Roman superstitions. See an account of the Ceremony, in the Fifth Book of the Fasti, 1. 422, et seq., for driving the ghosts, or Lemures, from the house.] [Footnote 064: Ready for the whip--Ver. 19. See the Note to the 81st line of the Epistle of De'ianira to Hercules. Ovid says, that he has often pleaded for him to his mistress; indeed, the Roman ladies often showed more cruelty to the slaves, both male and female, than the men did to the male slaves.] [Footnote 065: As you wish.--Ver. 28. Of course it would be the porter's wish that the night should pass quickly on, as he would be relieved in the morning, and was probably forbidden to sleep during the night.] [Footnote 066: Hours of the night pass on.--Ver. 24. This is an intercalary line, being repeated after each seventh one.] [Footnote 067: From the door-post.--Ver. 24. The fastenings of the Roman doors consisted of a bolt placed at the bottom of eacn 'foris,' or wing of the door, which fell into a socket made in the sill. By way of additional precaution, at night, the front door was secured by a bar of wood or iron, here called 'sera,' which ran across, and was inserted in sockets on each side of the doorway. Hence it was necessary to remove or strike away the bar, 'excutere seram,' before the door could be opened.] [Footnote 068: Water of the slave.--Ver. 26. Water was the principal beverage of the Roman slaves, but they were allowed a small quantity of wiue, which was increased on the Saturnalia. 'Far,' or 'spelt,' formed their general sustenance, of which they received one 'libra' daily. Salt and oil were also allowed them, and sometimes fruit, but seldom vegetables. Flesh meat seems not to have been given to them.] [Footnote 069: About my temples.--Ver. 37. 'Circa mea tempora,' literally, 'around my temples' This-expression is used, because it was supposed that the vapours of excessive wine affect the brain. He says that he has only taken a moderate quantity of wine, although the chaplet falling from off his hair would seem to bespeak the contrary.] [Footnote 073: Otherwise I myself!--Ver. 57. Heinsius thinks that this and the following line are spurious.] [Footnote 074: Holding in my torch--Ver. 58. Torches were usually carried by the Romans, for their guidance after sunset, and were generally made of wooden staves or twigs, bound by a rope around them, in a spiral form, or else by circular bands at equal distances. The inside of the torch was filled with flax, tow, or dead vegetable matter, impregnated with pitch, wax, rosin, oil, or other inflammable substances.] [Footnote 075: Love and wine.--Ver. 59. He seems, by this, to admit that he has taken more than a moderate quantity of wine, 'modicum vinum,' as he says above.] [Footnote 076: Anxieties of the prison.--Ver. 64. He alludes to the 'ergastulum,' or prison for slaves, that was attached to most of the Roman farms, whither the refractory slaves were sent from the City to work in chains. It was mostly under ground, and, was lighted with narrow windows, too high from the ground to be touched with the hand. Slaves who had displeased their masters were usually sent there for a punishment, and those of uncouth habits were kept there. Plutarch says that they were established, on the conquest of Italy, in consequence of the number of foreign slaves imported for the cultivation of the conquered territory. They were finally abolished by the Emperor Hadrian.] [Footnote 077: Bird is arousing.--Ver. 66. The cock, whom the poets universally consider as 'the harbinger of morn.'] [Footnote 078: Equally slaves.--Ver. 74. He called the doors, which were bivalve or folding-doors, his 'conservæ,' or 'fellow' slaves,' from the fact of their being obedient to the will of a slave. Plautuâ, in the Asinaria, act. ii sc. 3, has a similar expression:--'Nolo ego fores, conservas meas a te verberarier.' 'I won't have my door, my fellow-slave, thumped by you.'] [Footnote 080: Did not Ajax too.--Ver. 7. Ajax Telamon, on being refused the arms of Achilles, became mad, and slaughtered a flock of sheep, fancying that they were the sons of Atreus, and his enemy Ulysses. His shield, formed of seven ox hides, is celebrated by Homer.] [Footnote 081: Mystic Goddesses.--Ver. 10. Orestes avenged the death of his father, Agamemnon, by slaying his own mother, Clytemnestra, together with her paramour, Ægistheus. He also attempted to attack the Furies, when they haunted him for the murder of his mother.] [Footnote 082: Daughter of Schceneus.--Ver. 13. Atalanta, the Arcadian, or Mae-nalian, was the daughter of Iasius, and was famous for her skill in the chase. Atalanta, the Boeotian, was the daughter of Schceneus, and was renowned for her swiftness, and for the race in which she was outstripped by Hippomenes. The Poet has here mistaken the one for the other, calling the Arcadian one the daughter of Schoeneus. The story of the Arcadian Atalanta is told in the Eighth Book of the Metamorphoses, and that of the daughter of Schceneus, at the end of the Tenth Book of the same work.] [Footnote 083: The Cretan damsel.--Ver. 16. Ariadne, the daughter of Minos, when deserted on the island of Naxos or Cea.] [Footnote 084: Cassandra.--Ver. 17. Cassandra being a priestess, would wear the sacred fillets, 'vittse.' She was ravished by Ajax Oileus, in the temple of Minerva.] [Footnote 085: The humblest Roman.--Ver. 29. It was not lawful to strike a freeborn human citizen. See Acts, c. xxii. v. 25. 'And as they hound him with thongs, Paul said unto the Centurion that stood by, Is it lawful for you to scourge a man that is a Roman, and uncondemncd?' This privilege does not seem to have extended to Roman women of free birth.] [Footnote 086: Strike a Goddess.--Ver. 32. He alludes to the wound inflicted by Diomedes upon Venus, while protecting her son Æneas.] [Footnote 087: Her hurt cheeks--Ver. 40. He implies by this, to his disgrace which has made her cheeks black and blue by his violence.] [Footnote 089: At the middle.--Ver. 48. He says that he ought to have been satisfied with tearing her tunic down to the waist, where the girdle should have stopped short the rent; whereas, in all probability, he had torn it from the top to the bottom.] [Footnote 090: Her free-born cheeks.--Ver. 50. It was a common practice with many of the Romans, to tear and scratch their Slaves on the least provocation.] [Footnote 091: The Parian mountains.--Ver. 52. The marble of Paros was greatly esteemed for its extreme whiteness. Paros was one of the Cyclades, situate about eighteen miles from the island of Delos.] [Footnote 092: Their proper order. --Ver 68. 'In statione,' was originally a military phrase, signifying 'on guard'; from which It came to be applied to any thing in its place or in proper order.] [Footnote 094: Does she derive.--Ver. 3. He says that her name, 'Dipsas,' is derived from reality, meaning thereby that she is so called from the Greek verb [êtxpâui], 'to thirst'; because she was always thirsty, and never rose sober in the morning.] [Footnote 095: The charms of Ææa.--Ver. 5. He alludes to the charms of Circe and Medea. According to Eustathius, Ææa was a city of Colchis.] [Footnote 096: Turns back to its source.--Ver. 6. This the magicians of ancient times generally professed to do.] [Footnote 097: Spinning wheel.--Ver. 8. 'Rhombus,' means a parallelogram with equal sides, but not having right angles, and hence, from the resemblance, a spinning wheel, or winder. The 'licia' were the cords or thrums of the old warp, or the threads of the old web to which the threads of the new warp were joined. Here, however, the word seems to mean the threads alone. The spinning-wheel was much used in magical incantations, not only among the Romans, but among the people of Northern and Western Europe. It is not improbable that the practice was founded on the so-called threads of destiny, and it was the province of the wizard, or sorceress, by his or her charms, to lengthen or shorten those threads, according as their customers might desire. Indeed, in some parts of Europe, at the present day, charms, in the shape of forms of words, are said to exist, which have power over the human life at any distance from the spot where they are uttered; a kind of superstition which dispenses with the more cumbrous paraphernalia of the spinning-wheel. Some Commentators think that the use of the 'licia' implied that the minds of individuals were to be influenced at the will of the enchanter, in the same way as the old thrums of the warp are caught up and held fast by the new threads; this view, however, seems to dispense with the province of the wheel in the incantation. See the Second Book of the Fasti, 1. 572. The old woman there mentioned as performing the rites of the Goddess, Tacita, among her other proceedings, 'binds the enchantea threads on the dark-coloured spinning-wheel.'] [Footnote 098: Venomous exudation.--Ver. 8. This was the substance called 'hippomanes,' which was said to flow from mares when in a prurient state. Hesiod says, that 'hippomanes' was a herb which produced madness in the horses that ate of it. Pliny, in his Eighth Book, says that it is a poisonous excrescence of the size of a fig, and of a black colour, which grows on the head of the mare, and which the foal at its birth is in the habit of biting off, which, if it neglects to do, it is not allowed by its mother to suck. This fictitious substance was said to be especially used in philtres.] [Footnote 099: Moon was empurpled.--Ver. 12. If such a thing as a fog ever exists in Italy, he may very possibly have seen the moon of a deep red colour.] [Footnote 101: That she, transformed.--Ver. 13. 'Versam,' 'transformed,' seems here to be a preferable reading to 'vivam,' 'alive.' Burmann, however, thinks that the 'striges' were the ghosts of dead sorcerers and wizards, and that the Poet means here, that Dipsas had the power of transforming herself into a 'strix' even while living, and that consequently 'vivam' is the proper reading. The 'strix' was a fabulous bird of the owl kind, which was said to suck the blood of children in the cradle. Seethe Sixth Book of the Fasti, 1. 141, and the Note to the passage.] [Footnote 102: A double pupil, too.--Ver. 15. The pupil, or apple of the eye, is that part through which light is conveyed to the optic nerve. Some persons, especially females, were said by the ancients to have a double pupil, which constituted what was called 'the evil eye.' Pliny the Elder says, in his Seventh Book, that 'all women injure by their glances, who have a double pupil.' The grammarian, Haephestion, tells us, in his Fifth Book, that the wife of Candaulcs, king of Lydia, had a double pupil. Heinsius suggests, that this was possibly the case with the Ialysian Telchines, mentioned in the Seventh Book of the Metamorphoses, 1. 365, 'whose eyes corrupting all things by the very looking upon them, Jupiter, utterly hating, thrust them beneath the waves of his brother.'] [Footnote 103: And their grandsires.--Ver. 17. One hypercritical Commentator here makes this remark: 'As though it were any more difficult to summon forth from the tomb those who have long been dead, than those who are iust deceased.' He forgot that Ovid had to make up his line, and that 'antiquis proavos atavosque' made three good feet, and two-thirds of another.] [Footnote 105: The twofold doors.--Ver. 20. The doors used by the ancients were mostly bivalve, or folding doors.] [Footnote 106: Mars in opposition.--Ver. 29. She is dabbling here in astrology, and the adverse and favourable aspects of the stars. We are to suppose that she is the agent of the young man who has seen the damsel, and she is telling her that the rising star of Venus is about to bring her good luck.] [Footnote 107: Makes it his care.--Ver. 32. Burmann thinks that this line, as it stands at present, is not pure Latin; and, indeed, 'curæ habet,' 'makes it his care,' seems a very unusual mode of expression. He suggests another reading--'et, cultæ quod tibi défit, habet,' 'and he possesses that which is wanting for your being well-dressed,' namely, money.] [Footnote 108: The damsel blushed.--Ver. 35. He says that his mistress blusned at the remark of the old hag, that the young man was worthy to be purchased by her, if he had not been the first to make an offer. We must suppose that here the Poet peeped through a chink of the door, as he was on the other side, listening to the discourse; or he may have reasonably guessed that she did so, from the remark made in the same line by the old woman.] [Footnote 109: Your eyes cast down.--Ver. 37. The old woman seems to be advising her to pretend modesty, by looking down on her lap, so as not to give away even a look, until she has seen what is deposited there, and then only to give gracious glances in proportion to her present. It was the custom for the young simpletons who lavished their money on the Roman courtesans, to place their presents in the lap or bosom.] [Footnote 111: Sabine females.--Ver. 39. The Sabines were noted for their domestic virtues. The hag hints, that the chastity of the Sabine women was only the result of their want of good breeding. 'Tatio régnante' seems to point to the good old times, in the same way as our old songsters have it, 'When good king Arthur reigned.' Tatius reigned jointly at Rome with Romulus. See the Fourteenth Book of the Metamorphoses, 1. 804.] [Footnote 112: In foreign warfare.--Ver. 41. She says, that they are now in a more civilized state, than when they were fighting just without the walls of Rome; now they are solely engaged in foreign conquests, and Venus reigns in the city of the descendants of her son, Æneas.] [Footnote 113: Dispel these frowns.--Ver. 45. The damsel has, probably, frowned here at her last remark, on which she tells her she must learn to dispense with these frowns, and that when she dispels them, 'excutit,' so many faults which might otherwise prove to her disadvantage, will be well got rid of.] [Footnote 114: Penelope used to try.--Ver. 47. Penelope, in order that she might escape the importunity of the suitors, proposed that they should try to bend the bow of Ulysses, promising her hand to him who should prove successful. The hag, however, says that, with all her pretended chastity, Penelope only wanted to find out who was the most stalwart man among her lovers, in order that she might choose him for a husbaud.] [Footnote 116: Graceful in his mantle.--Ver. 59. The 'palla' was especially worn by musicians. She is supposed to refer to the statue of Apollo, which was erected on the Palatine Hill by Augustus; and her design seems to be, to shew that poetry and riches are not so incompatible as the girl may, from her lover's poverty, be led to imagine.] [Footnote 117: At a price for his person.--Ver. 63. That is to say, some rich slave who has bought his own liberty. As many of the Roman slaves were skilful at various trades and handicrafts, and were probably allowed the profits of their work after certain hours in the day, it would be no uncommon thing for a slave, with his earnings, to purchase his liberty. Some of the slaves practised as physicians, while others followed the occupation of literary men.] [Footnote 118: Rubbed with chalk.--Ver. 64. It was the custom to mark with chalk, 'gypsum,' the feet of such slaves as were newly imported for sale.] [Footnote 119: Busts about the halls.--Ver. 65. Instead of 'quinquatria,' which is evidently a corrupt reading, 'circum atria' has been adopted. She is advising the girl not to be led away by notions of nobility, founded on the number of 'ceræ,' or waxen busts of their ancestors, that adorned the 'atria,' or halls of her admirers. See the Fasti, Book i. line 591, and the Note to the passage; also the Epistle of Laodamia to Protesilaus, line 152.] [Footnote 120: Nay, more, should.--Ver. 67. 'Quin' seems to be a preferable reading to-'quid?'] [Footnote 121: There will be Isis.--Ver. 74. The Roman women celebrated the festival of Isis for several successive days, and during that period they care-fully abstained from the society of men.] [Footnote 127: By your censure.--Ver. 80. When she has offended she is to pretend a counter grievance, so as to outweigh her faults.] [Footnote 128: A deaf hearing.--Ver. 86. Literally, 'deaf Godhead.'] [Footnote 129: A crafty handmaid.--Ver. 87. The comedies of Plautus and Terence show the part which the intriguing slaves and handmaids acted on such occasions.] [Footnote 130: A little of many.--Ver. 89. 'Multos,' as suggested by Heinsius, is preferable to 'multi,' which does not suit the sense.] [Footnote 131: Heap from the gleanings--Ver. 90. 'Stipula' here means 'gleanings.' She says, that each of the servants must ask for a little, and those little sums put together will make a decent amount collected from her lovers. No doubt her meaning is, that the mistress should pocket the presents thus made to the slaves.] [Footnote 132: With a cake.--Ver. 94. The old woman tells how, when she has exhausted all other excuses for getting a present, to have the birth-day cake by her, and to pretend that it is her birth-day; in order that her lover may take the hint, and present her with a gift. The birth-day cake, according to Servius, was made of flour and honey; and being set on tabic before the guests, the person whose birth-day it was, ate the first slice, after which the others partook of it, and wished him happiness and prosperity. Presents, too, were generally made on birth-days.] [Footnote 133: The Sacred Street."--Ver. 100. The 'via sacra,' or' Sacred Street, from the old Senate house at Rome towards the Amphitheatre, and up the Capitoline hill. For the sale of all kinds of luxuries, it seems to have had the same rank in Rome that Regent Street holds in London. The procuress tells her, that if her admirer makes no presents, she must turn the conversation to the 'Via Sacra;' of course, asking him such questions as, What is to be bought there? What is the price of such and such a thing? And then she is to say, that she is in want of this or that, but unfortunately she has no money, &c.] [Footnote 134: Conceal your thoughts.--Ver. 103. This expression resembles the famous one attributed to Machiavelli, that 'speech was made for the concealment of the thoughts.'] [Footnote 134: Prove his ruin.--Ver. 103. 'Let your lips utter kind things, but let it be your intention to ruin him outright by your extravagance.'] [Footnote 135: Grant thee both no home--Ver. 113. The 'Lares,' being the household Gods, 'nullos Lares,' implies 'no home.'] [Footnote 136: Everlasting thirst.--Ver. 114. In allusion to her thirsty name; see the Note to the second line.] [Footnote 138: Atticus.--Ver. 2. It is supposed that this Atticus was the same person to whom Ovid addresses the Fourth and Seventh Pontic Epistle in the Second Book. It certainly was not Pomponius Atticus, the friend of Cicero, who died when the Poet was in his eleventh year.] [Footnote 139: The years which."--Ver. 5. The age for serving in the Roman armies, was from the seventeenth up to the forty-sixth year.] [Footnote 140: Of his general.--Ver. 8. He alludes to the four night-watches of the Roman army, which succeeded each other every three hours. Each guard, or watch, consisted of four men, of whom one acted as sentry, while the others were in readiness, in case of alarm.] [Footnote 142: The othert doors.--Ver. 20. From the writings of Terence and Plautus, as well as those of Ovid, we find that the youths of Rome were not very scrupulous about kicking down the door of an obdurate mistress.] [Footnote 143: Thracian Rhesits.--Ver. 23. See the preceding Epistle of Pénélope to Ulysses, and the speech of Ulysses in the Thirteenth Book of the Metamorphoses.] [Footnote 144: Cease to love.--Ver. 32. It is hard to say whether the word 'Desinat' means 'Let him leave off saying so,' or 'Let him cease to love': perhaps the latter is the preferable mode of rendering it.] [Footnote 146: The raving prophetess.--Ver. 38. 'Mænas' literally means 'a raving female,' from the Greek word paivopai, 'to be mad.' He alludes to Cassandra when inspired with the prophetic spirit.] [Footnote 147: At the forge.--Ver. 39. When he was detected by means of the iron net, as related in the Fourth Book of the Metamorphoses.] [Footnote 148: A lazy inactivity.--Ver. 41. When persons wished to be at ease in their leisure moments at home, they were in the habit of loosening the girdle which fastened the tunic; from this circumstance, the term 'dis-cinctus' is peculiarly applied to a state of indolence.] [Footnote 149: Couch and the shade.--Ver. 42. 'Lectus et umbra' means 'lying in bed and reclining in the shade.' The shade of foliage would have peculiar attractions in the cloudless climate of Italy, especially for persons naturally inclined to be idle.] [Footnote 150: To serve.--Ver. 44. 'Æra merere' has the same meaning as 'stipendum merere,' 'to earn the pay of a soldier,' whence it came to signify 'to sene as a soldier.' The ancient accounts differ materially as to the pay which the Roman soldiers received.] [Footnote 151: The Eurotas.--Ver. 1. The Eurotas was the river which flowed past the walls of Sparta. He is alluding to Helen.] [Footnote 152: Amymone.--Ver. 5. She was one of the Danaides, and was carrying water, when she was attacked by a Satyr, and rescued by Neptune. See the Epistle of Hero to Leander, 1. 131, and the Note to the passage.] [Footnote 153: Fold in his dress.--Ver. 18. The 'sinhs' of the 'toga,' among the men, and of the 'palla,' among the women, which extended in folds across the breast, was used as a pocket, in which they carried money, purses, letters, and other articles. When the party was seated, the 'sinus' would almost correspond in meaning with our word 'lap.'] [Footnote 154: Avaricious procurer.--Ver. 23. 'Leno' was a person who kept a house for the purposes of prostitution, and who generally robbed his victims of the profits of their unfortunate calling. This was called 'lenocinium,' and the trade was not forbidden, though the 'lenones' were considered 'infames,' or 'disgraced,' and thereby lost certain political rights.] [Footnote 155: By compulsion.--Ver. 24. Being probably the slave of the 'leno,' he would use force to make her comply with his commands.] [Footnote 156: Hired dishonestly.--Ver. 37. The evidence of witnesses was taken by the Praetor, and was called 'jusjurandum in judicio,' whereas the evidence of parties themselves was termed 'jusjurandum in jure.' It was given on oath by such as the Praetor or other judge chose to call, or as either party might propose for examination.] [Footnote 157: The chest.--Ver. 38. The 'area' here means the strong box, or chest, in which the Romans were accustomed to place their money; they were generally made of, or bound with, iron or other metal.] [Footnote 158: Commissioned judge.--Ver. 38. The 'judices selecti' were the 'cen-tumviri,' a body of one hundred and five officers, whose duty it was to assist the Praetor in questions where the right to property was litigated. In the Second Book of the Tristia, 1. 93, we are informed that the Poet himself filled the office of a 'judex selectus.'] [Footnote 159: That is purchased.--Ver. 39. Among the Romans, the 'patroni' defended their 'clientes' gratuitously, and it would have been deemed disgraceful for them to take a fee or present.] [Footnote 160: He who hires.--Ver. 45. The 'conductor' was properly the person who hired the services, or the property of another, for a fixed price. The word sometimes means 'a contractor,' or the person with whom the bargain by the former party is made. See the public contract mentioned in the Fasti, Book v. 1. 293.] [Footnote 161: The Sabine bracelets.--Ver. 49. He alludes to the fate of the Vestal virgin Tarpeia. See the Fasti, Book i. 1. 261, and Note; also the Translation of the Metamorphoses, p. 516.] [Footnote 163: The son pierced.--Ver. 52. Alcmæon killed his mother Eriphyle, for having betrayed his father Amphiaraus. See the Second Book of the Fasti, 1. 43, and the Third Book of the Pontic Epistles, Ep. i. 1. 52, and the Notes to the passages.] [Footnote 164: A simple necklace.--Ver. 52. See the Epistle of Deianira to Hercules, and the Tenth Book of the Metamorphoses 1. 113, with the Note to the passage.] [Footnote 165: Soil of Alcinoiis.--Ver. 56. The fertile gardens of Alcinoiis, king of the Phæacians, are celebrated by Homer in the Odyssey.] [Footnote 166: The straggling locks.--Ver. 1. The duty of dressing the hair of the Roman ladies was divided among several slaves, who were called by the general terms of 'cosmetæ,' and 'omatrices.' It was the province of one to curl the hair with a hot iron, called 'calamistrum,' which was hollow, and was heated in wood ashes by a slave who, from 'cinis,' 'ashes,' was called 'ciniflo.' The duty of the 'psecas' came next, whose place it was to anoint the hair. Then came that of the 'ornatrix,' who parted the curls with a comb or bodkin; this seems to have been the province of Napè.] [Footnote 167: To be reckoned.--Ver. 2. The Nymphs of the groves were called [Footnote vanâtai ]; and perhaps from them Nape received her name, as it is evidently of Greek origin. One of the dogs of Actæon is called by the same name, in the Metamorphoses, Book iii. 1. 214.] [Footnote 168: Giving the signale.--Ver. 4. 'Notis' may mean here, either 'hints,] 'signs,' 'signals.' or 'letters.' In Nizard's French translation it is rendered 'missives.'] [Footnote 169: Carry these tablets.--Ver. 7. On the wax tablets, see the Note to the Pontic Epistles, Book ii. El. 9.1. 69, and the Metamorphoses, Book ix. 1. 521, with the Note.] [Footnote 170: So well filled.--Ver. 7. 'Peraratas' literally means 'ploughed over'; which term is properly applied to the action of the 'stylus,' in ploughing through the wax upon the tablets. Suetonius relates that Julius Caesar, when he was murdered in the Senate House, pierced the arm af the assassin Cassius with his 'stylus.'] [Footnote 172: A long answer.--Ver. 19. She is to write at once, on having read his letter through. This she could do the more readily, as she could use the same tablets, smoothing the wax with the broad end of the 'graphium,' or 'stylus.'] [Footnote 175: Holding the pen.--Ver. 23. 'Graphium' was the Greek name for the 'stylus,' or pen used for writing on the wax tablets. It was generally of iron or copper, but sometimes of gold. The case in which it was kept was called 'graphiarium,' or 'graphiaria theca.'] [Footnote 176: Of worthless maple.--Ver. 28. He calls the wood of the tablets 'vile,' in comparison with their great services to him: for, according to Pliny, Book xvi. c. 15, maple was the most valued wood for tablets, next to 'citrus,' cedar, or citron wood. It was also more useful than citron, because it could be cut into leaves, or laminae, of a larger size than citron would admit of.] [Footnote 178: Struck her foot.--Ver. 4. This is mentioned as a bad omen by Laodamia, in her Epistle to Protesilaüs, 1. 88. So in the Tenth Book of the Metamorphoses, in the shocking story of Cinyras and Myrrha; Three times was she recalled by the presage of her foot stumbling.'] [Footnote 180: The Corsican lee.--Ver. 10. From Pliny, Book xvi., we learn that the honey of Corsica was of a bitter taste, in consequence of the box-trees and yews, with which the isle abounded, and which latter, according to him, were poisonous. From Diodorus Siculus we learn that there were many turpentine trees on the island; this would not tend to improve the flavour of the honey.] [Footnote 181: Dyed in vermilion.--Ver. 11. 'Minium,' 'red lead,' or 'vermilion,' was discovered by Callias, an Athenian, according to Theophrastus. It was sometimes mixed with the wax used for tablets: probably not the best, but that which was naturally of a bad colour. This censure of the tablets is a good illustration of the grapes being sour. In the last Elegy, before he has received his repulse, he declares the wax to be 'splen-dida,' 'of brilliaut whiteness through bleaching;' now, on the other hand, he finds, most ominously, that it is as red as blood.] [Footnote 182: Dreadful crosses.--Ver. 18. See the First Book of the Pontic Epistlea, Ep. vi. 1. 38, and the Note to the passage.] [Footnote 183: The screech-owl.--Ver. 20. 'Strix' here means a screech-owl; and not the fabulous bird referred to under that name, in the Sixth Book of the Fasti, and the thirteenth line of the Eighth Elegy of this Book.] [Footnote 184: The prosy summons.--Ver. 23. 'Vadimonium legere' probably means, 'to call a man on his bail' or 'recognizances.' When the Praetor had granted an action, the plaintiff required the defendant to give security for his appearance on the day named. The defendant, on finding a surety, was said 'vades dare,' or 'vadimonium facere': and the 'vas,' or surety, was said 'spondere.' The plaintiff, if satisfied with the surety, was said 'vadari reum,' 'to let the defendant go on his sureties.'] [Footnote 185: Some judge.--Ver. 24. Some Commentators think that the word 'cognitor' here means, the attorney, or procurator of the plaintiff, who might, in his absence, carry on the cause for him. In that case they would translate 'duro,' 'shameless,' or 'impudent.' But another meaning of the word 'cognitor' is 'a judge,' or 'commissioner,' and such seems to be the meaning here, in which case 'duras' will mean 'severe,' or 'sour;' 'as,' according to one Commentator, 'judges are wont to be.' Much better would they lie amid diaries and day-books, [186] over which the avaricious huncks might lament his squandered substance. And have I then in reality as well as in name found you full of duplicity? [187] The very number _of you_ was not one of good omen. What, in my anger, ought I to pray, but that an old age of rottenness may consume you, and that your wax may be white with nasty mould?] [Footnote 186: And day-books.--Ver. 25. Seneca, at the end of his 19th Epistle, calls a Calendar by the name of 'Ephemeris,' while a day-book is meant by the term as used by Ausonius. The word here seems to mean a 'diary;' while 'tabula' is perhaps a 'day-book,' in which current expenses are set down, and over which the miser weeps, as the record of past extravagance.] [Footnote 187: Full of duplicity.--Ver. 27. The word 'duplex' means either 'double,' or 'deceitful,' according to the context. He plays on this twofold meaning, and says that double though they might be, still truly deceitful they were; and that the two leaves of the tablets were of no good omen to him. Two-leaved tablets were technically called 'diptycha.'] [Footnote 189: Honour the shades.--Ver. 4. 'Parento' means 'to celebrate the funeral obsequies of one's parents.' Both the Romans and the Greeks were accustomed to visit the tombs of their relatives at certain times, and to offer sacrifices, called 'inferiæ,' or 'parentalia.' The souls of the departed were regarded by the Romans as Gods, and the oblations to them consisted of milk, wine, victims, or wreaths of flowers. The Poet here refers to the birds which arose from the funeral pile of Memnon, and wera said to revisit it annually. See the Thirteenth Book of the Metamorphoses.] [Footnote 190: Moisture is cooling.--Ver. 7. 'Humor' seems to mean the dew, or the dampness of the night, which would tend, in a hot climate, to modify the sultriness of the atmosphere. One Commentator thinks that the word means the humours of the brain.] [Footnote 192: To their masters.--Ver. 17. The schools at Rome were mostly kept by manumitted slaves; and we learn from the Fasti, Book iii. 1. 829, that people were not very particular about paying them.] [Footnote 193: The cruel stripes.--Ver. 18. The punishment here mentioned was generally inflicted on the hands of the Roman school-boys, with a 'ferula,' or stalk of giant-fennel, as we learn from Juvenal, Satire 1.] [Footnote 194: The attorney.--Ver. 19. The business of the 'jurisconsultus' was to expound and give opinions on the law, much like the chamber counsel of the present day. They were also known by the name of 'juris periti,' or 'consulti' only. Cicero gives this definition of the duty of a 'consultus.'] 'He is à person who has such a knowledge of the laws and customs which prevail in a state, as to be able to advise, and secure a person in his dealings. They advised their clients gratuitously, either in public places, or at their own houses. They also drew up wills and contracts, as in the present instance.] [Footnote 195: To become bail.--Ver. 19. This passage has given much trouble to the Commentators, but it has been well explained by Burmann, whose ideas on the subject are here adopted. The word 'sponsum' has been generally looked upon here as a noun substantive, whereas it is the active supine of the verb 'spondeo,' 'to become bail' or 'security.' The meaning then is, that some rise early, that they may go and become bail for a friend, and thereby incur risk and inconvenience, through uttering a single word, 'spondeo,' 'I become security,' which was the formula used. The obligation was coutracted orally, and for the purpose of evidencing it, witnesses were necessary; for this reason the undertaking was given, as in the present instance, in the presence of a 'jurisconsultus.'] [Footnote 198: To the pleader.--Ver. 21. 'Causidicus' was the person who pleads the cause of his client in court before the Prætor or other judges.] [Footnote 199: What if.--Ver. 33. Heinsius and other Commentators think that this line and the next are spurious. The story of Cephalus and Procris is related at the close of the Seventh Book of the Metamorphoses.] [Footnote 201: The Moon gave.--Ver. 43. Ovid says that Diana sent the sleep upon Endymion, whereas it was Jupiter who did so, as a punishment for his passion for Juno; he alludes to the youthfulness of the favorite of Diana, antithetically to the old age of Tithonus, the husband of Aurora.] [Footnote 202: Two nights together.--Ver. 46. When he slept with Acmena, under the form of her husband Amphion.] [Footnote 203: Doctoring your hair.--Ver. 1. Among the ancient Greeks, black hair was the most frequent, but that of a blonde colour was most valued. It was not uncommon with them to dye it when turning grey, so as to make it a black or blonde colour, according to the requirement of the case. Blonde hair was much esteemed by the Romans, and the ladies were in the habit of washing their hair with a composition to make it of this colour. This was called 'spuma caustica,' or, 'caustic soap,' wich was first used by the Gauls and Germans; from its name, it was probably the substance which had been used inthe present instance.] [Footnote 204: So far as ever.--Ver. 4. By this he means as low as her ancles.] [Footnote 205: Afraid to dress.--Ver. 5. He means to say, that it was so fine that she did not dare to curl it, for fear of injuring it.] [Footnote 206: Just like the veils.--Ver. 6. Burmann thinks that 'fila,' 'threads,' is better here than 'vela,' and that it is the correct reading. The swarthy Seres here mentioned, were perhaps the Chinese, who probably began to import their silks into Rome about this period. The mode of producing silk does not seem to have been known to Virgil, who speaks, in the Second Book of the Georgies, of the Seres combing it off the leaves of trees. Pliny also, in his Sixth Book, gives the same account. Ovid, however, seems to refer to silkworms under the name of 'agrestes tineæ,' in the Fifteenth Book of the Metamorphoses, 1. 372.] [Footnote 208: Neither the bodkin.--Ver. 15. This was the 'discerniculum,' a 'bodkin,' which was used in parting the hair.] [Footnote 210: Bid the bodkin.--Ver. 18. The 'acus' here mentioned, was probably the 'discemicirium,' and not the 'crinale,' or hair-pin that was worn in the hair; as the latter was worn when the hair was bound up at the back of the head; whereas, judging from the length of the hair of his mistress, she most probably wore it in ringlets. He says that he never saw her snatch up the bodkin and stick it in the arm of the 'ornatrix.'] [Footnote 211: Iron and the fire.--Ver. 25. He alludes to the unnecessary application of the curling-iron to hair which naturally curled so well.] [Footnote 212: The very locks instruct.--Ver. 30. Because they naturally assume as advantageous an appearance as the bodkin could possibly give them, when arranged with the utmost skill.] [Footnote 213: Dione is painted.--Ver. 34. Pliny, book xxxv. c. 4, mentions a painting, by Apelles, in which Venus was represented as rising from the sea. It was placed, by Augustus, in the temple of Julius Caesar; and the lower part having become decayed, no one could be found of sufficient ability to repair it.] [Footnote 214: Lay down the mirror.--Ver. 16. The mirror was usually held by the 'ornatrix,' while her mistress arranged her hair.] [Footnote 215: Herbs of a rival.--Ver. 39. No person would be more likely than the 'pellex,' or concubine, to resort to charms and drugs, for the purpose of destroying the good looks of the married woman whose husband she wishes to retain.] [Footnote 216: All bad omens.--Ver. 41. So superstitious were the Romans, that the very mention of death, or disease, was deemed ominous of ill.] [Footnote 217: Germany will be sending.--Ver 45. Germany having been lately conquered by the arms of Augustus, he says that she must wear false hair, taken from the German captives. It was the custom to cut short the locks of the captives, and the German women were famed for the beauty of their hair.] [Footnote 218: Sygambrian girl.--Ver. 49. The Sygambri were a people of Ger many, living on the banks of the rivers Lippe and Weser.] [Footnote 219: For that spot.--Ver. 53. She carries a lock of the hair, which had fallen off, in her bosom.] [Footnote 221: My tongue for hire.--Ver. 6. Although the 'patronus pleaded the cause of the 'cliens,' without reward, still, by the use of the word 'pros-tituisse,' Ovid implies that the services of the advocate were often sold at a price. It must be remembered, that Ovid had been educated for the Roman bar, which he had left in disgust.] [Footnote 222: Mæonian bard.--Ver. 9. Strabo says, that Homer was a native of Smyrna, which was a city of Maeonia, a province of Phrygia. But Plutarch says, that he was called 'Maeonius,' from Maeon, a king of Lydia, who adopted him as his son.] [Footnote 223: Tenedos and Ida.--Ver. 10. Tenedos, Ida, and Simois, were the scenes of some portions of the Homeric narrative. The first was near Troy, in sight of it, as Virgil says--'est in conspectu Tenedos.'] [Footnote 224: The Ascræan, tool--Ver. 11. Hesiod of Ascræa, in Boeotia, wrote chieflv upon agricultural subjects. See the Pontic Epistles, Book iv. ep. xiv. 1. 38.] [Footnote 225: With its juices.--Ver. 11. The 'mustum' was the pure jidcc of the grape before it was boiled down and became 'sapa,' or 'defrutum.' See the Fasti, Book iv. 1. 779, and the Note to the passage.] [Footnote 226: The son of Battus.--Ver. 13. As to the poet Callimachus, the son of Battus, see the Tristia, Book ii. 1. 367, and the Ibis, 1. 55.] [Footnote 227: To the tragic buskin.--Ver. 15. On the 'cothurnus,' or 'buskin,' see the Tristia, Book ii. 1. 393, and the Note to the passage. Sophocles was one of the most famous of the Athenian Tragedians. He is supposed to have composed more than one hundred and twenty tragedies, of which only seven are remaining.] [Footnote 228: Aratus.--Ver. 16. Aratus was a Greek poet, a native of Cilicia, in Asia Minor. He wrote some astronomical poems, of which one, called 'Phænomena,' still exists. His style is condemned by Quintilian, although it is here praised by Ovid. His 'Phænomena' was translated into Latin by Cicero, Germanicus Caesar, and Sextus Avienus.] [Footnote 229: The deceitful slave.--Ver. 17. Although the plays of Menander have perished, we can judge from Terence and Plautus, how well he depicted the craftiness of the slave, the severity of the father, the dishonesty of the procuress, and the wheedling ways of the courtesan. Four of the plays of Terence are translations from Menander. See the Tristia, Book ii. 1. 369, and the Note to the passage.] [Footnote 230: Ennius.--Ver. 19. Quintus Ennius was a Latin poet, a Calabrian by birth. He flourished about 408 years before Christ. The few fragments of his works that remain, show the ruggedness and uncouth nature of his style. He wrote the Annals of Italy in heroic verse.] [Footnote 231: Accius.--Ver. 19. See the Second Book of the Tristia, 1. 359, and the Note to the passage.] [Footnote 232: Of Varro.--Ver. 21. He refers to Publius Terentius Varro Attacinus, who wrote on the Argonautic expedition. See the Tristia, Book ii. 1. 439, and the Pontic Epistles, Book iv. Ep. xvi. 1. 21.] [Footnote 233: Lucretius.--Ver. 23. Titus Lucretius Carus is referred to, whose noble poem on the Epicurean philosophy is still in existence (translated in Bohn's Classical Library). See the Tristia, Book ii. 1. 261 and 426, and the Notes to those passages.] [Footnote 234: Tityrus.--Ver. 25. Under this name he alludes to Virgil, who introduces himself under the name of Tityrus, in his first Eclogue, See the Pontic Epistles, *Boek iv. Ep. xvi. 1. 33.] [Footnote 235: So long as thou, Rome.--Ver. 26. His prophecy has been surpassed by the event. Rome is no longer the 'caput urbis,' but the works of Virgil are still read by all civilized nations.] [Footnote 236: Polished Tibullus.--Ver. 28. Albius Tibullus was a Roman poet of Equestrian rank, famous for the beauty of his compositions. He was born in the same year as Ovid, but died at an early age. Ovid mentions him in the Tristia, Book ii. 1. 447 and 463, Book iv. Ep. x. 1. 52, and Book v. Ep. i. 1. 18. In the Third Book of the Amores, El. 9, will be found his Lament on the death of Tibullus.] [Footnote 237: Gallus --Ver. 29. Cornelius Gallus was a Roman poet of considerable merit. See the Tristia, Book ii 1. 445, and the Note to the passage, and the Amores, Book iii. El. 1.] [Footnote 238: By the East.--Ver. 29. Gallus was the Roman governor of Egypt, which was an Eastern province of Rome.] [Footnote 239: The golden Tagus.--Ver. 34. Pliny and other authors make mention of the golden sands of the Tagus, which flowed through the province of Lusitania, now Portugal.] [Footnote 240: The closing fire.--Ver. 41. Pliny says that the ancient Romans buried the dead; but in consequence of the bones being disturbed by continual warfare, they adopted the system of burning them.] FOOTNOTES BOOK TWO: [Footnote 301: The watery Peligni.--Ver. 1. In the Fourth Book of the Fasti, 1. 81, and the Fourth Book of the Tristia, 1. x. El. 3, he mentions Sulmo, a town of the Peligni, as the place of his birth. It was noted for its many streams or rivulets.] [Footnote 302: And Gyges.--Ver. 12. This giant was more generally called Gyas. He and his hundred-handed brothers, Briareus and Cæus, were the sons of Coelus and Terra.] [Footnote 303: Verses bring down.--Ver. 23. He alludes to the power of magic spells, and attributes their efficacy to their being couched in poetic measures; from which circumstance they received the name of 'carmina.'] [Footnote 304: And by verses.--Ver. 28. He means to say that in the same manner as magic spells have brought down the moon, arrested the sun, and turned back rivers towards their source, so have his Elegiac strains been as wonderfully successful in softening the obduracy of his mistress.] [Footnote 305: Bagous.--Ver. 1. The name Bagoas, or, as it is here Latinized. Bagous, is said to have signified, in the Persian language, 'an eunuch.' It was probably of Chaldæan origin, having that meaning. As among the Eastern nations of the present day, the more jealous of the Romans confided the care of their wives or mistresses to eunuch slaves, who were purchased at a very large price.] [Footnote 306: Daughters of Danaus.--Ver. 4. The portico under the temple of Apollo, on the Palatine Hill, was adorned with the statues of Danaus, the son of Belus, and his forty-nine guilty daughters. It was built by Augustus, on a spot adjoining to his palace. Ovid mentions these statues in the Third Elegy of the Third Book of the Tristia, 1. 10.] [Footnote 307: Let him go.--Ver. 20. 'Eat' seems here to mean 'let him go away' from the house; but Nisard's translation renders it 'qu'il entre,' 'let him come in.'] [Footnote 308: At the sacrifice.--Ver. 23. It is hard to say what 'si faciet tarde' means: it perhaps applies to the rites of Isis, mentioned in the 25th line.] If she shall be slow in her sacrifice.'] [Footnote 309: Linen-clad Isis.--Ver. 25. Seethe 74th line of the Eighth Elegy of the preceding Book, and the Note to the passage; and the Pontic Epistles, Book i. line 51, and the Note. The temple of Isis, at Rome, was in the Campus Martius, or Field of Mars, near the sheep market. It was noted for the intrigues and assignations of which it was the scene.] [Footnote 310: He turns the house.--Ver. 29. As the Delphin Editor says, 'Il peut renverser la maison,' 'he can turn the house upside down.'] [Footnote 311: The masters approve..--Ver. 30. He means to say that the eunuch and his mistress will be able to do just as they please.] [Footnote 312: An executioner.--Ver. 36. To blind the husband, by pretending harshness on the part of Bagous.] [Footnote 313: Of the truth.--Ver. 38 This line is corrupt, and there are about ten various readings. The meaning, however, is clear; he is, by making false charges, to lead the husband away from a suspicion of the truth; and to put him, as we say, in common parlance, on the wrong scent.] [Footnote 314: Your limited savings.--Ver. 39. 'Peculium,' here means the stock of money which a slave, with the consent of his master, laid up for his own, 'his savings.' The slaves of the Romans being not only employed in domestic offices and the labours of the field, but as agents or factors for their masters, in the management of business, and as mechanics and artisans in various trades, great profits were made through them. As they were often entrusted with a large amount of property, and considerable temptations were presented to their honesty, it became the practice to allow the slave to consider a part of his gains, perhaps a per centage, as his own; this was termed his 'peculium.' According to the strict letter of the law, the 'peculium' was the property of the master, but, by usage, it was looked upon as the property of the slave. It was sometimes agreed upon between the master and slave, that the latter should purchase his liberty with his 'peculium,' when it amounted to a certain sum. If the slave was manumitted by the owner in his lifetime, his 'peculium' was considered to be given him, with his liberty, unless it was expressly retained.] [Footnote 315: Necks of informers.--Ver. 41. He probably alludes to informers who have given false evidence. He warns Bagous of their fate, intending to imply that both his mistress and himself will deny all, if he should attempt to criminate them.] [Footnote 325: Tongue caused this.--Ver. 44. According to one account, his punishment was inflicted for revealing the secrets of the Gods.] [Footnote 326: Appointed by Juno.--Ver. 45. This was Argus, whose fate is related at the end of the First Book of the Metamorphoses.] [Footnote 327: Alas! that.--Ver. 1. He is again addressing Bagous, and begins in a strain of sympathy, since his last letter has proved of no avail with the obdurate eunuch.] [Footnote 328: Mutilate Joys --Ver. 3. According to most accounts, Semiramis was the first who put in practice this abominable custom.] [Footnote 329: Standard be borne.--Ver. 10. He means, that he is bound, with his mistress to follow the standard of Cupid, and not of Mars.] [Footnote 330: Favours to advantage.--Ver. 13. 'Ponere' here means, literally, 'to put out at interest.' He tells the eunuch that he has now the opportunity of conferring obligations, which will bring him in à good interest by way of return.] [Footnote 332: Sabine dames.--Ver. 15. Juvenal, in his Tenth Satire, 1. 293, mentions the Sabine women as examples of prudence and chastity.] [Footnote 333: In her stateliness.--Ver. 16. Burmann would have 'ex alto' to mean 'ex alto pectore,' 'from the depths of her breast.' In such case the phrase will correspond with our expression, 'to dissemble deeply,' 'to be a deep dissembler.'] [Footnote 334: Modulates her voice.--Ver. 25. Perhaps 'flectere vocem' means what we technically call, in the musical art, 'to quaver.'] [Footnote 335: Her arms to time.--Ver. 29. Dancing was, in general, discouraged among the Romans. That here referred to was probably the pantomimic dance, in which, while all parts of the body were called into action, the gestures of the arms and hands were especially used, whence the expressions 'manus loquacissimi,' 'digiti clamosi,' 'expressive hands,' or 'fingers.' During the Republic, and the earlier periods of the Empire, women never appeared on the stage, but they frequently acted at the parties of the great. As it was deemed disgraceful for a free man to dance, the practice at Rome was probably confined to slaves, and the lowest class of the citizens. See the Fasti, Book iii. 1. 536, and the Note to the passage.] [Footnote 336: Hippolytus.--Ver. 32. Hippolytus was an example of chastity, while Priapus was the very ideal of lustfulness.] [Footnote 337: Heroines of old.--Ver. 33. He supposes the women of the Heroic ages to have been of extremely tall stature. Andromache was remarkable for her height.] [Footnote 338: The brunette.--Ver. 39. 'Flava,' when coupled with a female name, generally signifies 'having the hair of a flaxen,' or 'golden colour'; here, however, it seems to allude to the complexion, though it would be difficult to say what tint is meant. Perhaps an American would have no difficulty in translating it 'a yellow girl.' In the 43rd line, he makes reference to the hair of a 'flaxen,' or 'golden colour.'] [Footnote 339: Tablets rubbed out.--Ver. 5. If 'deletæ' is the correct reading here, it must mean 'no tablets from which in a hurry you 'have rubbed off the writing.' 'Non interceptæ' has been suggested, and it would certainly better suit the sense. 'No intercepted tablets have, &c.'] [Footnote 342: The wine on table.--Ver. 14. The wine was probably on this occasion placed on the table, after the 'coena,' or dinner. The Poet, his mistress, and his acquaintance, were, probably, reclining on their respective couches; he probably, pretended to fall asleep to watch, their conduct, which may have previously excited his suspicions.] [Footnote 343: Moving your eyebrows.--Ver. 15. See the Note to the 19th line of the Fourth Elegy of the preceding Book.] [Footnote 344: Were not silent.--Ver. 17. See the Note to the 20th line of the same Elegy.] [Footnote 345: Traced over with wine.--Ver. 18. See the 22nd and 26th lines of the same Elegy.] [Footnote 346: Your discourse.--Ver. 19. He seems to mean that they were pretending to be talking on a different subject from that about which they were really discoursing, but that he understood their hidden meaning. See a similar instance mentioned in the Epistle of Paris to Helen, 1. 241.] [Footnote 347: Hand of a master.--Ver. 30. He asserts the same right over her favours, that the master (dominus) does over the services of the slave.] [Footnote 348: New-made husband.--Ter. 36. Perhaps this refers to the moment of taking off the bridal veil, or 'flammeum,' when she has entered her husband's house.] [Footnote 349: Of her steeds.--Ver. 38. When the moon appeared red, probably through a fog, it was supposed that she was being subjected to the spells of witches and enchanters.] [Footnote 350: Assyrian ivory.--Ver. 40. As Assyria adjoined India, the word 'Assyrium' is here used by poetical licence, as really meaning 'Indian.'] [Footnote 351: Woman has stained.--Ver. 40. From this we learn that it was the custom of the Lydians to tint ivory of a pink colour, that it might not turn yellow with age.] [Footnote 352: Of this quality.--Ver. 54. 'Nota,' here mentioned, is literally the mark which was put upon the 'amphorae,' or 'cadi,' the 'casks' of the ancients, to denote the kind, age, or quality of the wine. Hence the word figuratively means, as in the present instance, 'sort,' or 'quality.' Our word 'brand' has a similar meaning. The finer kinds of wine were drawn off from the 'dolia,' or large vessels, in which they were kept into the 'amphoræ,' which were made of earthenware or glass, and the mouth of the vessel was stopped tight by a plug of wood or cork, which was made impervious to the atmosphere by being rubbed over with pitch, clay, or a composition of gypsum. On the outside, the title of the wine was painted, the date of the vintage being denoted by the names of the Consuls then in office: and when the vessels were of glass, small tickets, called 'pittacia,' were suspended from them, stating to a similar effect. For a full account of the ancient wines, see Dr. Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities.] [Footnote 353: The imitative bird.--Ver. 1. Statius, in his Second Book, calls the parrot 'Humanæ sollers imitator linguæ,' 'the clever imitator of the human voice.'] [Footnote 354: The long trumpet.--Ver. 6. We learn from Aulus Gellius, that the trumpeters at funerals were called 'siticines.' They headed the funeral procession, playing mournful strains on the long trumpet, 'tuba,' here mentioned. These were probably in addition to the 'tibicines,' or 'pipers,' whose number was limited to ten by Appius Claudius, the Censor. See the Sixth Book of the Fasti, 1. 653.] [Footnote 360: Affectionate turtle-dove.--Ver. 12. This turtle-dove and the parrot had been brought up in the same cage together. He probably refers to these birds in the thirty-eighth line of the Epistle of Sappho to Phaon where he mentions the turtle-dove as being black. This Elegy is remarkable for its simplicity and pathetic beauty, and can hardly fail to remind the reader of Cowper's Elegies, on the death of the bullfinch, and that of his pet hare.] [Footnote 361: The Phocian youth.--Ver. 15. He alludes to the friendship of Orestes and Pylades the Phocian, the son of Strophius.] [Footnote 362: So prettily.--Ver. 24. 'Bene' means here, 'prettily,' or 'cleverly,' rather than 'distinctly,' which would be inconsistent with the signification of blæsus.] [Footnote 363: All their battles --Ver. 27. Aristotle, in the Eighth Chapter of the Ninth Book of his History of Animals, describes quails or ortolans, and partridges, as being of quarrelsome habits, and much at war among themselves.] [Footnote 364: The foreboder.--Ver. 34. Festus Avienus, in his Prognostics, mentions the jackdaw as foreboding rain by its chattering.] [Footnote 366: Armed Minerva.--Ver. 35. See the story of the Nymph Coronis, in the Second Book of the Metamorphoses.] [Footnote 367: After nine ages.--Ver. 36. Pliny makes the life of the crow to last for a period of three hundred years.] [Footnote 368: Destined numbers.--Ver. 40. 'Numeri' means here, the similar. parts of one whole: 'the allotted portions of human life.'] [Footnote 369: Seventh day was come.--Ver. 45. Hippocrates, in his Aphorisms, mentions the seventh, fourteenth, and twentieth, as the critical days in a malady. Ovid may here possibly allude to the seventh day of fasting, which was supposed to terminate the existence of the person so doing.] [Footnote 370: Corinna, farewell.--Ver. 48. It may have said 'Corinna;' but Ovid must excuse us if we decline to believe that it said 'vale,' 'farewell,' also; unless, indeed, it had been in the habit of saying so before; this, perhaps, may have been the case, as it had probably often heard the Poet say 'vale' to his mistress.] [Footnote 371: The Elysian hill.--Ver. 49. He kindly imagines a place for the souls of the birds that are blessed.] [Footnote 372: By his words.--Ver. 58. His calling around him, in human accents, the other birds in the Elysian fields, is ingeniously and beautifully imagined.] [Footnote 377: This very tomb.--Ver. 61. This and the following line are considered by Heinsius to be spurious, and, indeed, the next line hardly looks like the composition of Ovid.] [Footnote 378: Am I then.--Ver. 1. 'Ergo' here is very expressive. 'Am I always then to be made the subject of fresh charges?'] [Footnote 379: Long-eared ass.--Ver. 15. Perhaps the only holiday that the patient ass got throughout the year, was in the month of June, when the festival of Vesta was celebrated, and to which Goddess he had rendered an important service. See the Sixth Book of the Fasti, 1. 311, et seq.] [Footnote 380: Skilled at tiring.--Ver. 17. She was the 'ornatrix,' or 'tiring woman' of Corinna. As slaves very often received their names from articles of dress, Cypassis was probably so called from the garment called 'cypassis,' which was worn by women and men of effeminate character, and extended downwards to the ancles.] [Footnote 387: With the whip.--Ver. 22. From this we see that the whip was applied to the female slaves, as well as the males.] [Footnote 388: Carpathian ocean..--Ver. 20. See the Metamorphoses, Book xi.] 1. 249, and the Note to this passage.] [Footnote 389: Swarthy Cypassis.--Ver. 22. From this expression, she was probably a native of Egypt or Syria.] [Footnote 390: With his spear.--Ver. 7. He alludes to the cure of Telephus by the aid of the spear of Achilles, which had previously wounded him.] [Footnote 391: Cottages of thatch.--Ver. 18. In the First Book of the Fasti, 1.199, he speaks of the time when 'a little cottage received Quiriuus, the begotten of Mars, and the sedge of the stream afforded him a scanty couch.' The straw-thatched cottage of Romulus was preserved at Rome for many centuries. See the Fasti, Book iii. 1. 184, and the Note to the passage.] [Footnote 392: Off to the fields.--Ver. 19. The 'emeriti,' or veterans of the Roman legions, who had served their full time, received a regular discharge, which was called 'missio,' together with a bounty, either in money, or an allotment of land. Virgil was deprived of his property near Mantua, by the officers of Augustus; and in his first Eclogue, under the name of Tityrus, he relates how he obtained restitution of it on applying to the Emperor.] [Footnote 393: Free from the race.--Ver. 20. Literally, 'the starting place.'] [Footnote 394: Wand of repose--Ver. 22. For an account of the 'rudis,' and the privilege it conferred, see the Tristia, Book, iv, El. 8. 1. 24.] [Footnote 395: Græcinus.--Ver. 1. He addresses three of his Pontic Epistles, namely, the Sixth of the First Book, the Sixth of the Second Book, and the Ninth of the Fourth Book, to his friend Græcinus. In the latter Epistle, he congratulates him upon his being Consul elect.] [Footnote 396: Without my arms.--Ver. 3. 'Inermis,' may be rendered, 'off my guard.'] [Footnote 397: Like the skiff.--Ver. 10. 'Pliaselos' is perhaps here used as a general name for a boat or skiff; but the vessel which was particularly so called, was long and narrow, and probably received its name from its resemblance to a kidney-bean, which was called 'ptaselus.' The 'phaseli' were chiefly used by the Egyptians, and were of various sizes, from that of a mere boat to a vessel suited for a long voyage. Appian mentions them as being a medium between ships of war and merchant vessels. Being built for speed, they were more noted for their swiftness than for their strength. Juvenal, Sat. xv, 1. 127, speaks of them as being made of clay; but, of course, that can only refer to 'pha-seli' of the smallest kind.] [Footnote 401: That are thin.--Ver 23. The Poet was of slender figure.] [Footnote 402: Arm his breast --Ver. 31. He alludes to the 'lorica,' or cuirass, which was worn by the soldiers.] [Footnote 403: Of his battles.--Ver. 36. He probably was thinking at this moment of the deaths of Cornelius Gallus, and T. Haterius, of the Equcstriai order, whose singular end is mentioned by Valerius Maximus, 11. ix c. 12, s. 8, and by Pliny the Elder, B. vii., c. 53.] [Footnote 404: The meeting rocks.--Ver 3. See the 121st line of the Epistle of Medea to Jason, and the Note to the passage.] [Footnote 405: Tinted pebbles.--Ver. 13. The 'picti lapilli' are probably camelians, which are found on the sea shore, and are of various tints.] [Footnote 406: The recreation.--Ver. 14. 'Mora,' 'delay,' is put here for that which causes the delay. 'That is a pleasure which belongs to the shore.'] [Footnote 407: In what Malea.--Ver. 20. Propertius and Virgil also couple Malea, the dangerous promontory on the South of Laconia, with the Syrtes or quicksands of the Libyan coast.] [Footnote 409: Stars of the fruitful Leda.--Ver. 29. Commentators are divided upon the exact meaning of this line. Some think that it refers to the Constellations of Castor and Pollux, which were considered to be favourable to mariners; and which Horace mentions in the first line of his Third Ode, B. i., 'Sic fratres Helenae, lucida sidera,' 'The brothers of Helen, those brilliant stars.' Others think that it refers to the luminous appearances which were seen to settle on the masts of ships, and were called by the name of Castor and Pollux; they were thought to be of good omen when both appeared, but unlucky when seen singly.] [Footnote 410: In the couch.--Ver. 31. 'Torus' most probably means, in this place a sofa, on which the ladies would recline while reading.] [Footnote 411: Amusing books.--Ver. 31. By using the diminutive 'libellus' here, he probably means some light work, such as a bit of court scandal, of a love poem.] [Footnote 412: My Divinities.--Ver. 44. See the Second Epistle, 1. 126, and the Note to the passage.] [Footnote 413: As a table.--Ver. 48. This denotes his impatience to entertain her once again, and to hear the narrative of her adventures.] [Footnote 414: Though they be fictions.--Ver. 53. He gives a sly hit here at the tales of travellers.] [Footnote 415: Twice five years.--Ver. 9. Or the 'lustrum' of the Romans, see the Fasti, Book iii. 1. 166, and the Tristia, Book iv. El. 10.] [Footnote 416: And the cause.--Ver. 17. This passage is evidently misunderstood in Nisard's translation, 'Je ne serai pas non plus la caus d'une nouvelle guerre,' 'I will never more be the cause of a new war.'] [Footnote 417: A female again.--Ver. 22. He alludes to the war in Latium, between Æneas and Turnus, for the hand of Lavinia, the daughter of Latinus and Amata. See the narrative in the Fourteenth book of the Metamorphoses.] [Footnote 421: 'Twas the females--Ver. 23. The rape of the Sabines, by the contrivance of Romulus, is here alluded to. The narrative will be found in the Third Book of the Fasti, 1. 203, et seq. It has been suggested, but apparently without any good grounds, that Tarpeia is here alluded to.] [Footnote 422: Thou who dost.--Ver. 7. Io was said to be worshipped under the name of Isis.] [Footnote 423: Parætonium.--Ver. 7. This city was situate at the Canopic mouth of the Nile, at the Western extremity of Egypt, adjoining to Libya. According to Strabo, its former name was Ammonia. It still preserves its ancient name in a great degree, as it is called al-Baretoun.] [Footnote 424: Fields of Canopus.--Ver. 7. Canopus was a city at one of the mouths of the Nile, now called Aboukir. The epithet 'genialis,' seems to have been well deserved, as it was famous for its voluptuousness. Strabo tells us that there was a temple there dedicated to Serapis, to which multitudes resorted by the canal from Alexandria. He says that the canal was filled, night and day, with men and women dancing and playing music on board the vessels, with the greatest licentiousness. The place was situate on an island of the Nile, and was about fifteen miles distant from Alexandria. Ovid gives a similar description of Alexandria, in the Tristia, Book i. El. ii. 1. 79. See the Note to the passage.] [Footnote 425: Memphis.--Ver. 8. Memphis was a city situate on the North of Egypt, on the banks of the Nile. It was said to have been built by Osirit.] [Footnote 426: Pharos.--Ver. 8. See the Metamorphoses, Book ix. 1. 772, and Book xv. 1. 287, with the Notes to the passages.] [Footnote 428: By thy sistra. --Ver. 11. For an account of the mystic 'sistra' of Isis, see the Pontic Epistles, Book i. El. i. 1. 38, and the Note.] [Footnote 429: Anubis. --Ver. 11. For an account of Anuhis, the Deity with the dog's head, see the Metamorphoses, Book ix. 1. 689, and the Note.] [Footnote 430: Osiris.--Ver. 12. See the Metamorphoses, Book ix. 1. 692, and the Note to the passage.] [Footnote 431: The sluggish serpent.--Ver. 13. Macrobius tells us, that the Egyptians accompanied the statue of Serapis with that of an animal with three heads, the middle one that of a lion, the one to the right, of a dog, and that to the left, of a ravenous wolf; and that a serpent was represented encircling it in its folds, with its head below the right hand of the statue of the Deity. To this the Poet possibly alludes, or else to the asp, which was common in the North of Egypt, and perhaps, was looked upon as sacred. If so, it is probable that the word 'pigra,' 'sluggish,' refers to the drowsy effect produced by the sting of the asp, which was generally mortal. This, indeed, seems the more likely, from the fact of the asp being clearly referred to, in company with these Deities, in the Ninth Book of the Metamorphoses, 1. 93; which see, with the Note to the passage.] [Footnote 432: The horned Apis.--Ver. 14. See the Ninth Book of the Metamorphoses, 1. 691, and the Note to the passage.] [Footnote 433: Thy features.--Ver. 15. Isis is here addressed, as being supposed to be the same Deity as Diana Lucina, who was invoked by pregnant and parturient women. Thus Isis appears to Telethusa, a Cretan woman, in her pregnancy, in the Ninth Book of the Metamorphoses, 1. 665, et seq.] [Footnote 434: Thy appointed days.--Ver. 17. Votaries who were worshipping in the temples of the Deities sat there for a considerable time, especially when they attended for the purpose of sacrifice. In the First Book of the Pontic Epistles, Ep. i. 1. 50, Ovid says, 'I have beheld one who confessed that he had offended the Divinity of Isis, clothed in linen, sitting before he altars of Isis.'] [Footnote 435: On which.--Ver. 18. 'Queis' seems a preferable reading to 'qua.'] [Footnote 436: The Galli.--Ver. 18. Some suppose that Isis and Cybele were the same Divinity, and that the Galli, or priests of Cybele, attended the rites of their Goddess under the name of Isis. It seems clear, from the present passage, that the priests of Cybele, who were called Galli, did perform the rites of Isis, but there is abundant proof that these were considered as distinct Deities. In imitation of the Corybantes, the original priests of Cybele, they performed her rites to the sound of pipes and tambourines, and ran to and fro in a frenzied manner.] [Footnote 437: With thy laurels.--Ver. 18. See the Note to the 692nd line of the Ninth Book of the Metamorphoses. While celebrating the search for the limbs of Osiris, the priests uttered lamentations, accompanied with the sound of the 'sistra'; but when they had found the body, they wore wreaths of laurel, and uttered cries, signifying their joy.] [Footnote 438: Ilithyia.--Ver. 21. As to the Goddess Ilithyia, see the Ninth Book of the Metamorphoses, 1. 283, and the Note to the passage.] [Footnote 439: With their bucklers.--Ver. 2. Armed with 'peltæ,' or bucklers, like the Amazons.] [Footnote 440: The sand must.--Ver. 8. This figure is derived from the gladiatorial fights of the amphitheatre, where the spot on which they fought was strewed with sand, both for the purpose of giving a firm footing to the gladiators, and of soaking up the blood that was shed.] [Footnote 441: Again throw stones.--Ver. 12. He alludes to Deucalion and Pyr-rha. See the First Book of the Metamorphoses.] [Footnote 442: Ilia had destroyed.--Ver. 16. Romulus was her son. See her story, related at the beginning of the Third Book of the Fasti.] [Footnote 443: Why pierce.--Ver. 27. He alludes to the sharp instruments which she had used for the purpose of procuring abortion: a practice which Canace tells Macareus that her nurse had resorted to. Epistle xi. 1. 40--43.] [Footnote 444: Armenian dens.--Ver. 35. See the Metamorphoses, Book viii. 1. 126, and the Note to the passage.] [Footnote 445: Many a time.--Ver. 38. He seems here to speak of this practice as being frequently resorted to.] [Footnote 446: She deserved it.--Ver. 40. From this, it would seem that the practice was considered censurable; but, perhaps it was one of those cases whose heinousness is never fully discovered till it has brought about its own punishment.] [Footnote 447: O ring.--Ver. 1. On the rings in use among the ancients, see the note to the First Book of the Aruores, El. iv., 1. 26. See also the subject of the seventh Elegy of the First Book of the Tristia.] [Footnote 448: Carpathian old man.--Ver. 10. For some account of Proteus, who is here referred to, see the First Book of the Fasti, 1. 363, and the Note.] [Footnote 449: Be able to seal--Ver. 15. From this, it appears to have been a signet ring.] [Footnote 450: Touch the lips.--Ver. 17. See the Tristia, Book v., El. iv. 1 5, and the Note to the passage.] [Footnote 459: In her desk.--Ver. 19. 'Loculi' used in the plural, as in the present instance, signified a receptacle with compartments, similar, perhaps, to our writing desks; a small box, coffer, casket, or cabinet of wood or ivory, for keeping money or jewels.] [Footnote 460: Sulmo.--Ver. 1. See the Note to the first line of the First Elegy of this Book.] [Footnote 461: Pelignian land.--Ver. 1. From Pliny the Elder, we learn that the Peligni were divided into three tribes, the Corfinienses, the Superequani, and the Sulmonenses.] [Footnote 462: Constellation.--Ver. 4. He alludes to the heat attending the Dog star, see the Fasti, Book iv., 1. 939, and the Note to the passage.] [Footnote 463: The thin soil.--Ver. 8. 'Rarus ager' means, a 'thin' or 'loose' soil, which was well suited for the cultivation of the grape.] [Footnote 464: That bears its berries.--Ver. 8. In Nisard's translation, the words 'bacciferam Pallada,' which mean the olive, are rendered 'L'amande Caere Pallas,' 'the almond dear to Pallas.'] [Footnote 465: Lengthened tracks.--Ver. 16. To the Delphin Editor this seems a silly expression.] [Footnote 466: The stormy Alps.--Ver. 19. See the Metamorphoses, Book ii. 1. 226, and the Note to the passage.] [Footnote 467: The obedient stream.--Ver. 35. This was a method of irrigation in agriculture, much resorted to by the ancients.] [Footnote 468: Fierce Cilicians --Ver. 39. The people of the interior of Cilicia, in Asia Minor, were of rude and savage manners while those on the coast had been engaged in piracy, until it had been effectually suppressed by Pompey.] [Footnote 469: Britons painted green.--Ver. 39. The Britons may be called 'virides,' from their island being surrounded by the sea; or, more probably, from the colour with which they were in the habit of staining their bodies. Cæsar says, in the Fifth Book of the Gallic war, 'The Britons stain themselves with woad, 'vitrum,' or 'glastum,' which produces a blue colour: and thus they become of a more dreadful appearance in battle.' The conquest of Britain, by Cæsar, is alluded to in the Fifteenth Book of the Metamorphoses, 1. 752.] [Footnote 471: Loves the vine.--Ver. 41. The custom of training vines by the side of the elm, has been alluded to in a previous Note. See also the Metamorphoses, Book xiv. 1. 663, and the Note to the passage.] [Footnote 472: As the nags.--Ver. 49. The 'manni' were used by the Romans for much the same purpose as our coach-horses; and were probably more noted for their fleetness than their strength; They were a small breed, originally imported from Gaul, and the possession of them was supposed to indicate the possession of considerable wealth. As the 'esseda' was a small vehicle, and probably of light structure, we must not be surprised at Corinna being in the habit of driving for herself. The distance from Rome to Sulmo was about ninety miles: and the journey, from his expressions in the fifty-first and fifty-second lines, must have been over hill and dale.] [Footnote 473: Your little chaise.--Ver. 49. For an account of the 'essedum,' or 'esseda,' see the Pontic Epistles, Book ii. Ep. 10, 1. 34, and the Note to the passage.] [Footnote 474: King of Pkthia.--Ver. 17.] He alludes to the marriage of Thetis, the sea Goddess, to Peleus, the king of Phthia, in Thessaly.] [Footnote 475: His anvil.--Ver. 19. It is a somewhat curious fact, that the anvils of the ancients exactly resembled in form and every particular those used at the present day.] [Footnote 476: Becomingly united.--Ver. 22. He says, that in the Elegiac measure the Pentameter, or line of five feet, is not unhappily matched with the Hexameter, or heroic line of six feet.] [Footnote 477: Disavowed by you.--Ver. 26. 'Voids' seems more agreable to the sense of the passage, than 'nobis.' 'to be denied by us;' as, from the context, there was no fear of his declining her affection.] [Footnote 478: That she is Corinna.--Ver. 29. This clearly proves that Corinna was not a real name; it probably was not given by the Poet to any one of his female acquaintances in particular.] [Footnote 479: Thy poem onwards.--Ver. 1. Macer translated the Iliad of Homer into Latin verse, and composed an additional poem, commencing at the beginning of the Trojan war, and coming down to the wrath of Achilles, with which Homer begins.] [Footnote 480: I, Macer.--Ver. 3. Æmilius Macer is often mentioned by Ovid in his works. In the Tristia, Book iv. Ep. 10,1.41, he says, 'Macer, when stricken in years, many a time repeated to me his poem on birds, and each serpent that is deadly, each herb that is curative.' The Tenth Epistle of the Second Book of Pontic Epistles is also addressed to him, in which Ovid alludes to his work on the Trojan war, and the time when they visited Asia Minor and Sicily together. He speaks of him in the Sixteenth Epistle of the Fourth Book, as being then dead. Macer was a native of Verona, and was the intimate friend of Virgil, Ovid, and Tibullus. Some suppose that the poet who wrote on natural history, was not the same with him who wrote on the Trojan war; and, indeed, it does not seem likely, that he who was an old man in the youth of Ovid, should be the same person to whom he writes from Pontus, when about fifty-six years of age. The bard of Ilium died in Asia.] [Footnote 481: Tragedy grew apace.--Ver. 13. He alludes to his tragedy of Medea, which no longer exists. Quintilian thus speaks of it: 'The Medea of Ovid seems to me to prove how much he was capable of, if he had only preferred to curb his genius, rather than indulge it.'] [Footnote 482: Sabinus return.--Ver. 27. He represents his friend, Sabinus, here in the character of a 'tabellarius,' or 'letter carrier,' going with extreme speed (celer) to the various parts of the earth, and bringing back the answers of Ulysses to Penelope, Hippolytus to Phaedra, Æneas to Dido, Demophoôn to Phyllis, Jason to Hypsipyle, and Phaon to Sappho. All these works of Sabinus have perished, except the Epistle of Ulysses to Penelope, and Demophoôn to Phyllis. His Epistle from Paris to Oenonc, is not here mentioned. See the Pontic Epistles, Book iv. Ep. xvi. 1. 13, and the Note to the passage.] [Footnote 483: Bring back letters.--Ver. 28. As the ancients had no establishment corresponding to our posts, they employed special messengers called 'tabellarii,' for the conveyance of their letters.] [Footnote 484: Vowed to Phobus.--Ver. 34. Sappho says in her Epistle, that if Phaon should refuse to return, she will dedicate her lyre to Phobus, and throw herself from the Leucadian rock. This, he tells her, she may now-do, as by his answer Phaon declines to return.] [Footnote 485: Pain in her head.--Ver. 11. She pretended a head-ache, when nothing wras the matter with her; in order that too much familiarity, in the end, might not breed contempt.] [Footnote 486: A surfeit of love.--Ver. 25. 'l'inguis amor' seems here to mear a satisfied 'ora 'pampered passion;' one that meets with no repulse.] [Footnote 487: Enclosed Danaë.--Ver. 27. See the Metamorphoses, Book iv., 1.] [Footnote 488: The dogs bark.--Ver. 40. The women of loose character, among the Romans, were much in the habit of keeping dogs, for the protection of their houses.] FOOTNOTES BOOK THREE: [Footnote 501: Than the other.--Ver. 8. 'He alludes to the unequal lines of the Elegiac measure, which consists of Hexameters and Pentameters. In personifying Elegy, he might have omitted this remark, as it does not add to the attractions of a lady, to have one foot longer than the other; he says, however, that it added to her gracefulness.] [Footnote 502: The Lydian buskin.--Ver. 14. As Lydia was said to have sent colonists to Etruria, some Commentators think that the word 'Lydius' here means 'Etrurian and that the first actors at Rome were Etrurians. But, as the Romans derived their notions of tragedy from the Greeks, we may conclude that Lydia in Asia Minor is here referred to; for we learn from Herodotus and other historians, that the Greeks borrowed largely from the Lydians.] [Footnote 503: Drunken revels.--Ver. 17. He probably alludes to the Fourth Elegy of the First, and the Fifth Elegy of the Second Book of the 'Amores.'] [Footnote 505: Mighty inspiration.--Ver. 23. The 'thyrsus' was said to have been first used by the troops of Bacchus, in his Indian expedition, when, to deceive the Indians, they concealed the points of their spears amid leaves of the vine and ivy. Similar weapons were used by his devotees when worshipping him, which they brandished to and fro. To be touched with the thyrsus of Bacchus, meant 'to be inspired with poetic frenzy.' See the Notes to the Metamorphoses, Book iii. 1. 542.] [Footnote 506: In unequal numbers.--Ver. 37. Some have supposed, that allusion is made to the Tragedy of Medea, which Ovid had composed, and that it had been written in Elegiac measure. This, however, does not seem to be the meaning of the passage. Elegy justly asks Tragedy, why, if she has such a dislike to Elegiac verses, she has been talking in them? which she has done, from the 15th line to the 30th.] [Footnote 507: Myself the patroness.--Ver. 44. She certainly does not give herself a very high character in giving herself the title of 'lena.'] [Footnote 508: The fastened door.--Ver. 50. He alludes, probably, to one of the Elegies which he rejected, when he cut down the five books to three.] [Footnote 509: In a hose tunic.--Ver. 51. He may possibly allude to the Fifth Elegy of the First Book, as the words 'tunicâ velata recinctâ,' as applied to Corinna, are there found. But there he mentions midday as the time when Corinna came to him, whereas he seems here to allude to the middle of the night.] [Footnote 510: Cut in the wood.--Ver. 53. He alludes to the custom of lovers carving inscriptions on the doors of their obdurate mistresses: this we learn from Plautus to have been done in Elegiac strains, and sometimes with charcoal. 'Implentur meæ fores clegiarum carbonibus.' 'My doors are filled with the coal-black marks of elegies.'] [Footnote 511: On her birthday.--Ver. 57. She is telling Ovid what she has put up with for his sake; and she reminds him how, when he sent to his mistress some complimentary lines on her birthday, she tore them up and threw them in the water. Horace mentions 'the flames, or the Adriatic sea,' as the end of verses that displeased. Athenseus, Book xiii. c. 5, relates a somewhat similai story. Diphilus the poet was in the habit of sending his verses to his mistress Gnathæna. One day she was mixing him a cup of wine and snow-water, on which he observed, how cold her well must be; to which she answered, yes, for it was there that she used to throw his compositions.] [Footnote 514: From behind.--Ver. 70. It is not known, for certain, to what he refers in this line. Some think that he refers to the succeeding Elegies in this Book, which are, in general, longer than the former ones, while others suppose that he refers to his Metamorphoses, which he then contemplated writing. Burmann, however, is not satisfied with this explanation, and thinks that, in his more mature years, he contemplated the composition of Tragedy, after having devoted his youth to lighter snbjects; and that he did not compose, or even contemplate the composition of his Metamorphoses, until many years afterwards.] [Footnote 515: I am not sitting here.--Ver. 1. He is here alluding to the Circen-sian games, which were celebrating in the Circus Maximus, or greatest Circus, at Rome, at different times in the year. Some account is given of the Circus Maximus in the Note to 1. 392. of the Second Book of the Fasti. The 'Magni,' or Great Circensian games, took place on the Fourth of the Ides of April. The buildings of the Circus were burnt in the conflagration of Rome, in Nero's reign; and it was not restored till the days of Trajan, who rebuilt it with more than its former magnificence, and made it capable, according to some authors, of accommodating 385,000 persons. The Poet says, that he takes no particular interest himself in the race, but hopes that the horse may win which is her favourite.] [Footnote 516: The spirited steeds.--Ver. 2. The usual number of chariots in each race was four. The charioteers were divided into four companies, or 'fac-tiones,' each distinguished by a colour, representing the season of the year. These colours were green for the spring, red for the summer, azure for the autumn, and white for the winter. Originally, but two chariots started in each race; but Domitian increased the number to six, appointing two new companies of charioteers, the golden and the purple; however the number was still, more usually, restricted to four. The greatest interest was shewn by all classes, and by both sexes, in the race. Lists of the horses were circulated, with their names and colours; the names also of the charioteers were given, and bets were extensively made, (see the Art of Love, Book i. 1. 167, 168,) and sometimes disputes and violent contests arose.] [Footnote 517: To be seated by you.--Ver. 3. The men and women sat together when viewing the contests of the Circus, and not in separate parts of the building, as at the theatres.] [Footnote 518: Happy the driver.--Ver. 7. He addresses the charioteer.] [Footnote 519: The sacred barrier.--Ver. 9. For an account of the 'career,' or 'starting-place,' see the Notes to the Tristia, Book v. El. ix. 1. 29. It is called 'sacer,' because the whole of the Circus Maximus was sacred to Consus, who is supposed by some to have been the same Deity as Neptune. The games commenced with sacrifices to the Deities.] [Footnote 520: I would give rein.--Ver. 11. The charioteer was wont to stand within the reins, having them thrown round his back. Leaning backwards, he thereby threw his full weight against the horses, when he wished to check them at full speed. This practice, however, was dangerous, and by it the death of Hippolytus was caused. In the Fifteenth Book of the Metamorphoses,1. 524, he says, 'I struggled, with unavailing hand, to guide the bridle covered with white foam, and throwing myself "backwards, I pulled back the loosened reins.' To avoid the danger of this practice, the charioteer carried a hooked knife at his waist, for the purpose of cutting the reins on an emergency.] [Footnote 521: The turning-place.--Ver. 12. For an account of the 'meta.'see the Tristia, Book iv. El. viii.l. 35. Of course, thpse who kept as close to the 'meta' as possible, would lose the least distance in turning round it.] [Footnote 522: How nearly was Pelops.--Ver. 15. In his race with Onomaüs, king of Pisa, in Arcadia, for the hand of his daughter, Hippodamia, when Pelops conquered his adversary by bribing his charioteer, Myrtilus.] [Footnote 523: Of his mistress.--Ver. 17. He here seems to imply that it was Hippodamia who bribed Myrtilus.] [Footnote 524: Shrink away in vain.--Ver. 19. She shrinks from him, and seems to think that he is sitting too close, but he tells her that the 'linea' forces them to squeeze. This 'linea' is supposed to have been either cord, or a groove, drawn across the seats at regular intervals, so as to mark out room for a certain number of spectators between each two 'lineæ.'] [Footnote 525: Has this advantage.--Ver. 20. He congratulates himsdf on the construction of the place, so aptly giving him an excuse for sitting close to his mistress.] [Footnote 526: But do you --Ver. 21. He is pretending to be very anxious for her comfort, and is begging the person on the other side not to squeeze so close against his mistress.] [Footnote 527: And you as well.--Ver. 23. As in the theatres, the seats, which were called 'gradas,' 'sedilia,' or 'subsellia,' were arranged round the course of the Circus, in ascending tiers; the lowest being, very probably, almost flush with the ground. There were, perhaps, no backs to the seats, or, at the best, only a slight railing of wood. The knees consequently of those in the back row would be level, and in juxta-position with the backs of those in front. He is here telling the person who is sitting behind, to be good enough to keep his knees to himself, and not to hurt the lady's back by pressing against her.] [Footnote 528: I am taking it up.--Ver. 26. He is here showing off his politeness, and will not give her the trouble of gathering up her dress. Even in those days, the ladies seem to have had no objection to their dresses doing the work of the scavenger's broom.] [Footnote 529: The fleet Atalanta.--Ver. 29. Some suppose that the Arcadian Atalanta, the daughter of Iasius, was beloved by a youth of the name of Milanion. According to Apollodorus, who evidently confounds the Arcadian with the Boeotian Atalanta, Milanion was another name of Hippo-menes, who conquered the latter in the foot race, as mentioned in the Tenth Book of the Metamorphoses. See the Translation of the Metamorphoses, p. 375. From this and another passage of Ovid, we have reason to suppose that Atalanta was, by tradition, famous for the beauty of her ancles.] [Footnote 530: The fan may cause.--Ver. 38. Instead of the word 'tabella,' 'flabella' has been suggested here; but as the first syllable is long, such a reading would occasion a violation of the laws of metre, and 'tabella' is probably correct. It has, however, the same meaning here as 'flabella it signifying what we should call 'a fan;' in fact, the 'flabellum' was a 'tabella,' or thin board, edged with peacocks' feathers, or those of other birds, and sometimes with variegated pieces of cloth. These were generally waved by female slaves, who were called 'flabelliferæ'; or else by eunuchs or young boys. They were used to cool the atmosphere, to drive away gnats and flies, and to promote sleep. We here see a gentleman offering to fan a lady, as a compliment; and it must have been especially grateful amid the dust and heat of the Roman Circus. That which was especially intended for the purpose of driving away flies, was called 'muscarium.' The use of fans was not confined to females; as we learn from Suetonius, that the Emperor Augustus had a slave to fan him during his sleep. The fan was also sometimes made of linen, extended upon a light frame, and sometimes of the two wings of a bird, joined back to back, and attached to a handle.] [Footnote 531: Now the procession.--Ver. 34 All this time they have been waiting for the ceremony to commence. The 'Pompa,' or procession, now opens the performance. In this all those who were about to exhibit in the race took a part. The statues of the Gods were borne on wooden platforms on the shoulders of men, or on wheels, according as they were light or heavy. The procession moved from the Capitol, through the Forum, to the Circus Maximus, and was also attended by the officers of state. Musicians and dancers preceded the statues of the Gods. See the Fasti, Book iv. 1. 391, and the Note to the passage.] [Footnote 532: Victory borne.--Ver. 45. On the wooden platform, which was called 'ferculum,' or 'thensa,' according as it was small or large.] [Footnote 533: With expanded wings.--Ver. 45. Victory was always represented with expanded wings, on account of her inconstancy and volatility.] [Footnote 534: Salute Neptune.--Ver. 47. 'Plaudite Neptuno' is equivalent, in our common parlance, to 'Give a cheer for Neptune.' He is addressing the sailors who may be present: but he declines to have anything to do with the sea himself.] [Footnote 535: Arms I detest.--Ver. 49. Like his contemporary, Horace, Ovid was no lover of war.] [Footnote 536: Of the artisan.--Ver. 52. We learn from the Fasti, Book iii. 1.815, that Minerva was especially venerated as the patroness of handicrafts.] [Footnote 537: Let the boxers.--Ver. 54. Boxing was one of the earliest athletic games practised by the Greeks. Apollo and Hercules, as well as Pollux, are celebrated by the poets for excelling in this exercise. It formed a portion of the Olympic contests; while boys fought in the Nemean and Isthmian games. Concerning the 'cæstus' used by pugilists, see the Fasti, Book ii. 1. 367, and the Note to the passage. The method in fighting most practised was to remain on the defensive, and thus to wear out the opponent by continual efforts. To inflict blows, without receiving any in return on the body, was the great point of merit. The right arm was chiefly used for attack, while the office of the left was to protect the body. Teeth were often knocked out, and the ears were much disfigured. The boxers, by the rules of the game, were not allowed to take hold of each other, nor to trip up their antagonist. In Italy boxing seems to have been practised from early times by the people of Etruria. It continued to be one of the popular games during the period of the Republic as well as of the Empire.] [Footnote 538: In the lattice work.--Ver. 64. The 'cancelli' were lattice work, which probably fkirted the outer edge of each wide 'præcinctio,' or passage,that ran along in front of the seats, at certain intervals. As the knees would not there be so cramped, these seats would be considered the most desirable. It is clear that Ovid and the lady have had the good fortune to secure front seats, with the feet resting either on the lowest 'præcinctio', or the 'præcinctio' of a set of seats higher up. Stools, of course, could not be used, as they would be in the way of passers-by. He perceives, as the seat is high, that she has some difficulty in touching the ground with her feet, and naturally concludes that her legs must ache; on which he tells her, if it will give her ease, to rest the tips of her feet on the lattice work railing which was opposite, and which, if they were on an upper 'præcinctio,' ran along the edge of it: or if they were on the very lowest tier, skirted the edge of the 'podium' which formed the basis of that tier. This she might do, if the 'præcinctio' was not more than a yard wide, and if the 'cancelli' were as much as a foot in height.] [Footnote 539: Now the Prcetor.--Ver. 65. The course is now clear of the procession, and the Prætor gives the signal for the start, the 'carceres' being first opened. This was sometimes given by sound of trumpet, or more frequently by letting fall a napkin; at least, after the time of Nero, who is said, on one occasion, while taking a meal, to have heard the shouts of the people who were impatient for the race to begin, on which he threw down his napkin as the signal.] [Footnote 540: The even harriers.--Ver. 66. From this description we should be apt to think that the start was effected at the instant when the 'carceres' were opened. This was not the case: for after coming out of the-carceres,' the chariots were ranged abreast before a white line, which was held by men whose office it was to do, and who were called 'moratores.' When all were ready, and the signal had been given, the white line was thrown down, and the race commenced, which was seven times round the course. The 'career' is called 'æquum,' because they were in a straight line, and each chariot was ranged in front of the door of its 'career.'] [Footnote 541: Circuit far too wide.--Ver. 69. The charioteer, whom the lady favours, is going too wide of the 'meta,' or turning-place, and so loses ground, while the next overtakes him.] [Footnote 542: To the left.--Ver. 72. He tells him to guide the horses to the left, so as to keep closer to the 'meta,' and not to lose so much ground by going wide of it.] [Footnote 543: Call him back again.--Ver. 73. He, by accident, lets drop the observation, that they have been interesting themselves for a blockhead. But he immediately checks himself, and, anxious that the favourite may yet distinguish himself, trusts that the spectators will call him back. Crispinus, the Delphin Editor, thinks, that by the calling back, it is meant that it was a false start, and that the race was to be run over again. Bur-mann, however, is not of that opinion; but supposes, that if any chariot did not go well, or the horses seemed jaded, it was the custom to call the driver back from the present race, that with new horses he might join in the next race. This, from the sequel, seems the most rational mode of explanation here.] [Footnote 544: Waving the garments.--Ver. 74. The signal for stopping was given by the men rising and shaking and waving their outer garments, or 'togae,' and probably calling the charioteer by name.] [Footnote 545: Disarrange your hair.--Ver. 75. He is afraid lest her neighbours, in their vehemence should discommode her hair, and tells her, in joke, that she may creep into the bosom of his own 'toga.'] [Footnote 546: And now the barrier.--Ver. 77. The first race we are to suppose finished, and the second begins similarly to the first. There were generally twenty-five of these 'missus,' or races in a day.] [Footnote 547: The variegated throng.--Ver. 78. See the Note to the second line.] [Footnote 548: At all events.--Ver. 79. He addresses the favourite, who has again started in this race.] [Footnote 549: Bears away the palm.--Ver. 82. The favourite charioteer is now victorious, and the Poet hopes that he himself may gain the palm in like manner. The victor descended from his car at the end of the race, and ascended the 'spina,' where he received his reward, which was generally a considerable sum of money. For an account of the 'spina,' see the Metamorphoses, Book x. l. 106, and the Note to the passage.] [Footnote 550: Her beauty remains.--Ver. 2. She has not been punished with ugliness, as a judgment for her treachery.] [Footnote 551: Proved false to me.--Ver. 10. Tibullus has a similar passage, 'Et si perque suos fallax juravit ocellos 'and if with her eyes the deceitful damsel is forsworn.'] [Footnote 552: Its divine sway.--Ver. 12. 'Numen' here means a power equal to that of the Divinities, and which puts it on a level with them.] [Footnote 553: Mine felt pain.--Ver. 14. When the damsel swore by them, his eyes smarted, as though conscious of her perjury.] [Footnote 554: Forsooth to you.--Ver. 17. He says that surely it was enough for the Gods to punish Andromeda, the daughter of Cepheus, for the sins of her mother, without making him to suffer misery for the perjury of his mistress. Cassiope, the mother of Andromeda, having dared to compare her own beauty with that of the Nereids, her daughter was, by the command of Jupiter, exposed to a sea-monster, which was afterwards slain by Perseus. See the Metamorphoses, Book iv. 1. 670.] [Footnote 555: Hurls at the groves.--Ver. 35. A place which had been struck by lightning was called 'bidental,' and was held sacred ever afterwards. The same veneration was also paid to a place where any person who had been killed by lightning was buried. Priests collected the earth that had been torn up by lightning, and everything that had been scorched, and buried it in the ground with lamentations. The spot was then consecrated by sacrificing a two-year-old sheep, which being called 'bidens,' gave its name to the place. An altar was also erected there, and it was not allowable thenceforth to tread on the spot, or to touch it, or even look at it. When the altar had fallen to decay, it might be renovated, but to remove its boundaries was deemed sacrilege. Madness was supposed to ensue on committing such an offence; and Seneca mentions a belief, that wine which had been struck by lightning, would produce death or madness in those who drank it.] [Footnote 556: Unfortunate Semele.--Ver. 37. See the fate of Semele, related in the Third Book of the Metamorphoses.] [Footnote 557: Have some regard.--Ver. 49. Or, in other words. 'Don't sweat any more by my eyes.'] [Footnote 558: Because she cannot, stilt sews.--Ver. 4. It is not a little singular that a heathen poet should enunciate the moral doctrine of the New Testament, that it is the thought, and not the action, that of necessity constitutes the sin.] [Footnote 559: A hundred in his neck.--Ver. 18. In the First Book of the Metamorphoses, he assigns to Argus only one hundred eyes; here, however, he uses a poet's license, prohably for the sake of filling up the line.] [Footnote 560: Its stone and its iron.--Ver. 21. From Pausanias and Lucian we learn that the chamber of Danaë was under ground, and was lined with copper and iron.] [Footnote 561: Nor yet is it legal.--Ver. 33. He tells him that he ought not to inflict loss of liberty on a free-born woman, a punishment that was only suited to a slave.] [Footnote 562: Those two qualities.--Ver. 42. He says, the wish being probably the father to the thought, that beauty and chastity cannot possibly exist together.] [Footnote 563: Many a thing at home.--Ver. 48. He tells him that he will grow quite rich with the presents which his wife will then receive from her admirers.] [Footnote 564: Its bubbling foam..--Ver. 13. He alludes to the noise which the milk makes at the moment when it touches that in the pail.] [Footnote 565: Ewe when milked.--Ver. 14. Probably the milk of ewes was used for making cheese, as is sometimes the case in this country.] [Footnote 566: Hag of a procuress.--Ver. 40. We have been already introduced to one amiable specimen of this class in the Eighth Elegy of the First Book.] [Footnote 567: River that hast.--Ver. 1. Ciofanus has this interesting Note:--'This river is that which flows near the walls of Sulmo, and, which, at the present day we call 'Vella.' In the early spring, when the snows melt, and sometimes, at the beginning of autumn, it swells to a wonderful degree with the rains, so that it becomes quite impassable. Ovid lived not far from the Fountain of Love, at the foot of the Moronian hill, and had a house there, of which considerable vestiges still remain, and are called 'la botteghe d'Ovidio.' Wishing to go thence to the town of Sulmo, where his mistress was living, this river was an obstruction to his passage.'] [Footnote 568: A hollow boat.--Ver. 4. 'Cymba' was a name given to small boats used on rivers or lakes. He here alludes to a ferry-boat, which was not rowed over; but a chain or rope extending from one side of the stream to the other, the boatman passed across by running his hands along the rope.] [Footnote 569: The opposite mountain.--Ver. 7. The mountain of Soracte was near the Flaminian way, in the territory of the Falisci, and may possibly be the one here alluded to. Ciofanus says that its name is now 'Majella,-and that it is equal in height to the loftiest mountains of Italy, and capped with eternal snow. *All one with the day.--Ver. 10. He means to say that he has risen early in the morning for the purpose of proceeding on his journey.] [Footnote 570: The son of Danaë.--Ver. 13. Mercury was said to have lent to Perseus his winged shoes, 'talaria,' when he slew Medusa with her viperous locks.] [Footnote 571: Wish for the chariot.--Ver. 15. Ceres was said to have sent Trip-tolemus in her chariot, drawn by winged dragons, to introduce agriculture among mankind. See the Fourth Book of the Fasti, 1. 558.] [Footnote 572: Inachus.--Ver. 25. Inachus was a river of Argolis, in Peloponnesus.] [Footnote 573: Love for Melie.--Ver. 25. Melie was a Nymph beloved by Neptune, to whom she bore Amycus, king of Bebrycia, or Bithynia, in Asia Minor, whence her present appellation.] [Footnote 574: Alpheus.--Ver 29. See the story of Alpheus and Arethusa, in the Fifth Book of the Metamorphoses, 1. 576.] [Footnote 575: Creüsa.--Ver. 31. Creüsa was a Naïad, the mother of Hypseas, king of the Lapithae, by Peneus, a river of Thessaly. Xanthus was a rivulet near Troy. Of Creüsa being promised to Xanthus nothing whatever is known.] [Footnote 576: The be beloved by Mars.--Ver. 33. Pindar, in his Sixth Olympic Ode, says that Metope, the daughter of Ladon, was the mother of live daughters, by Asopus, a river of Boeotia. Their names were Corcyra, Ægina, Salamis, Thebe, and Harpinna. Ovid, in calling her Thebe, probably follows some other writer. She is called 'Martia,' because she was beloved by Mars, to whom she bore Evadne.] [Footnote 577: Hand of Hercules.--Ver. 36. For the contest of Hercules and Achelous for the hand of Deianira, see the beginning of the Ninth Book of the Metamorphoses.] [Footnote 578: Calydon.--Ver. 37. Aeneus, the father of Meleager and Dei'anira, reigned over Ætolia, of which Calydon was the chief city.] [Footnote 579: The native spot.--Ver. 40; He alludes to the fact of the source or native country of the Nile being then, as it probably still is, quite unknown.] [Footnote 580: Daughter of Asopus.--Ver. 41. Evadne is called 'Asopide,' from her mother being the wife of Asopus. See the Note on line 33 above.] [Footnote 581: Enipeus dried up.--Ver. 43. Probably the true reading here is 'fictus,' 'the false Enipeus.' Tyro was the daughter of Salmoneus, king of Pisa, in Elis. She being much enamoured of the river Enipeus, Neptune is said to have assumed his form, and to have been, by her, the father of Pelias and Neleus.'] [Footnote 582: Argive Tibur,--Ver. 46. Tibur was a town beautifully situate in the neighbourhood of Home; it was said to have been founded by three Argive brothers, Tyburtus, Catillus, and Coras.] [Footnote 583: Whom Ilia.--Ver. 47. Ilia was said to have been buried alive, by the orders of Amulius, on the banks of the river Tiber; or, according to some, to have been thrown into that river, on which she is said to have become the wife of the river, and was deified. Acron, an ancient historian, wrote to the effect that her ashes were interred on the banks of the Anio; and that river overflowing, carried them to the bed of the Tiber, whence arose the story of her nuptials with the latter. According to one account, she was not put to death, but was imprisoned, having been spared by Amulius at the entreaty of his daughter, who was of the same age as herself, and at length regained her liberty.] [Footnote 584: Descendant of Laomedon.--Ver. 54. She was supposed to be descended from Laomedon, through Ascanius, the son of Creüsa, the granddaughter of Laomedon.] [Footnote 585: No white fillet.--Ver. 56. The fillet with which the Vestals bound their hair.] [Footnote 586: Am I courted.--Ver. 75. The Vestais were released from their duties, and were allowed to marry if they chose, after they had served for thirty years. The first ten years were passed in learning their duties, the next ten in performing them, and the last ten in instructing the novices.] [Footnote 587: Did she throw herself.--Ver. 80. The Poet follows the account which represented her as drowning herself.] [Footnote 588: To some fixed rule.--Ver. 89. 'Legitimum' means 'according to fixed laws so that it might be depended upon, 'in a steady manner.'] [Footnote 589: Injurious to the flocks.--Ver. 99. It would be 'damnosus' in many ways, especially from its sweeping away the cattle and the produce of the land. Its waters, too, being turbid, would be unpalatable to the thirsty traveller, and unwholesome from the melted snow, which would be likely to produce goitre, or swellings in the throat.] [Footnote 590: Could I speak of the rivers.--Ver. 103. He apologizes to the Acheloüs, Inachus, and Nile, for presuming to mention their names, in addressing such a turbid, contemptible stream.] [Footnote 591: After my poems.--Ver. 5. He refers to his lighter works; such, perhaps, as the previous books of his Amores. This explains the nature of the 'libelli,' which he refers to in his address to his mistress, in the Second Book of the Amores, El. xi. 1. 31.] [Footnote 592: His wealth acquired.--Ver. 9. 'Censu.' For the explanation of this word, see the Fasti, B. i. 1. 217, and the Note to the passage.] [Footnote 593: Through his wounds.--Ver. 9. In battle, either by giving wounds, or receiving them.] [Footnote 594: Which thus late.--Ver. 15. By 4 serum,'he means that his position, as a man of respectable station, has only been recently acquired, and has not descended to him through a long line of ancestors.] [Footnote 595: Was it acquired.--Ver. 20. This was really much to the merit of his rival; but most of the higher classes of the Romans affected to despise anything like gain by means of bodily exertion; and the Poet has extended this feeling even to the rewards of merit as a soldier.] [Footnote 596: Hold sway over.--Ver. 27. He here plays upon the two meanings of the word 'deducere.' 'Deducere carmen' is 'to compose poetry'; 'deducere primum pilum' means 'to form' or 'command the first troop of the Triarii.' These were the veteran soldiers of the Roman army, and the 'Primipilus' (which office is here alluded to) being the first Centurion of the first maniple of them, was the chief Centurion of the legion, holding an office somewhat similar to our senior captains. Under the Empire this office was very lucrative. See the Note to the 49th line of the Seventh Epistle, in the-Fourth Book of the Pontic Epistles.] [Footnote 597: The ravished damsel.--Ver. 30. He alludes to Danaë.] [Footnote 598: Resorted to presents.--Ver. 33. He seems to allude to the real meaning of the story of Danaë, which, no doubt, had reference to the corrupting influence of money.] [Footnote 599: With no boundaries.--Ver. 42. The 'limes' was a line or boundary, between pieces of land belonging to different persons, and consisted of a path, or ditch, or a row of stones. The 'ager limitatus' was the public land marked out by 'limites,' for the purposes of allotment to the citizens. On apportioning the land, a line, which was called 'limes,' was drawn through a given point from East to West, which was called 'decumanus,' and another line was drawn from North to South. The distance at which the 'limites' were to be drawn depended on the magnitude of the squares or 'centuriæ,' as they were called, into which it was purposed to divide the tract.] [Footnote 601: Then was the shore.--Ver. 44. Because they had not as yet learnt the art of navigation.] [Footnote 602: Turreted fortifications.--Ver. 47. Among the ancients the fortifications of cities were strengthened by towers, which were placed at intervals on the walls; they were also generally used at the gates of towns.] [Footnote 603: Why not seek the heavens.--Ver. 50. With what indignation would he not have spoken of a balloon, as being nothing less than a downright attempt to scale the 'tertia régna!'] [Footnote 604: Ciesar but recently.--Ver. 52. See the end of the Fifteenth Book of the Metamorphoses, and the Fasti, Book iii. 1. 704.] [Footnote 605: The Senate-house.--Ver. 55. 'Curia'was the name of the place where the Senate held its meetings, such as the 'curia Hostilia,' * Julia,' Marcelli,' and others. Hence arose the custom of calling the Senate itself, in the various Roman towns, by the name of 'curia,' but not the Senate of Rome. He here means to say, that poverty excluded a man from the Senate-house, and that wealth alone was the qualification for the honours of the state.] [Footnote 606: Wealth alone confers honours --Ver. 55. The same expression occurs in the Fasti, Book i. 1. '217, where a similar complaint is made on the worldly-mindedness of the age.] [Footnote 607: The Field of Mars.--Ver. 57. The 'comitia,' or meetings for the elections of the magistrates, were held on the 'Campus Martius' or field of Mars. See the Notes to the Fasti, Book i. 1. 53.] [Footnote 608: And the Forum. --Ver. 57. The 'Fora' were of two kinds at Rome; some being market-places, where all kinds of goods were exposed for sale, while others were solely courts of justice. Among the latter is the one here mentioned, which was simply called 'Forum,' so long as it was the only one of its kind existing at Rome, and, indeed, after that period, as in the present instance. At a later period of the Republic, and under the Empire, when other 'fora,' for judicial purposes, were erected, this Forum' was distinguished by the epithets 'vetus,' 'old,' or 'magnum, 'great.' It was situate between the Capitoline and Palatine hills, and was originally a swamp or marsh, which was filled up hy Romulus or Tatius. It was chiefly used for judicial proceedings, and is supposed to have been surrounded with the hankers' shops or offices, 'argentaria.' Gladiatorial games were occasionally held there, and sometimes prisoners of war, and faithless legionary soldiers, were there put to death. A second 'Forum,' for judicial purposes, was erected hy Julius Caesar, and was called hy his name. It was adorned with a splendid temple of Venus Genitrix. A third was built hy Augustus, and was called 'Forum Augusts' It was adorned with a temple of Mars, and the statues of the most distinguished men of the republic. Having suffered severely from fire, this Forum was restored by the Emperor Hadrian. It is mentioned in the Fourth Book of the Pontic Epistles, Ep. xv. 1. 16. See the Fasti, Book iii. 1. 704.] [Footnote 609: With regard to me.--Ver. 63. He says that because he is poor she makes excuses, and pretends that she is afraid of her husband and those whom he has set to watch her.] [Footnote 610: Of thy own inspiration.--Ver. 5. Burmann remarks, that the word 'opus' is especially applied to the sacred rites of the Gods; literally 'the priest of thy rites.'] [Footnote 611: The erected pile--Ver. 6. Among the Romans the corpse was burnt on a pile of wood, which was called 'pyra,' or 'rogus.' According to Servius, it was called by the former name before, and hy the latter after, it was lighted, but this distinction is not observed by the Latin writers.] It was in the form of an altar with four equal sides, but it varied in height and the mode of decoration, according to the circumstances of the deceased. On the pile the body was placed with the couch on which it had been carried; and frankincense, ointments, locks of hair, and garlands, were thrown upon it. Even ornaments, clothes, and dishes of food were sometimes used for the same purpose. This was done not only by the family of the deceased, but by such persons as joined the funeral procession.] [Footnote 612: The cruel boar.--Ver. 16. He alludes to the death of Adonis, by the tusk of a boar, which pierced his thigh. See the Tenth Book of the Metamorphoses, l. 716.] [Footnote 613: We possess inspiration.--Ver. 17. In the Sixth Book of the Fasti, 1. 6, he says. 'There is a Deity within us (Poets): under his guidance we glow with inspiration; this poetic fervour contains the impregnating. particles of the mind of the Divinity.'] [Footnote 614: She lays her.--Ver. 20. It must be remembered that, whereas we personify Death as of the masculine gender; the Romans represented the grim tyrant as being a female. It is a curious fact that we find Death very rarely represented as a skeleton on the Roman monuments. The skeleton of a child has, in one instance, been found represented on one of the tombs of Pompeii. The head of a horse was one of the most common modes of representing death, as it signified departure.] [Footnote 615: Ismarian Orpheus.--Ver. 21. Apollo and the Muse Calliope were the parents of Orpheus, who met with a cruel death. See the beginning of the Eleventh Book of the Metamorphoses.] [Footnote 616: Linus! Alas!--Ver. 23. 'Ælinon' was said to have been the exclamation of Apollo, on the death of his son, the poet Linus. The word is derived from the Greek, 'di Aivôç,' 'Alas! Linus.' A certain poetic measure was called by this name; but we learn from Athenaeus, that it was not always confined to pathetic subjects. There appear to have been two persons of the name of Linus. One was a Theban, the son of Apollo, and the instructor of Orpheus and Hercules, while the other was the son of an Argive princess, by Apollo, who, according to Statius, was torn to pieces in his infancy by dogs.] [Footnote 617: The son of Mæon. --Ver. 25. See the Note to the ninth line of the Fifteenth Elegy of the First Book of the Amores.] [Footnote 618: Slow web woven.--Ver. 30. The web of Penelope.] [Footnote 619: Nemesis, so Delia.--Ver. 31. Nemesis and Delia were the names of damsels whose charms were celebrated by Tibullus.] [Footnote 620: Sacrifice avail thee.--Ver. 33. He alludes to two lines in the] First Elegy of Tibullus.] 'Quid tua nunc Isis mihi Delia? quid mihi prosunt] Ilia tuâ toties sera repuisa manu.'] What have I now to do, Delia, with your Isis? what avail me those sistra so often shaken by your hand?'] [Footnote 621: What lying apart.--Ver. 34. During the festival of Isis, all intercourse with men was forbidden to the female devotees.] [Footnote 622: The yawning tomb.--Ver. 38. The place where a person was burnt was called 'bustum,' if he was afterwards buried on the same spot, and 'ustrina,' or 'ustrinum,' if he was buried at a different place. See the Notes to the Fasti, B. ii. 1. 531.] [Footnote 623: The towers of Eryx--Ver. 45. He alludes to Venus, who had a splendid temple on Mount Eryx, in Sicily.] [Footnote 624: The Phæacian land.--Ver. 47. The Phæacians were the ancient people of Corcyra, now the isle of Corfu. Tibullus had attended Messala thither, and falling ill, was unable to accompany his patron on his return to Rome, on which he addressed to him the First Elegy of his Third Book, in which he expressed a hope that he might not die among the Phæacians. To this Elegy Ovid here refers. Tibullus afterwards recovered, and died at Rome. When he penned this line, Ovid little thought that his own bones would one day rest in a much more ignoble spot than Corcyra, and one much more repulsive to the habits of civilization.] [Footnote 625: Here.--Ver. 49. 1 Hie'here seems to be the preferable reading; alluding to Rome, in contradistinction to Corcyra.] [Footnote 626: His tearful eyes.--Ver. 49. He alludes to the custom of the nearest relative closing the eyes of the dying person.] [Footnote 627: The last gifts.--Ver. 50. The perfumes and other offerings which were thrown on the burning pile, are here alluded to. Tibullus says, in the same Elegy--] 'Non soror Assyrios cineri quæ dedat odores,] Et Heat effusis ante sepulchra comis'] 'No sister have I here to present to my ashes the Assyrian perfumes, and to weep before my tomb with dishevelled locks.' To this passage Ovid makes reference in the next two lines.] [Footnote 628: Thy first love.--Ver. 53. 'Prior;' his former love was Delia, who was forsaken by him for Nemesis. They are both represented here as attending his obsequies. Tibullus says, in the First Elegy of the First Book, addressing Delia:--] 1 Te spectem, suprema mihi cum venerit hora,] Te teneam moriens, déficiente manu.] Flebis et arsuro positum me, Delia, lecto,] Tristibus et lacrymis oscula mista dabis.'] May I look upon you when my last hour comes, when dying, may I hold you with my failing hand. Delia, you will lament me, too, when placed on my bier, doomed to the pile, and will give me kisses mingled with the tears of grief.' To these lines Ovid evidently here refers. It would appear from the present passage, that it was the custom to give the last kiss when the body was laid on the funeral pile.] [Footnote 629: With his failing hand.--Ver. 58. Nemesis here alludes to the above line, and tells Delia, that she, herself, alone engaged his affection, as it was she alone who held his hand when he died.] [Footnote 630: Learned Catullus.--Ver. 62. Catullus was a Roman poet, a native of Verona. Calvus was also a Roman poet of great merit. The poems of Catullus and Calvus were set to music by Hermogenes, Tigellius, and Demetrius, who were famous composers. See the Tristia, Book ii. lines 427 and 431, and the Notes to the passages.] [Footnote 631: Prodigal of thy blood.--Ver. 64. He alludes to the fact of Gallus having killed himself, and to his having been suspected of treason against Augustus, from whom he had received many marks of kindness Ovid seems to hint, in the Tristia, Book ii. 1. 446, that the fault of Gallus was his having divulged the secrets of Augustus, when he was in a state o* inebriety. Some writers say, that when Governor of Egypt, he caused his name and exploits to be inscribed on the Pyramids, and that this constituted his crime. Others again, suppose that he was guilty of extortion in Egypt, and that he especially harassed the people of Thebea with his exactions. Some of the Commentators think that under the name 'amicus,' Augustus is not here referred to, inasmuch as it woulc seem to bespeak a familiar acquaintanceship, which is not known to have existed. Scaliger thinks that it must refer to some misunderstanding which had taken place between Gallus and Tibullus, in which the former was accused of having deceived his friend.] [Footnote 632: The rites of Ceres--Ver. 1. This festival of Ceres occurred on the Fifth of the Ides of April, being the 12th day of that month. See the Fasti, Book iv. 1. 393. White garments, were worn at this festival, and woollen robes of dark colour were prohibited. The worship was conducted solely by females, and all intercourse with men was forbidden, who were not allowed to approach the altars of the Goddess.] [Footnote 633: The oaks, the early oracles.--Ver. 9. On the oaks, the oracles of Dodona, see the Translation of the Metamorphoses, pages 253 and 467.] [Footnote 634: Having nurtured Jove.--Ver. 20. See an account of the education of Jupiter, by the Curetes, in Crete, in the Fourth Book of the Fasti, L 499, et seq.] [Footnote 635: Beheld Jasius.--Ver. 25. Iasius, or Iasion, was, according to most accounts, the son of Jupiter and Electra, and enjoyed the favour of Ceres, by whom he was the father of Plutus. According to the Scholiast on Theocritus, he was the son of Minos, and the Nymph Phronia. According to Apollodorus, he was struck dead by the bolts of Jupiter, for offering violence to Ceres. He was also said by some to be the husband of Cybele. He is supposed to have been a successful husbandman when agriculture was but little known; which circumstance is thought to have given rise to the story of his familiarity with Ceres. Ovid repeats this charge against the chastity of Ceres, in the Tristia, Book ii. 1. 300. See the Note to the passage.] [Footnote 636: Proportion of their wheat.--Ver. 30. With less corn than had been originally sown.] [Footnote 637: The law-giving Mims.--Ver. 41. Minos is said to have been the first who gave laws to the Cretans.] [Footnote 638: Late have the horns.--Ver. 6. This figure is derived from the horns, the weapons of the bull. 'At length I have assumed the weapons of defence.' It is rendered in a singular manner in Nisard's Translation, 'Trop tard, helas 1 J'ai connu l'outrage fait a mon front.' 'Too late, alas! I have known the outrage done to my forehead.'!!!] [Footnote 639: Have patience and endure.--Ver. 7. He addresses himself, recommending fortitude as his only cure.] [Footnote 640: The hard ground.--Ver. 10. At the door of his mistress; a practice which seems to have been very prevalent with the Roman lovers.] [Footnote 641: I was beheld by him.--Ver. 15. As, of courser, his rival would only laugh at him for his folly, and very deservedly.] [Footnote 642: As you walked.--Ver. 17. By the use of the word 'spatiantis,' he alludes to her walks under the Porticos of Rome, which were much frequented as places for exercise, sheltered from the heat.] [Footnote 643: The Gods forsworn.--Ver. 22. This forms the subject of the Third Elegy of the present Book.] [Footnote 644: Young mem at banquets.--Ver. 23. See the Fifth Elegy of the Second Book of the Amores.] [Footnote 645: She was not ill.--Ver. 26. When he arrived, he found his rival in her company.] [Footnote 646: I will hate.--Ver. 35. This and the next line are considered by Heinsius and other Commentators to be spurious.] [Footnote 647: She who but lately.--Ver. 5. Commentators are at a loss to know whether he is here referring to Corinna, or to his other mistress, to whom he alludes in the Tenth Elegy of the Second Book, when he confesses that he is in love with two mistresses. If Corinna was anything more than an ideal personage, it is probable that she is not meant here, as he made it a point not to discover to the world who was meant under that name; whereas, the mistress here mentioned has been recommended to the notice of the Roman youths by his poems.] [Footnote 648: Made proclamation.--Ver. 9. He says that, unconsciously, he has been doing the duties of the 'præco' or 'crier,' in recommending his mistress to the public. The 'præco,' among the Romans, was employed in sales by auction, to advertise the time, place, and conditions of sale, and very probably to recommend and praise the property offered for sale. These officers also did the duty of the auctioneer, so far as calling out the biddings, but the property was knocked down by the 'magister auctionum.' The 'præcones' were also employed to keep silence in the public assemblies, to pronounce the votes of the centuries, to summon the plaintiff and defendant upon trials, to proclaim the victors in the public games, to invite the people to attend public funerals, to recite the laws that were enacted, and, when goods were lost, to cry them and search for them. The office of a 'præco' was, in the time of Cicero, looked upon as rather disreputable.] [Footnote 649: Thebes.--Ver. 15. He speaks of the Theban war, the Trojan war, and the exploits of Caesar, as being good subjects for Epic poetry; but he says that he had neglected them, and had wasted his time in singing in praise of Corinna. This, however, may be said in reproof of his general habits of indolence, and not as necessarily implying that Corinna is the cause of his present complaint. The Roman poet Statius afterwards chose the Theban war as his subject.] [Footnote 650: Poets as witnesses.--Ver. 19. That is, 'to rely implicitly on the testimony of poets.' The word 'poetas' requires a semicolon after it, and not a comma.] [Footnote 651: The raging dogs.--Ver. 21. He here falls into his usual mistake of confounding Scylla, the daughter of Nisus, with Scylla, the Nymph, the rival of Circe, in the affections of Glaucus. See the Note to 1. 33 of the First Epistle of Sabinus, and the Eighth and Fourteenth Books of the Metamorphoses.] [Footnote 652: Descendant of Abas.--Ver. 24. In the Fourth Book of the Metamorphoses he relates the rescue of Andromeda from the sea monster, by Perseus, the descendant of Abas, and clearly implies that he used the services of the winged horse Pegasus on that occasion. It has been suggested by some Commentators, that he here refers to Bellerophon; but that hero was not a descendant of Abas, and, singularly enough, he is not on any occasion mentioned or referred to by Ovid.] [Footnote 653: Extended Tityus.--Ver. 25. Tityus was a giant, the son of Jupiter and Elara. Offering violence to Latona, he was pierced by the darts of Apollo and hurled to the Infernal Regions, where his liver was doomed to feed a vulture, without being consumed.] [Footnote 654: Enceladus.--Ver. 27. He was the son of Titan and Terra, and joining in the war against the Gods, he was struck by lightning, and thrown beneath Mount Ætna. See the Pontic Epistles, Book ii. Ep.ii. 1.11.] [Footnote 655: The-two-shaped damsels.--Ver. 28. He evidently alludes to the Sirens, with their two shapes, and not to Circe, as some have imagined.] [Footnote 656: The Ithacan bags.--Ver. 29. Æolus gave Ulysses favourable wind* sewn up in a leather bag, to aid him in his return to Ithaca. See tha Metamorphoses, Book xiv. 1. 223] [Footnote 657: The Cecropian bird.--Ver. 32. He calls Philomela the daughter of Pandion, king of Athens, 'Cecropis ales Cc crops having been the first king of Athens. Her story is told in the Sixth Book of the Metamorphoses.] [Footnote 658: A bird, or into gold.--Ver. 33. He alludes to the transformation of Jupiter into a swan, a shower of gold, and a bull; in the cases of Leda, Danaë, and Europa.] [Footnote 659: The Theban seed.--Ver. 35. He alludes to the dragon's teeth sown by Cadmus. See the Third Book of the Metamorphoses.] [Footnote 660: Distil amber tears.--Ver. 37. Reference is made to the transformation of the sisters of Phaeton into poplars that distilled amber. See the Second Book of the Metamorphoses, 1. 364.] [Footnote 661: Who once were ships.--Ver. 38. He alludes to the ships of Æneas, which, when set on fire by Turnus, were changed into sea Nymphs.] [Footnote 662: The hellish banquet.--Ver. 39. Reference is made to the revenge of Atreus, who killed the children of Thyestes, and set them on table before their father, on which occasion the Sun is said to have hidden his face.] [Footnote 663: Stonesfollowed the lyre.--Ver. 40. Amphion is said to have raised the walls of Thebes by the sound of his lyre.] [Footnote 664: Camillus, by thee.--Ver. 2. Marcus Furius Camillus, the Roman general, took the city of Falisci.] [Footnote 665: The covered paths.--Ver. 12. The pipers, or flute players, led the procession, while the ground was covered with carpets or tapestry.] [Footnote 666: Snow-white heifers.--Ver. 14. Pliny the Elder, in his Second Book, says, 'The river Clitumnus, in the state of Falisci, makes those cattle white that drink of its waters.'] [Footnote 667: In the lofty woods.--Ver. 20. It is not known to what occasion this refers. Juno is stated to have concealed herself on two occasions; once before her marriage, when she fled from the pursuit of Jupiter, who assumed the form of a cuckoo, that he might deceive her; and again, when, through fear of the giants, the Gods took refuge in Egypt and Libya. Perhaps the former occasion is here referred to.] [Footnote 668: As a mark.--Ver. 21. This is similar to the alleged origin of the custom of throwing sticks at cocks on Shrove Tuesday. The Saxons being about to rise in rebellion against their Norman oppressors, the conspiracy is said to have been discovered through the inopportune crowing of a cock, in revenge for which the whole race of chanticleers were for centuries submitted to this cruel punishment.] [Footnote 669: With garments.--Ver. 24. As 'vestis' was a general name for a covering of any kind, it may refer to the carpets which appear to be mentioned in the twelfth line, or it may mean, that the youths and damsels threw their own garments in the path of the procession.] [Footnote 670: After the Grecian manner.--Ver. 27. Falisci was said to have been a Grecian colony.] [Footnote 671: Hold religious silence.--Ver. 29. 'Favere linguis' seems here to mean, 'to keep religious silence as to the general meaning of the term, see the Fasti, Book i. 1. 71.] [Footnote 672: Halesus.--Ver. 33. Halesus is said to have been the son of Agamemnon, by a concubine. Alarmed at the tragic death of his father, and of the murderers, Ægisthus and Clytemnestra, he fled to Italy, where he founded the city of Phalesus, which title, with the addition of one letter, was given to it after his name. Phalesus afterwards became corrupted, to 'Faliscus,' or 'Falisci.'] [Footnote 673: One side and the other.--Ver. 32. For the 'torus exterior' and 'interior,' and the construction of the beds of the ancients, see the Note to the Eighth Book of the Metamorphoses, 1. 659. * Forced to love.--Ver. 39. This passage seems to be hopelessly corrupt.] [Footnote 674: Turning-place is grazed.--Ver. 2. On rounding the 'meta' in the chariot race, from which the present figure is derived, see the Note to the 69th line of the Second Elegy of this Book.] [Footnote 675: Heir to my rank.--Ver. 5. See the Tristia, Book ii. 1. 112, where he enlarges upon the rank and circumstances of his family.] [Footnote 676: To glorious arms.--Ver. 9. He alludes to the Social war which was commenced in the year of the City 659, by the Marsi, the Peligni, and the Picentes, for the purpose of obtaining equal rights and privileges with the Roman citizens. He calls them 'arma honesta,' because wielded in defence of their liberties.] [Footnote 677: Rome dreaded.--Ver. 10. The Romans were so alarmed, that they vowed to celebrate games in honour of Jupiter, if their arms should prove successful.] [Footnote 678: Amathusian parent.--Ver. 15. Venus was worshipped especially at Amathus, a city of Cyprus; it is mentioned by Ovid as abounding in metals. See the Metamorphoses, Book x. 1. 220 and 531, B. III.] [Footnote 679: The homed.--Ver. 17. In addition to the reasons already mentioned for Bacchus being represented as horned, it is said, by some, that it arose from the fact, of wine being drunk from horns in the early ages. It has been suggested, that it had a figurative meaning, and implied the violence of those who are overtaken with wine.] [Footnote 680: Lyæus.--Ver. 17. For the meaning of the word Lyæus, see the Metamorphoses, Book iv. 1. 11, and the Note to the passage.] [Footnote 681: My sportive.--Ver. 19. Genialis; the Genii were the Deities of pure, unadorned nature. See the Fasti, Book iii. 1. 58, and the Note to the passage. 'Genialis,' consequently, 'voluptuous,' or 'pleasing to the impulses of nature.'] 
21920	----	Copyright (C) 2006 by Mark Bear Akrigg THE LAST POEMS OF OVID A New Edition, with Commentary, of the Fourth Book of the _Epistulae ex Ponto_ by Mark Bear Akrigg, Ph.D. * * * * * Original (unpublished) edition Copyright 1985 by Mark Bear Akrigg First published edition, corrected and augmented Copyright 2006 by Mark Bear Akrigg * * * * * This edition and commentary are dedicated to ROB MORROW _"quo non mihi carior alter"_ TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments i Preface ii Introduction 1 Textual Introduction 23 P. OVIDI NASONIS _EPISTVLARM EX PONTO_ LIBER QVARTVS 54 I. Ad Sextum Pompeium 56 II. Ad Seuerum 59 III. Ad ingratum 63 IIII. Ad Sextum Pompeium 68 V. Ad Sextum Pompeium 72 VI. Ad Brutum 76 VII. Ad Vestalem 81 VIII. Ad Suillium 86 IX. Ad Graecinum 93 X. Ad Albinouanum 105 XI. Ad Gallionem 113 XII. Ad Tuticanum 115 XIII. Ad Carum 120 XIV. Ad Tuticanum 125 XV. Ad Sextum Pompeium 131 XVI. Ad inuidum 136 COMMENTARY 144 I. To Sextus Pompeius 146 II. To Cornelius Severus 161 III. To an Unfaithful Friend 177 IV. To Sextus Pompeius 199 V. To Sextus Pompeius 213 VI. To Brutus 226 VII. To Vestalis 244 VIII. To Suillius 258 IX. To Graecinus 286 X. To Albinovanus Pedo 325 XI. To Gallio 359 XII. To Tuticanus 370 XIII. To Carus 389 XIV. To Tuticanus 410 XV. To Sextus Pompeius 429 XVI. To a Detractor 446 Bibliography 471 Index of topics discussed 477 Index of textual emendations 489 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The Editor gratefully acknowledges the permission of the Herzog August Bibliothek for the use of Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel: Cod. Guelf. 13.11 Aug. 4° (fragmentum Guelferbytanum). PREFACE It is a pleasure to present to the public this digital edition, with commentary, of _Ex Ponto_ IV, the final poems written by the Roman poet Ovid, published after his death as a posthumous collection quite separate from the earlier _Ex Ponto_ I-III. These poems have a special place among Ovid's works, but have not received the attention which they deserve. In particular, there has been no full modern commentary on these poems. This text presented in this edition is based on my personal examination of ten manuscripts. I have also restored to the text certain readings commonly accepted by editors until the nineteenth century. Finally, the edition contains several dozen new textual conjectures by myself and others. The intended audience of this edition This edition is intended to serve as a guide to the poems for intermediate and advanced students of Latin poetry. However, I have deliberately made it as straightforward as possible, and my hope is that even a beginning student of Latin poetry embarking on the study of these poems will find the commentary helpful. This edition is also directed towards present and future Latin textual critics. My expectation when starting my research for this edition was that I would be presenting a text that differed little from that to be found in current editions. However, I made two discoveries during my research into the text. The first discovery was that many important textual corrections generally accepted in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had been suppressed by editors in the course of the nineteenth century. I have restored many of these readings to the text, and others will be found in the textual apparatus. The second discovery was that there was a surprisingly large number of passages which appeared to be corrupt and for which it was possible to suggest corrections. Given the long history of Latin textual criticism, and Ovid's central position in Roman literary history, it was surprising to find that so much remained to be done. Yet such was the case. Nothing is more certain than that this book of poems as well as the three earlier books of the _Ex Ponto_ represent an outstanding opportunity for future editors and commentators to contribute to the progress of Latin scholarship. History of this edition I originally prepared this edition and commentary during my time as a graduate student at the University of Toronto. Upon its completion (and my graduation) in 1985, a copy was deposited at the National Library of Canada. Had I followed a university teaching career after graduation, I would undoubtedly have taken the necessary steps to publish the edition, if only in pursuit of academic promotion. But I instead chose a career in the software industry, which both removed the external incentive to publish the edition, and denied me the time that I would have needed to prepare it for publication. However, I wished to ensure that future editors and commentators were aware of the edition and would be able to make use of it. I therefore decided to publish two short articles drawn from the edition. These articles were intended to make generally available two textual conjectures which I considered likely to be correct. But the articles were also intended to make future editors aware that I had worked on the text of Ovid, so that they would seek out my unpublished edition. The first article ("An Intrusive Gloss in Ovid _Ex Ponto_ 4.13") appeared in _Phoenix_ (vol. 40, p. 322) in 1986: it reported the restoration of IV xiii 45 discussed at page 408 of the commentary. _Phoenix_ is published by the Classical Association of Canada, and since my own training in the classical languages had taken place almost entirely in Canada, it seemed appropriate that my first publication should be in a Canadian journal. To my surprise and pleasure, my short article attracted a critique by Professor Allan Kershaw ("_Ex Ponto_ 4.13: A Reply", _Phoenix_, vol. 42, p. 176), followed by a learned defense of my conjecture by Professor James Butrica ("Taking Enemies for Chains: Ovid _Ex Ponto_ 4.13.45 Again", _Phoenix_, vol. 43, pp. 258-59). Four years later, I published a second article ("A Palaeographical Corruption in Ovid, _Ex Ponto_ 4.6"), which appeared in the May 1990 issue of the _Classical Quarterly_ (pp. 283-84). This article reported the restoration of IV vi 38 discussed at pages 240-41 of the commentary. I selected the _Classical Quarterly_ because of its prominence within the world of classical scholarship, and in particular because of its close association with the modern history of Latin textual criticism: it was in the _Classical Quarterly_ that many of the learned articles of A. E. Housman first appeared. My hope had been that these two articles would serve as a signpost that would lead editors to my edition. The publication of J. A. Richmond's Teubner edition of the _Ex Ponto_ in 1990 proved that this plan was inadequate. Professor Richmond had indeed discovered the existence of my edition: it received a prominent and flattering mention at the end of his preface. However, he stated that he received the microfilm of the edition too late for use in his edition! In his review of Richmond's Teubner edition in the _Classical Review_ (n.s. 42, 2 [1992], pp. 305-06), Professor James Butrica highlighted a number of proposed emendations from my edition. It had become clear there was considerable outside interest in the work that I had done, and that simply having a copy of an unpublished edition on deposit at the National Library of Canada was not a sufficient means of making the edition available to the public, so over the years that followed I gave some consideration to how I might publish the edition so that it would be conveniently available to students of Latin poetry. Early in 2006, I was working as a volunteer proofreader for the Project Gutenberg digital library: I noticed that the Project Gutenberg library included some public domain classical editions comparable in scope to my own. Prompted by this, I decided that I would publish my edition online in order to make it instantly accessible free of charge to anyone wishing to use it. This seemed in every way preferable to seeking out a university press, going through the time-consuming process of seeking the necessary grants to subsidize publication, in order to produce a printed book so expensive that no student and not many libraries could afford to purchase a copy. Nature of this edition In essence, this is a corrected version of the original typescript. Typing errors have been corrected, and minor errors have been set right. All statements made and conjectures proposed should be considered to have been made in 1985. The HTML and Text versions of this edition This digital edition is being made available in two versions. The _HTML version_ takes advantage of the Unicode character set to present Greek passages using the Greek alphabet, and to present certain other special characters, such as the macron. It also offers hyperlinks from the table of contents and from the indices to the relevant sections of the edition. Popular and useful as HTML is, it does not offer the universality of ASCII text. Essentially every computer can display plain ASCII text correctly. The _Text version_ is presented so that the edition can be read on any computer, large or small, new or old. However, this portability comes at a price. The ISO 8859-1 ASCII character set does not include the Greek alphabet, nor does it include certain special characters which form part of this edition. Therefore, the Text version of this edition presents Greek passages transliterated into the Latin alphabet. Similarly, in the textual apparatus any capital letter occurring in the report of a manuscript should be considered to be that letter in lower case, with a macron (dash) above. When the textual apparatus reports a manuscript correction where the original reading is no longer legible, the HTML version underlines the corrected letters, but the Text version uses capitalization. For example, the Text version reports "facTisque _B2c_" at iii 25: a later hand in _B_ has erased the original fourth letter, and has replaced it with "t". In the commentary, when metre is being discussed and a Latin word is quoted, any vowel in that word which is capitalized is long, and any vowel which is not capitalized is short. I have occasionally pointed out explicitly that a word is metrically inconvenient because it has a series of short vowels: in the HTML edition, because the actual letters are marked short, these statements will appear to be redundant. In the Latin text, the start and end of passages which are deeply corrupt and therefore difficult to correct are indicated by an asterisk, instead of the usual dagger (obelus). Finally, in the critical apparatus, 'æ' is used where a manuscript has 'e' with a cedilla. Enhancements made: the indices In order to make the digital edition as useful as possible, I have added this preface, a full table of contents, and two indices. The first index (starting on page 477) is an index of _topics discussed_. It is a selective rather than an exhaustive index for the following two reasons: (1) A commentary is already in effect indexed by the text it is linked to. If, for instance, readers wish to find what the commentary has to say about a certain passage, all they need do is turn to the part of the commentary dealing with that passage. (2) A digital edition can be searched online very quickly and easily. A reader wishing to find any mention of the eminent Dutch textual critic Nicolaus Heinsius could find every mention of Heinsius in the edition simply by using "Heinsius" as a search argument. However, some of the discussions in the commentary do not have an obvious link to the text, nor would they necessarily be found quickly by an electronic search. An example would be the discussion of "Simple verbs used for compound ones" at page 281. Also, there were some parts of the introduction and commentary which I wanted to highlight to the reader as being of possible interest: including references to these in the index would serve this purpose. For similar reasons, I have included (starting on page 489) an index of textual emendations first proposed in this edition. Some of these emendations involve works other than _Ex Ponto_ IV, and authors other than Ovid. The index of textual emendations makes these corrections easy to find. The debt I owe to others I was able to create this edition only because of the help that I have received over the years from others. My basic training in the classical languages took place at the University of British Columbia, where I completed my B.A. in 1974, and my M.A. in 1977. It is impossible to repay the debt I owe to every single member of the Classics Department at that time. Professor Charles Murgia of the University of California (Berkeley) initiated me into the mysteries of Latin palaeography and textual criticism. I created this edition while a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Classics at the University of Toronto. I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Professor Richard Tarrant, who encouraged me to undertake the edition, posed many excellent questions, and offered many excellent suggestions. I owe a similar debt to Professor Alexander Dalzell, Professor Elaine Fantham, Professor J. N. Grant, and Professor C. P. Jones, all of them members of the Graduate Department of Classics at the University of Toronto when I was creating the edition. I have known Rob Morrow for twenty-one years, and he has touched every aspect of my life. The study of Latin poetry is a field of endeavour far removed from his usual interests: but even here he has made an important contribution in the work he did in scanning the original typescript, and in his continuing encouragement and support during the months I worked on creating this digital edition. It is to him, with deep affection and gratitude, that I dedicate this edition. INTRODUCTION In AD 8, when he was fifty years of age, Ovid was abruptly banished from Rome to Tomis, an exile from which he never returned. In his poetry from exile, he gives two reasons for the banishment: the publication of the _Ars Amatoria_, and an unnamed error (_Tr_ II 207; _EP_ III iii 71-72)[1]. The _Ars Amatoria_ had been published some years previously, being generally dated on the basis of _AA_ I 171-72 to 2 BC or shortly thereafter; compare _Tr_ II 545-46. The error was clearly the real cause of the banishment; what precisely this _error_ was Ovid does not reveal, but it appears from _Tr_ II 103-4 and _Tr_ III v 49-50 to have been the witnessing of some action that was embarrassing to the imperial family. Beyond this nothing is known, for Ovid was careful to avoid compounding his original mistake by mentioning what it consisted of. [Footnote 1: The evidence for Ovid's _error_ and the many theories advanced to explain it are gathered and fully discussed in J. C. Thibault's _The Mystery of Ovid's Exile_ (Berkeley: 1964).] The catastrophe which befell Ovid did not put an end to his poetic activity; from the eight or nine years of his exile we possess a corpus of elegiac verse that substantially exceeds in bulk the combined production of Tibullus and Propertius. The first work produced by Ovid was book I of the _Tristia_. Although it is perhaps not literally true that Ovid wrote much of the poetry on shipboard (_Tr_ I xi 3-10), all of the poems are directly related to the circumstances of his downfall and his journey to exile; and it is reasonable to suppose that the book was published shortly after Ovid's arrival in Tomis. In his first poems from exile, Ovid had attempted to engage the sympathy of the public on his behalf; his next production was a direct appeal to Augustus in the 578-line elegiac poem that comprises the second book of the _Tristia_. The poem is written with Ovid's usual clarity and elegance, but its failure to secure his recall is not surprising. The poem deals only with the publication of the _Ars Amatoria_, which was not the true cause of the exile; and rather than admitting his guilt and appealing to Augustus' clemency, Ovid tactlessly argues that Augustus had been wrong to exile him. The years 10, 11, and 12 saw the publication of the final three books of the _Tristia_. The charge of monotony that is generally brought against Ovid's poetry from exile (and was brought by his friends at the time; Ovid makes his defence in _EP_ III ix) is most nearly true of these three books of verse. He was unable to name his correspondents and vary his poetry with personal references as he was to do in the _Ex Ponto_; and the pain of exile was so fresh as to exclude other topics. Not all of Ovid's literary efforts in exile were devoted to his letters. It appears from _Fast_ IV 81-82 and VI 666, as well as from the dedication to Germanicus at the start of the first book (at _Tr_ II 551 Ovid says he dedicated the work to Augustus) that the _Fasti_ in the edition we possess is a revision produced by Ovid in exile after the death of Augustus. In AD 12 Ovid produced the _Ibis_. The greater part of the poem is a series of curses showing such minute mythological learning that many of them have not been explained; but the poem's lengthy exordium is a powerful treatment of Ovid's circumstances and Ibis's perfidy that has been considered Ovid's most perfect literary creation (Housman 1041). Many scholars also ascribe the composition of the final six _Heroides_ to the period of Ovid's exile; but although the literary appeal of these three sets of double epistles is considerable, I believe that their comparative diffuseness of manner indicates that Ovid was not their author. They are, however, clearly modelled on the _Heroides_ written by Ovid, and I have frequently quoted from them in the commentary. In AD 12 Ovid must have received some indication that it was safe for him to name his correspondents. He took full advantage of this new opportunity to induce his friends to work on his behalf; it is clear from Ovid's references to his fourth year of exile (I ii 26, I viii 28) and to Tiberius' triumph of 23 October AD 12 (II i 1 & 46, II ii 75-76, II v 27-28, III i 136, III iii 86, III iv 3)[2] that all three books were written within the space of a single year: as fast a rate of composition as can be proved for any part of Ovid's life. The three books were published as a unit: the opening poem of the first book and the closing poem of the last are addressed to Brutus, who was therefore the dedicatee of the collection; both poems are apologies for Ovid's verse. No such framing poems are found at the start of books II or III, or at the end of books I and II, although the addressees of II i and III i, Germanicus and Ovid's wife, were clearly chosen for their respective importance and closeness to Ovid. [Footnote 2: For these references I am indebted to page xxxv of A. L. Wheeler's excellent introduction to the Loeb edition of the _Tristia_ and _Ex Ponto_. For the date of Tiberius' triumph, see Syme _History in Ovid_ 40.] _Ex Ponto_ IV The fourth book of the _Ex Ponto_ constitutes a work separate from the three books composed in AD 12. The earliest datable poem in the book is the fourth, written shortly before Sextus Pompeius' consulship in AD 14; the latest is the ninth, written in honour of Graecinus' becoming suffect consul in AD 16. Of the books of Ovid's verse which are collections of individual poems, the fourth book of the _Ex Ponto_ is the longest, being some 926 lines in length (excluding the probably spurious distichs xv 25-26 and xvi 51-52). The mean average length of such books is 764 lines; and the next longest after _Ex Ponto_ IV is _Am_ III, with 824 lines (excluding the spurious fifth poem). I take the length of the book as an indication that in its present form it is probably a posthumous collection: Ovid's editor either gathered the individual poems to form a single book that was unusually long, or added a few later poems to a book previously assembled by Ovid[3]. [Footnote 3: Professor Tarrant notes however that unlike I-III the fourth book was not written within a very short time; if Ovid had collected what he thought worth publishing of his output over several years, it would not be surprising to find it longer than the preceding collections.] Syme (_HO_ 156) argues that the order of the poems indicates that Ovid survived to publish or at least to arrange the book: the fact that the first and penultimate poems are addressed to Sextus Pompeius indicates that Ovid dedicated the book to him. Professor R. J. Tarrant points out to me correspondences of structure between _EP_ IV and some of Ovid's earlier books. If the sixteenth and final poem of _EP_ IV is considered a _sphragis_-poem, as is indicated by _Nasonis_ in the opening line, we are left with a fifteen-poem book of which the first and last poems are addressed to Sextus Pompeius, and in which the middle poem is addressed to Germanicus through his client Suillius[4]. The same structural outline of 1-8-15 appears in _Amores_ I and III--the opening and closing poems of both books are concerned with Ovid's verse, while the eighth poem of each book stands somewhat apart from the other poems: _Am_ I viii is about the procuress Dipsas, while III ix (the eighth poem in the book after the removal of the spurious fifth poem) is the elegy on the death of Tibullus. [Footnote 4: Professor E. Fantham notes as well the central placement of poem ix, with its _laudes Augusti_.] Ovid's addressees in _Ex Ponto_ IV Sextus Pompeius, _consul ordinarius_ in 14, and himself a relative of Augustus, is the recipient of no less than four letters in _EP_ IV[5]. It is significant that he is not the recipient of any of Ovid's earlier letters from exile; this is discussed in the next section. [Footnote 5: Full information on what is known of each of the addressees will be found in the introductions to the poems in the commentary.] In the attention Ovid gives Sextus Pompeius there can be seen, according to Syme (_HO_ 156), a deliberate attempt to gain the favour of Germanicus, who is mentioned in connection with Sextus Pompeius at v 25. It is interesting that in viii Ovid addresses Germanicus' quaestor Suillius (and in the course of the poem addresses Germanicus), and that the recipient of xiii is Carus, the tutor of Germanicus' sons. But it is only natural that Ovid, when at last permitted, should address so influential a man as his benefactor Sextus Pompeius; and it does not seem strange that he should address his fellow poet Carus, still less that he should send a letter to Suillius, husband of his stepdaughter Perilla. C. Pomponius Graecinus, the recipient of ix, must have had some political influence, since the poem is in celebration of his becoming suffect consul in 16. But he probably owed this influence to his brother Flaccus, a close friend of Tiberius who succeeded Graecinus as _consul ordinarius_ for 17, and whom Ovid gives prominent mention at ix 57 ff. Graecinus must have been an old associate of Ovid, since he has the rare distinction of being mentioned by name in a poem written by Ovid before his exile (_Am_ II x 1). Two of Ovid's correspondents were orators. Gallio, the addressee of the eleventh poem, is frequently quoted by the elder Seneca. He was a senator; both Tacitus and Dio give accounts of how he fell into disfavour with Tiberius for proposing that ex-members of the Praetorian guard be granted the privilege of using the theatre seats reserved for members of the equestrian order (_Ann_ VI 3; LVIII 18 4). Brutus, the recipient of the sixth poem and dedicatee of the first three books of the _Ex Ponto_, is not mentioned by other writers, but it appears from vi 29-38 that he had a considerable reputation as a forensic orator, although some allowance must be made for possible exaggeration in Ovid's description of his close friend. The poem contains six lines on the death of Fabius Maximus, to whom Ovid had addressed _EP_ I ii and III iii; perhaps he and Brutus had been associates. Five epistles are addressed to Ovid's fellow poets. Cornelius Severus, the recipient of the second poem, was one of the most famous epic poets of the day; he is mentioned by Quintilian (X i 89), and the elder Seneca preserves his lines on the death of Cicero (_Suas_ VI 26), Albinovanus Pedo, the recipient of the tenth epistle, was known as a writer of hexameter verse and of epigram. He served in Germanicus' campaign of AD 15 (Tac _Ann_ I 60 2), and the elder Seneca preserves a fragment of his poem on Germanicus' campaigns (_Suas_ I 15). It might be argued that in addressing him Ovid is once again trying to win Germanicus' favour. But in view of his intimacy with Ovid (mentioned at Sen _Cont_ II 2 12), Albinovanus seems a natural choice to receive one of Ovid's letters. Tuticanus, the recipient of the twelfth and fourteenth poems and author of a _Phaeacid_ based on Homer (mentioned at xii 27 and again in the catalogue of poets at xvi 29), is known only through the _Ex Ponto_; the same is true of Carus, author of a poem on Hercules and, as already mentioned, tutor of the sons of Germanicus. Vestalis, the recipient of the seventh poem, is in a class separate from the other recipients of Ovid's verse epistles. As _primipilaris_ of the legion stationed in the vicinity, he would of course have been without influence at Rome, but as (apparently) the prefect of the region around Tomis, he presumably had some control over Ovid's circumstances. The traitorous friend to whom the third poem is addressed was a real person, for Ovid is quite explicit when speaking of their past together and of the friend's perfidy towards him; the same cannot be said of the _inuidus_ to whom is addressed the concluding poem of the book, a defence of Ovid's reputation as a poet. Cotta Maximus, the younger son of Tibullus' patron Messalla, is prominently mentioned at xvi 41-44 as an unpublished poet of outstanding excellence. He is the recipient of six letters in the earlier books of the _Ex Ponto_. Syme finds it significant that there is no poem in _EP_ IV addressed to Cotta: 'Ovid ... was now concentrating his efforts elsewhere: Germanicus, the friends of Germanicus, Sextus Pompeius ... The tardy tribute may perhaps be interpreted as a veiled reproach' (_HO_ 128). But arguments from silence are dangerous; and Ovid's mention of Cotta seems flattering enough. It is perhaps safer to postulate a change in Ovid's feelings towards his wife. She is never mentioned in _EP_ IV, although she had been the recipient of some eight earlier letters from exile (_Tr_ I vi, III iii, IV iii, V ii, xi, xiv, _EP_ I iv, III i; _Tr_ V v was written in honour of her birthday). At _EP_ III vii 11-12 Ovid indicates that his wife's efforts on his behalf had not matched his hopes: nec grauis uxori dicar, quae scilicet in me quam proba tam timida est experiensque parum. The fact that Ovid chose not to address any verse epistle to his wife during his final years at Tomis may well reflect a cooling in his attitude towards her. Differences between _Ex Ponto_ IV and the earlier poetry from exile The criticism most often made of Ovid's poems from exile is that they are repetitive and therefore monotonous. _EP_ III ix 1-4 shows that the same criticism was made while Ovid was still alive: Quod sit in his eadem sententia, Brute, libellis, carmina nescio quem carpere nostra refers: nil nisi me terra fruar ut propiore rogare, et quam sim denso cinctus ab hoste loqui. Ovid does not attempt to deny the criticism, but explains that he wished to obtain the assistance of as many people as possible: et tamen haec eadem cum sint, non scripsimus isdem, unaque per plures uox mea temptat opem. (41-42) nec liber ut fieret, sed uti sua cuique daretur littera, propositum curaque nostra fuit. postmodo collectas utcumque sine ordine iunxi: hoc opus electum ne mihi forte putes. da ueniam scriptis, quorum non gloria nobis causa, sed utilitas officiumque fuit. (51-56) Ovid's explanation is reasonable enough, and is confirmed by the speed with which he composed the first three books of the _Ex Ponto_ once he knew that it was safe to name people in his verse. The first three books of the _Ex Ponto_, like the _Tristia_, were written with the single objective of securing Ovid's recall, and this naturally caused a certain repetition of subject-matter. By the time Ovid wrote the poems that would form the fourth book of the _Ex Ponto_, he had lived in Tomis for six or more years, and it must have been clear to him that his chances of recall were slight. The result of this is a diminished use of his personal situation as a theme for his verse. Often he introduces his plight in only one or two distichs of a poem, subordinating the topic to the poem's main theme. The result of this technique can be seen in such extended passages as the descriptions of the investiture of the new consul (iv & ix), the address to Germanicus on the power of poetry (viii), or the catalogue of poets that concludes the book. In all of these passages Ovid's desire for recall is only a secondary theme. The mixing of levels of diction As well as variety of subject, the fourth book of the _Ex Ponto_ shows a variation in style that is typical of Ovid's letters from exile. The poems use the metre and language of elegiac verse. But at the same time they are _letters_, and are strongly influenced by the structure and vocabulary of prose epistles. This influence is naturally more obvious at some points than at others; and even within a single poem there can be a surprising degree of variation in the different sections of the poem. Some poems tend more to one extreme than the other. The eleventh poem, a letter of commiseration to Gallio on the death of his wife, is extensively indebted to the genre of the prose letter of consolation; this prose influence is evident in such passages as: finitumque tuum, si non ratione, dolorem ipsa iam pridem suspicor esse mora (13-14) At the opposite extreme is the final poem of the book, a defence of Ovid's poetry; as this was a traditional poetic subject, the level of diction throughout the poem is extremely high, particularly in the catalogue of poets that forms the main body of the poem. An interesting result of the mixture of styles is the presence in the poems of exile of words and expressions which belong essentially to prose, being otherwise rarely or never found in verse. Some instances from _Ex Ponto_ IV are _ad summam_ (i 15), _conuictor_ (iii 15), _abunde_ (viii 37), _ex toto_ (viii 72), _di faciant_ (ix 3), _secreto_ (ix 31), _respectu_ (ix 100), _quominus_ (xii 1), _praefrigidus_ (xii 35), and _tantummodo_ (xvi 49). Both in subject and style the sixteen poems of _Ex Ponto_ IV show a wide variety, worthy of the creator of the _Metamorphoses_. The following section examines the special characteristics of each of the poems. The letters to Sextus Pompeius Sextus Pompeius is the recipient of poems i, iv, v, and xv; only Cotta Maximus and Ovid's wife have more letters from exile addressed to them. It is clear from the opening of IV i that Pompeius had himself prohibited Ovid from addressing him; and Ovid is careful to present himself as a client rather than a friend; the tone is of almost abject humility, and he shows circumspection in his requests for assistance. In the opening of the first poem, Ovid describes how difficult it had been to prevent himself from naming Pompeius in his verse; in the climactic ten lines he declares that he is entirely Pompeius' creation. Only in the transition between the topics does he refer to future help from Pompeius, linking it with the assistance he is already providing: nunc quoque nil subitis clementia territa fatis auxilium uitae fertque feretque meae. (25-26) The fourth poem is a description of how Fama came to Ovid and told him of Pompeius' election to the consulship; Ovid then pictures the joyous scene of the accession. At the end of the poem he indirectly asks for Pompeius' assistance, praying that at some point he may remember him in exile. The device of having Fama report Pompeius' accession to the consulship serves to emphasize the importance of the event and raise the tone of the poem. Ovid had earlier used Fama as the formal addressee of _EP_ II i, which described his reaction to the news of Germanicus' triumph. In the fifth poem Ovid achieves a similar effect through the device of addressing the poem itself, giving it directions on where it will find Pompeius and what consular duties he might be performing[6]. Only in the concluding distich does Ovid direct the poem to ask for his assistance. [Footnote 6: Ovid had used a similar technique in _Tr_ I i, where he gives his book instructions for its voyage to Rome, including directions on how it should approach Augustus.] The fifteenth poem contains Ovid's most forceful appeal for Pompeius' assistance. It is interesting to observe the techniques Ovid uses to avoid offending Pompeius. The first part of the poem is a metaphorical description of how Ovid is as much Pompeius' property as his many estates or his house in Rome. This leads to Ovid's request: atque utinam possis, et detur amicius aruum, remque tuam ponas in meliore loco! quod quoniam in dis est, tempta lenire precando numina perpetua quae pietate colis. (21-24) He then attempts to compensate for the boldness of his request. First he says that his appeal is unnecessary: nec dubitans oro; sed flumine saepe secundo augetur remis cursus euntis aquae. (27-38) Then he apologizes for making such constant requests: et pudet et metuo semperque eademque precari ne subeant animo taedia iusta tuo (29-30) He ends the poem with a return to the topic of the benefits Pompeius has already rendered him. The letter to Suillius addressing Germanicus No poem in the fourth book of the _Ex Ponto_ is addressed to a member of the imperial family, but the greater part of IV viii, nominally addressed to Suillius, is in fact directed to his patron Germanicus. Suillius' family ties with Ovid and his influential position would have made it natural for Ovid to address him in the earlier books of the _Ex Ponto_ or even in the _Tristia_; and it is clear from the opening of the poem that Suillius must have distanced himself from Ovid: Littera sera quidem, studiis exculte Suilli, huc tua peruenit, sed mihi grata tamen In the section that follows, Ovid asks for Suillius' assistance, rather strangely setting forth his own impeccable family background and moral purity; then he moves to the topic of Suillius' piety towards Germanicus, and in line 31 begins to address Germanicus with a direct request for his assistance. In the fifty-eight lines that follow he develops the argument that Germanicus should accept the verse Ovid offers him for two reasons: poetry grants immortality to the subjects it describes; and Germanicus is himself a poet. In this passage Ovid allows himself a very high level of diction; as the topic was congenial to him, the result is perhaps the finest extended passage of verse in the book[7]. [Footnote 7: Professor R. J. Tarrant points out to me in particular that lines 63-64 on the apotheosis of Augustus being in part accomplished through poetry are one of the few instances in the poetry of exile of Ovid's earlier mischievous irony towards Augustus--a sign of a return on Ovid's part to his earlier form.] Ovid ends his address to Germanicus by asking for his assistance; only in the final distich of the poem does he return to Suillius. The letters to Brutus and Graecinus Only two of the ten addressees named by Ovid in _EP_ IV were recipients of earlier letters from him. Brutus, to whom IV vi is addressed, was also the addressee of _EP_ I i and III ix, while Graecinus, to whom IV ix is addressed, was the recipient of _EP_ I vi and II vi. There is some difference between Ovid's treatment of Brutus and Graecinus in _EP_ IV and in the earlier poems. _EP_ IV vi is highly personal, being mostly devoted to a lengthy description of Brutus' apparently conflicting but in fact complementary qualities of tenacity as a prosecuting advocate and of kindness towards those in need; no poem in the fourth book of the _Ex Ponto_ is more completely concerned with the addressee as a person. In contrast, nothing is said of Brutus in _EP_ I i, where he acts as the mere recipient of the plea that he protect Ovid's poems, or in III ix, where Brutus is the reporter of another's remarks on the monotony of Ovid's subject-matter. The address to Graecinus in IV ix, on the other hand, is much less personal than in I vi and II vi. The part of _EP_ IV ix concerned with Graecinus describes his elevation to the consulship, and was clearly written (in some haste) to celebrate the event. The earlier poems are more concerned with Graecinus as an individual: in _EP_ I vi Ovid describes at length Graecinus' kindliness of spirit and his closeness to his exiled friend, while in II vi Ovid admits the justice of the criticism Graecinus makes of the conduct which led to his exile, but thanks him for his support and asks for its continuance. The letters to Tuticanus The two letters to Tuticanus show a similar dichotomy. Of the two poems, xii is more personal and more concerned with poetry. The first eighteen lines are a witty demonstration of the impossibility of using Tuticanus' name in elegiac verse, while the twelve verses that follow recall their poetic apprenticeship together. In the final twelve lines, referring to Tuticanus' senatorial career, Ovid asks him to help his cause in any way possible. Poem xiv is far less personal than the earlier epistle. The only mention of Tuticanus is at the poem's beginning: Haec tibi mittuntur quem sum modo carmine questus non aptum numeris nomen habere meis, in quibus, excepto quod adhuc utcumque ualemus, nil te praeterea quod iuuet inuenies. The bulk of the poem is a defense against charges raised by some of the Tomitans that he has defamed them in his verse. Ovid answers that he was complaining about the physical conditions at Tomis, not the people, to whom he owes a great debt. It is characteristic of the fourth book of the _Ex Ponto_ that Ovid complains less of his exile than in his earlier verse from exile; this poem furnishes the most explicit demonstration that the years spent in exile and the dwindling likelihood of recall has made Ovid reach an accommodation with his new conditions of life. The topic of the poem clearly has no relation to Tuticanus; Professor R. J. Tarrant points out to me Ovid's use of the same technique in some of the _Amores_, such as I ix (_Militat omnis amans_), and II x, to Graecinus on loving two women at once, where there is no apparent connection between the addressee and the subject of the poem. Professor E. Fantham notes that the bulk of xiv could even have been written before Ovid chose Tuticanus as its addressee. Other letters to poets Three other poems in the book are addressed to poets. In all of them poetry itself is a primary subject. The letter to Severus The second poem in the book, addressed to the epic poet Severus, opens with a contrast of the situations of the two poets. The main body of the poem is concerned with the difficulty of composing under the conditions Ovid endures at Tomis, and the comfort that he even so derives from pursuing his old calling. The poem is well constructed and the language vivid. A particularly fine example of the use Ovid makes of differing levels of diction is found at 35-38: excitat auditor studium, laudataque uirtus crescit, et immensum gloria calcar habet. hic mea cui recitem nisi flauis scripta Corallis, quasque alias gentes barbarus Hister obit? The emotional height of the tricolon, where Ovid describes poetic inspiration, gives way to a comparatively prosaic distich where he explains that the conditions necessary for inspiration do not exist at Tomis. At the poem's conclusion Ovid reverts to Severus, asking that he send Ovid some recent piece of work. The letter to Albinovanus Pedo In the tenth poem of the book, poetry is not the main subject; instead, Ovid describes the hardships he endures at Tomis, and then describes at length the reasons the Black Sea freezes over. Towards the end of the letter, however, he explains why he is writing a poem to Albinovanus on this seemingly irrelevant topic[8]. The language recalls the poem to Severus: 'detinui' dicam 'tempus, curasque fefelli; hunc fructum praesens attulit hora mihi. abfuimus solito dum scribimus ista dolore, in mediis nec nos sensimus esse Getis.' [Footnote 8: However, Albinovanus' poem on Germanicus' campaigns may have had a strong geographical element; as Professor E. Fantham notes, Ovid may here be appealing to this interest, or demonstrating competitive skill in handling the topic.] (67-70) In the poem's concluding lines he links his own situation with the _Theseid_ Albinovanus is engaged on: just as Theseus was faithful, so Albinovanus should be faithful to Ovid. The letter to Gallio This letter is remarkable for its economy of structure, and indeed is so short as to seem rather perfunctory. Only twenty-two lines in length, it is a letter of consolation addressed to Gallio on the death of his wife. In the first four lines Ovid apologizes for not having written to him earlier. Ovid's exile serves as a bridge to the main topic of the poem: atque utinam rapti iactura laesus amici sensisses ultra quod quererere nihil (5-6) The remainder of the poem consists of the ingenious interweaving of various commonplaces of consolation. The poem is a good illustration of the secondary importance Ovid often gives his own misfortune in the fourth book of the _Ex Ponto_. The letter to Carus The thirteenth poem, like the second letter to Tuticanus, shows Ovid's acceptance of his life in Tomis. In it he tells Carus of the favourable reception given a poem he had written in Getic on the apotheosis of Augustus. The poem's opening is of interest as showing Ovid's consciousness of verbal wit as a special characteristic of his verse. He starts the poem with a play on the meaning of Carus' name, then tells him that the opening will by itself tell him who his correspondent is. In the lines that follow he discusses the individuality of his own style and that of Carus; this serves to introduce the subject of his Getic verse. The letter to Vestalis The subordination of the topic of Ovid's exile to another subject can be clearly seen in the seventh poem of the book, addressed to Vestalis, _primipilaris_ of a legion stationed in the area of Tomis. As in the letter to Gallio, mention of Ovid's personal misfortune is confined to one short passage near the start of the poem: aspicis en praesens quali iaceamus in aruo, nec me testis eris falsa solere queri (3-4) The descriptions that follow of wine freezing solid in the cold and of the Sarmatian herdsman driving his wagon across the frozen Danube are so picturesque that the reader's attention is drawn away from Ovid's personal situation. Ovid describes the poisoned arrows used in the region; then, in language recalling his letter to Gallio, expresses his regret that Vestalis has had personal experience of these weapons: atque utinam pars haec tantum spectata fuisset, non etiam proprio cognita Marte tibi! (13-14) The remainder of the poem is a description of Vestalis' capture of Aegissos. The description is conventional and unfelt; Ovid seems merely to have assembled a few standard topics of military panegyric. The third poem Poem iii, addressed to an unidentified friend who had proved faithless, is a well-crafted but not particularly original warning that Fortune is a changeable goddess, and his friend might well find find himself one day in Ovid's position. The familiar examples of Croesus, Pompey, and Marius are used; as the last and therefore most important example Ovid uses his own catastrophe. The device recalls the _Ibis_, where Ovid's final curse is to wish his enemy's exile to Tomis. Poem xvi The concluding poem of the book is a defence of Ovid's poetry. The poem's argument is that poets generally become famous only after their death, but that Ovid gained his reputation while still alive. The greater part of the poem is a catalogue of Ovid's contemporary poets, the argument being that even in such company he was illustrious. As elsewhere he equates his exile with death; the defence of his poetry therefore includes only the poetry that he wrote before his exile. TEXTUAL INTRODUCTION The Manuscripts The manuscript authority for the text of the fourth book of the _Ex Ponto_ is significantly poorer than for the earlier books because of the absence of _A_, _Hamburgensis scrin. 52 F_. This ninth-century manuscript has been recognized since the time of Heinsius as the most important witness for the text of the _Ex Ponto_; it breaks off, however, at III ii 67. The manuscript authorities for the fourth book can be placed in three categories. The fragmentary _G_ is from a different tradition than the other manuscripts. _B_ and _C_ are closely related, and offer the best witness to the main tradition. The other manuscripts I have collated are more greatly affected by contamination and interpolation; of them _M_ and _F_ show some independence, while no subclassification can be made of _H_, _I_, _L_, or _T_. _G_ The _fragmentum Guelferbytanum_, _Cod. Guelf. 13.11 Aug. 4°_, generally dated to the fifth or sixth century, is the oldest manuscript witness to any of Ovid's poems. Part of the collection of the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel, it was discovered by Carl Schoenemann, who published his discovery in 1829; details of his monograph will be found in the bibliography. The two pieces of parchment are a palimpsest, having been reused in the eighth century for a text of Augustine; later they were incorporated into a bookbinding. As a result of this treatment they are in extremely poor condition. _G_ contains all or part of ix 101-8, ix 127-33, xii 15-19, and xii 41-44. To make it perfectly clear when _G_ is a witness to the text, I have not grouped it with other manuscripts, but have always specified it by name. If _G_ is not mentioned in an apparatus entry, it is not extant for the text concerned. _G_ is written in uncial script, with no division between words but with indentation of the pentameters. Its one contribution to the establishment of the text is at ix 103, where it reads _quamquam ... sit_ instead of the more usual _quamquam ... est_ found in the other manuscripts. In general, the text offered by _G_ is surprisingly poor. At ix 108 it reads _fato_ for _facto_, at ix 130 it has the false and unmetrical spelling _praeces_, at ix 132 it has _misscelite_ for _misi caelite_, at xii 17 it reads _lati_ for _dilati_, and at xii 19 _naia_ for _nota_. These errors demonstrate that the rest of the tradition does not descend from _G_. Korn gives an accurate transcription of the fragment in the introduction to his edition; photographs of parts of the fragment can be found at Chatelain, _Paléographie des classiques latins_, tab. xcix, 2 and E. A. Lowe, _Codices Latini Antiquiores_, vol. IX, p. 40, no. 1377. _B_ and _C_ _Monacensis latinus 384_ and _Mon. lat. 19476_, both dated by editors to the twelfth century, are descended from a common ancestor. This is easily demonstrated by the large number of shared errors not found in other manuscripts[9]. At iv 36 _B_ and _C_ have _intendunt_ for the correct _intendent_, at viii 6 _uolo_ for _uoco_, at viii 18 _perueniemus_ for _inueniemur_ (_-ntur_,_-mus_), at viii 44 _illa_ for _ulla_, at viii 89 _cara_ for _care_, at ix 44 _fingit_ for _finget_, at ix 71 _quod_ for _cum_ (_FILT_) and _ut_ (_HM_), at ix 92 _praestat_ for _perstat_, at ix 97 _et_ for _ut_, at xiii 5 _certe est_ for _certe_, and at xiv 30 _culpatus_ for _culpatis_. In some of these passages _B_'s still visible original reading has been corrected by a later hand. In other passages it is clear from the signs of correction that _B_ originally agreed with _C_ in distinctive readings now preserved in C alone: _subito_ for _sed et_ (iii 27), _erat_ for _eras_ (vi 9), _occidit_ for _occidis_ (vi 11), _suspicit_ for _suscipit_ (ix 90), _parent_ for _darent_ (xvi 31). [Footnote 9: The manuscripts were probably produced at the same German centre. Professor R. J. Tarrant has noted the presence of the _Ex Ponto_ in book-lists of the eleventh and early twelfth centuries from Blaubeuern, Tegernsee, Bamberg, Egmond, and Cracow (_Texts and Transmission_ 263); he suggests Tegernsee to me as a probable candidate for the production of _B_ and _C_.] _B_ and _C_ on the whole offer a better text than any other manuscript. At iii 44 _B1_ and _C_ omit the lost pentameter, where the other manuscripts offer interpolations. At iv 11 they alone give the probably correct _solus_ for _tristis_, at xii 3 _aut_ for _ast_, and at xvi 31 _tyrannis_ (conjectured by Heinsius) for _tyranni_. At v 40 _C_ and _B2_ alone have the correct _mancipii ... tui_ for _mancipium ... tuum_. Both manuscripts naturally have readings peculiar to themselves. _B_ has about fifty unique readings. It places iii 11-12 after 13-14, omits v 37-40, and interchanges viii 49-50 and 51-52. At iv 34 _B_ alone has _erunt_ (for _erit_), conjectured by Heinsius; _C_ omits the word. Similarly, at xi 21 _B_ and _F1_ have _mihi_, omitted by _C_; the other manuscripts have _tibi_. _B_ has _ab_ at i 9 for the other manuscripts' _in_; _ab_ is possibly the true reading. Under the influence of Ehwald, modern editors have wrongly taken some of _B_'s other readings to be correct, placing _aspicerem_ in the text for _prospicerem_ at ix 23, _ara_ for _ora_ at ix 115, and _illi_ for _illum_ at ix 126. At ix 73 editors print _B_ and _T_'s _quem_, which is clearly an interpolation for the awkward transmitted reading _qua_. Unlike _C_, _B_ has been quite heavily corrected by later hands. _C_ has more than one hundred readings peculiar to itself. Two of them I have accepted as correct: _summo_ (for _summum_; _H_ has _mundum_) at iii 32, and _horas_ (that is, _oras_) at vii 1; the reading is also given by _I_. It is possible that _C_'s _correptior_ should be read at xii 13 for _correptius_. At xiv 38 _C_'s _sceptius_ is the manuscript reading closest to the correct _Scepsius_ restored by Scaliger. Most of _C_'s errors are trivial, but at some points it departs widely from the usual text. It omits ix 47 and xiv 37, and interchanges the second hemistichs of iii 26 and 28; xvi 30 is inserted by a later hand, perhaps in an erasure. At viii 43 it has _in uita_ for _officio_, at xiii 12 _contra uiam_ for _nouimus_, at xiv 36 _in_ for _loci_, and at xv 31 _colloquio_ for _uerum quid_. _C_ also contains a greater number of purely palaeographical errors than any other manuscript: _hunc_ for _nunc_ (i 25), _humeris_ for _numeris_ (ii 30), _hec_ for _nec_ (ix 30), _lucos_ for _sucos_ (x 19), _hasto_ for _horto_ (xv 7), _ueiiuolique_ for _ueliuolique_ (xvi 21), _pretia_ for _pr(o)elia_ (xvi 23). _B_ and _C_ sporadically offer the third declension accusative plural ending _-is_ (ix 4 _fascis_ _C_, ix 7 _partis_ _C_, ix 73 _rudentis_ _B_, x 17 _cantantis_ _B_, xii 30 _albentis_ _B_). But more usually all manuscripts, including _B_ and _C_, have the accusative in _-es_: compare for example ii 27 _partes_, iii 53 _purgantes_, ix 35 _praesentes_, and ix 42 _fasces_. The manuscripts show a similar variation in the earlier books of the _Ex Ponto_. The ninth-century Hamburg manuscript (_A_) sometimes offers accusatives in _-is_ where the other manuscripts, even _B_ and _C_, have _-es_ (I iv 23 _partis_, I v 11 _talis_, I vi 39 _ligantis_, I vi 51 _turris_). At I ii 4, _A_ has _omnes_, where _C1_ has _omnis_, and in general even in _A_ the accusative in _-es_ is the predominant form. For example, _A_ offers _auris_ at II iv 13 and II ix 25, but _aures_ at I ii 127, I ix 5, II v 33, and II ix 3. In view of the instability of the manuscript evidence[10], I have normalized the ending to _-es_ in all cases, considering the instances of _-is_ to be scribal interpolations. [Footnote 10: G. P. Goold ("Amatoria Critica", _HSPh_ 69 [1965] 10) has an interesting discussion of the problems in establishing Ovid's orthography. For accusative plural endings in the third declension, he concludes that _-is_ for Ovid can be neither established nor excluded.] Similarly, I have used the form _penna_ at iv 12 and vii 37, where _C_ offers _pinna_. _Penna_ is the form given in the ancient manuscripts of Virgil, and attested by Quintilian. _MFHILT_ The other manuscripts I have collated belong to the vulgate class. They are not related to each other in the sense that _B_ and _C_ are related, nor does any of them possess independent authority as does _G_. Within the group firm lines of affiliation are hard to establish, and each of the manuscripts attests a handful of good readings that are found in few or none of the others, either by happy conjecture, or because a reading that was in circulation at the time as a variant chanced to get copied into a few surviving manuscripts. Professor R. J. Tarrant has noted that the presence of the _Ex Ponto_ in north-central France 'can be traced from the eleventh century onwards, first from echoes in Hildebert of Lavardin and Baudri de Bourgeuil, later from the extracts in the _Florilegium Gallicum_, and finally from the complete texts [which include our _H_ and _F_] ... that emanate from this region toward the end of the twelfth century' (_Texts and Transmission_ 263); the vulgate manuscripts seem to have been propagated from the text current in the region of Orléans. _M_ and _F_ show some originality. Their readings at xvi 33 differ somewhat from the version of that passage in _HILT_. _F1_'s interpolation for the missing pentameter at iii 44 differs from that of _MHILT_, while _M_ has an interpolated distich following x 6 that is not otherwise attested. Of the other manuscripts, _I_ agrees with _C_ in reading _horas_ (=_oras_) for _undas_ at vii 1, while _T_ is the only manuscript collated to have the correct _laeuus_ at ix 119 in the original hand (_F2_ gives it as a variant reading). Similarly, _H_ and _L_ each have a few peculiar variants. As a group _MFHILT_ offer a good picture of the readings current in the later mediaeval period, and only rarely have I been obliged to cite a vulgate manuscript from the editions of Heinsius, Burman, or Lenz as testimony for a variant. _M_ Heinsius did not have knowledge of _B_ or _C_, and seems to have considered his _codex Moreti_ (preserved at the Museum Plantin-Moretus in Antwerp as 'Latin, n° 68 [anc. 43] [salle des reliures, n° 32]' in Denucé's catalogue of the museum's collection) to be the best of the poor selection of manuscripts available; at xvi 33, understandably despairing of restoring the true reading, he accepted _M_'s reading pending the discovery of better manuscripts. _M_ was dated by Heinsius to the twelfth or thirteenth century; Denucé assigns it to the twelfth century. At viii 85 _M_ alone has the correct _ullo_ for the other manuscripts' _illo_; this could naturally have been recovered by conjecture. At x 1 it has _cumerio_, the closest reading in the manuscripts collated to the correct _Cimmerio_; but Professor R. J. Tarrant informs me that _Cimmerio_ is also found in _British Library Harley 2607_. _M_ has suffered from a certain degree of interpolation. Following x 6 there is the spurious distich _set cum nostra malis uexentur corpora multis / aspera non possum perpetiendo mori_. At ii 9 _Falerno_ is a deliberate alteration of _Falerna_. At x 49 _Niphates_ is an interpolation from Lucan III 245. At xiii 47 _duorum_ (also given as a variant reading by _F2_) looks like an attempt to correct the cryptic transmitted reading _deorum_, and at xv 15 _tellus regnata_ is presumably a metrical correction following the loss of _-que_ from _regnataque terra_, the reading of the other manuscripts. At xvi 25 _eticiusque_ looks to be a deliberate alteration of _Trinacriusque_, but I am not sure what the interpolation means. _F_ _Francofurtanus Barth 110_, used by Burman, shows some signs of independence. At iii 44, where a pentameter has been lost, _B_ and _C_ omit the line, while the other manuscripts, including _M_, have the interpolation _indigus effectus omnibus ipse magis_; _F_ has the separate interpolation _Achillas Pharius abstulit ense caput_, also found in Heinsius' _fragmentum Louaniense_. _F_ omits viii 51-54, at xi 1 reads _Pollio_ for _Gallio_, and at xvi 33 has a reading somewhat different from those offered by the other manuscripts. _F_ alone of the manuscripts collated offers the correct _audisse_ (for _audire_) at x 17. At xi 21 it and _B_ alone have the correct _mihi_ for _tibi_ (omitted by _C_). At xiv 7 it has the probably correct _muter_ for _mittar_, also found in _Bodleianus Canon. lat. 1_ and _Barberinus lat. 26_, both of the thirteenth century. With the exception of _muter_, these readings could have been recovered by conjecture; given the separative interpolation at iii 44, _F_ differs surprisingly little from the other manuscripts. _H_ The thirteenth-century _Holkhamicus 322_, now _British Library add. 49368_, contains (with _I_) the correct _hanc_ at i 16, the other manuscripts having _ha_, _ah_ (_B_), or _a_ (_C_). At xvi 30, where I have printed _leuis_, the reading of most manuscripts, _H_ has _leui_, the conjecture of Heinsius; Professor R. J. Tarrant informs me that the same reading is found in _Othob. lat. 1469_. At iv 45 _H_'s _qua libet_ is the manuscript reading closest to Heinsius' correct _quamlibet_; most manuscripts have _quod licet_. Most other variants in _H_ are trivial errors, although there seems to have been deliberate scribal alteration at x 18 (_sucus amarus erat_ for _lotos amara fuit_), xiv 38 (_Celsius_ for the usual _Septius_; Scaliger restored _Scepsius_), xvi 3 (_ueniet_ for _uenit et_; presumably the intermediate step was _uenit_), and perhaps at xiv 31 (_miserabilis_ for _uitabilis_). _I_ The thirteenth-century _Laurentianus 36 32_, Lenz's and André's _m_, has the correct _perstas_ at x 83 for _praestas_; its reading is also found in _P_ and as a variant of _F2_. At vii 1 it shares with _C_ the reading _horas_ (=_oras_), which I have printed in preference to the usual _undas_. At viii 15 _I_ has the hypercorrect _nil_ for _nihil_, and at xiii 26 _ethereos ... deos_ for _aetherias ... domos_, but in general has few signs of deliberate alteration. _L_ _Lipsiensis bibl. ciu. Rep. I 2° 7_, of the thirteenth century, has _haec_ at ix 103 for the other manuscripts' _et_. _Haec_ restores sense to the passage, and was the preferred reading of Heinsius; I consider it a scribal conjecture, now rendered obsolete by Professor R. J. Tarrant's more elegant _quae_. _L_'s text has clearly been tampered with at xiv 41 (_populum ... uertit in iram_ for _populi ... concitat iram_), but in general seems to have suffered little from interpolation. It is, however, of little independent value as a witness to the text. _T_ _Turonensis 879_, written around the year 1200, was first fully collated by André for his edition; Lenz had earlier reported its readings for IV xvi and part of I i. At ix 119 only _T_ and _F2_ of the manuscripts collated have the correct _laeuus_, although other manuscripts come close, and the reading could have been recovered by conjecture. At xv 40 _T_ reads _transierit saeuos_ for _transit nostra feros_; clearly _nostra_ was at some point lost from the text, and metre forcibly restored. _P_ I have also collated the thirteenth-century _Parisinus lat. 7993_, Heinsius' _codex Regius_. At ix 46 _P_ offers the correct _cernet_ for _credet_; _cernet_ is also the reading of _M_ after correction by a later hand and of the thirteenth-century _Gothanus membr. II 121_. At vi 7 _P_ alone of collated manuscripts agrees with _C_ in reading _praestat_ for the correct _perstat_. _P_ agrees with _L_ in reading _niuibus_ for the other manuscripts' _nubibus_ at v 5, _adeptum_ for _ademptum_ at vi 49, _signare_ for _signate_ at xv 11, and in the orthography _puplicus_ for _publicus_ at ix 48, ix 102, xiii 5, and xiv 16. The manuscript has many corruptions: a few examples are i 30 _igne_ for _imbre_, ii 18 _supremo_ for _suppresso_, iv 6 _pace_ for _parte_, vi 34 _uirtus_ for _uirus_, vii 15 _piacula_ for _pericula_, ix 42 _praeterea_ for _praetextam_, x 63 _in harena_ for _marina_, xiv 39 _conuiuia_ for _conuicia_, and xvi 24 _sacri_ for _scripti_. However, _P_ has no unique variants with any probability of correctness. To have given a full report of _P_ would have involved a considerable expansion of an already long apparatus, and I have cited the manuscript only occasionally, where a reading is only weakly attested by the other manuscripts. Titles _MF_ and _B2H2I2T2_ usually supply titles for the poems. As will be seen from the apparatus, there is considerable variation among the titles, and there is no reason to suppose that they form an authentic part of the transmitted text. The manuscript authority for the text of _Ex Ponto_ IV By and large the manuscripts of the fourth book of the _Ex Ponto_ offer a remarkably uniform text of the poems, and one which, considering the late date of the manuscripts, is in surprisingly good condition. I believe that all the manuscripts, with the exception of _G_, are descended from a single archetype. _B_ and _C_ are the best witnesses to the text of the archetype, although the other, more heavily contaminated and interpolated manuscripts are indispensable, since they correct the peculiar errors of _B_ and _C_. The present edition The apparatus of this edition is intended to be a full report of _BCMFHILT_ and of the fragmentary _G_; some reports are also given of _P_. It includes corrections by original and by later hands. When no manuscripts are specified for the lemma in an entry, the lemma is the reading for those manuscripts not otherwise specified. For instance, the entry deductum carmen] carmen deductum _M_ indicates that _deductum carmen_ is the reading of _BCFHILT_, while _carmen deductum_ is the reading of _M_. I have from time to time cited from earlier editions readings of manuscripts which I have not collated. To make it clear that I have not personally verified these readings, I have added in parentheses after the citation the name of the editor whose report I am using. Professor R. J. Tarrant has inspected some nine manuscripts to see what readings they offered in some particularly vexed portions of the poems; I have similarly indicated when I am obliged to him for information on a manuscript. The _excerpta Scaligeri_ mentioned at xiii 27 I know of through Heinsius' notes as printed in Burman's edition; according to M. D. Reeve (_RhM_ CXVII [1974] 163), the original excerpts are still extant in Diez 8° 2560, a copy of the _editio Gryphiana_ of 1546. Reeve also gives identifications of certain of Heinsius' manuscripts; when citing Heinsius' codices, I give the modern name when the manuscript has been identified and is still extant. The greater number of the manuscripts dealt with have been corrected, some heavily. In my apparatus _B1_ means "the original hand in _B_" and _B2_ means "a correcting hand in B". _B2ul_ indicates that the reading of _B2_ is clearly marked as a variant reading. _B2gl_ indicates that the entry is marked in the manuscript as a gloss; _B2(gl)_ indicates a gloss not marked as such. I have reported glosses where they contribute to the understanding of a textual problem. If different correctors have been at work in different passages, both are called _B2_. If a later hand has made a correction after _B2_, the later hand is called _B3_. When I place _B1_ in an entry but do not report _B2_, it can be assumed that _B2_ has the lemma as its reading. Sometimes a corrector has altered the original text so much (without however erasing it entirely) that only the altered reading can be made out. In such cases I have used the siglum _B2c_. Where a corrector has inserted or altered only certain letters of a word, I have indicated this in the HTML version of this edition by underlining the letters involved. In the Text version, these letters are capitalized. Where the correction is apparently by the original scribe, _Bac_ indicates the original reading, and _Bpc_ the correction. The asterisk is used to indicate illegible letters, and the solidus (/) erasures. When reporting variants, I have tried to indicate the spellings actually found in the manuscripts, but since mediaeval spellings do not in themselves constitute variant readings, they have not usually been reported when the text is not otherwise disturbed. I have been more generous with proper names, but have often excluded confusions of _ae_, _oe_, and _e_, of _i_ and _y_, of _ph_ and _f_, of _c_ and _t_, the doubling of consonants, and the loss or addition of the aspirate. The apparatus is intended to include a comprehensive listing of all conjectures proposed. When the author of a conjecture is not a previous editor of the poems, I have given a reference either to the publication where the emendation was first proposed, or to the earliest edition I have consulted which reports the emendation. Conjectures of Bentley are from Hedicke's _Studia Bentleiana_. Conjectures of Professor R. J. Tarrant, Professor J. N. Grant, and Professor C. P. Jones were communicated to me by their authors. Printed editions The first editions of the works of Ovid were printed in 1471 by Balthesar Azoguidus at Bologna and by Conradus Sweynheym and Arnoldus Pannartz at Rome. The Bologna edition was edited by Franc. Puteolanus, and the Rome edition by J. Andreas de Buxis. Lenz's edition gives numerous readings from both editions; to judge from his reports, their texts of the _Ex Ponto_ were derived from late manuscripts of no great value. The Roman edition, however, contained the elegant correction of _iactate_ to _laxate_ at ix 73. For my knowledge of other early editions of the _Ex Ponto_ I have relied upon Burman's large variorum edition of the complete works of Ovid, published at Amsterdam in 1727. The edition contains notes of various editors of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, among them Merula, Naugerius, Ciofanus, Fabricius, and Micyllus. Although I have occasionally quoted from these notes, they are in general of surprisingly little use, containing for the most part unlikely variant readings from unnamed manuscripts and explanations of passages not really in need of elucidation. The principal event in the history of the editing of the _Ex Ponto_ was the appearance at Amsterdam in 1652 of Nicolaus Heinsius' edition of Ovid. Heinsius took full advantage of the opportunity his travels as a diplomat gave him of searching out manuscripts, thereby gaining a direct knowledge of the manuscripts of the poems which has never since been equalled[11]. Heinsius also possessed an unrivalled felicity in conjectural emendation. Some of his conjectures are unnecessary alterations of a text that was in fact sound, some of his necessary conjectures are trivial, and are already found in late manuscripts of the poems or could have been made by critics of less outstanding capacities; but many are alterations which are subtle and yet necessary to restore sense or Latinity. The present edition returns to the text many conjectures and preferred readings of Heinsius that were ejected by editors of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. [Footnote 11: In recent years much progress has been made in identifying the manuscripts Heinsius used. See the monograph of Munari and the articles of Reeve and Lenz listed in the bibliography.] The edition of Heinsius formed the basis of all editions published during the two centuries that followed. Of these editions the most important was the 1727 variorum edition of Burman already referred to. It is from the copy of that edition at the University of Toronto Library that I have obtained my knowledge of Heinsius' notes. Burman was apparently the first editor to make use of _F_. On occasion he differs from Heinsius in his choice of readings. At xvi 44 he made the convincing conjecture _Maxime_ (codd _maxima_), subsequently confirmed by _B_ and _C_. His notes are informative; and my note on x 37-38 in particular is greatly indebted to him. For poem x Burman reproduced some notes from an anthology of Latin verse for use at Eton, produced by an anonymous editor in 1705[12]. [Footnote 12: _Electa minora ex Ovidio, Tibullo et Propertio_, London, 1705. The book was reprinted as late as 1860 (_Brit. Mus. Gen. Catalogue_, vol. 177, col. 470). I quote some of the notes on x in the commentary and apparatus.] In 1772 Theophilus Harles published at Erlangen his edition of the _Tristia_ and _Ex Ponto_ 'ex recensione Petri Burmanni'. Harles was the first editor to make use of _B_. In the introduction to his edition Harles relates how he wrote von Oeffele, librarian to the Elector of Bavaria, asking if there was any manuscript in the Elector's library that might be helpful in preparing his edition, and thereby learned of the existence of _B_. It is clear from Harles' introduction that he fully appreciated the manuscript's importance; and in his notes he gives many of its readings, pointing out where it confirmed suggestions of Heinsius and Burman. However, his text is simply reprinted from Burman's variorum edition. W. E. Weber's text of _Ex Ponto_ IV in his 1833 _Corpus Poetarum Latinorum_ is in effect a reprint of the Heinsius-Burman vulgate, except that at viii 59 he prints the manuscripts' incorrect accusative form _Gigantes_ (Heinsius _Gigantas_). But this fidelity to the vulgate text seems not to have been the editor's intention: in his introduction he speaks of 'Heinsianae emendationes felices saepe, superuacuae saepius ... quarum emendationum partem Mitscherlichius eiecit [Göttingen, 1796; I have not seen the edition], maiorem eiicere Iahnius coepit [Leipzig, 1828: the part of the edition containing the _Ex Ponto_ was never published]. dicendum tamen, etiamnunc passim haud paucas fortasse latere Heinsii et aliorum correctiones minus necessarias in uerbis Ouidianis, quas accuratior codicum inter se comparatio, opus sane immensi laboris, extrudet'. It would be understandable enough if Weber, faced with the labour of editing the entire corpus of Latin poetry, found himself unable to effect a radical revision of the text of the _Ex Ponto_. In 1853 there appeared at Leipzig the third volume of Rudolf Merkel's first Teubner edition of the works of Ovid, containing his text of the _Ex Ponto_. The part of Merkel's introduction dealing with the _Ex Ponto_ is entirely concerned with describing the appearance, orthography, and readings of the ninth-century _Hamburgensis scrin. 52 F_. The manuscript ends, however, at III ii 67, and Merkel says nothing of the basis for his text of the later poems, which in general is the Heinsius-Burman vulgate. In 1868 B. G. Teubner published at Leipzig Otto Korn's separate edition of the _Ex Ponto_. Korn's apparatus is the first to have a modern appearance; but this appearance is deceptive, for of the twenty sigla Korn uses, ten are for individual or several manuscripts collated by Heinsius, and only five are for manuscripts collated by Korn himself. The edition is important, since Korn was the first editor to make substantial use of _B_ in constituting his text. Usually he printed the text of _B_ in preference to the vulgate: 'Ceterum eas partes in quibus _A_ caremus, [Greek: b] [=_B_] libri uestigia secutus restitui, prorsus neglectis recentiorum exemplarium elegantiis, quorum ad normam N. Heinsius, cuius in tertio quartoque libro R. Merkelius assecla est, textum conformauit' (xv). There was some reason to review critically the vulgate established by Heinsius and Burman. Even Heinsius was capable of error; examples of this in _Ex Ponto_ IV include his preference for the inelegant _idem_ for _ille_ at iii 17, for the impossible _ullo_ instead of the better attested _nullo_ at v 15, and for the obvious interpolation _domitam ... ab Hercule_ at xvi 19 instead of _domito ... ab Hectore_. His most pervasive fault is a partiality for elegant but unnecessary emendation: often he is guilty of rewriting passages which are in themselves perfectly sound. A typical instance is vii 30: Heinsius' _globos_ is elegant enough, but there is no reason to suspect the transmitted _uiros_. Some of the readings proposed or preferred by Heinsius had been unnecessary or wrong, but many had been necessary to make sense of the text; and Korn is often guilty of damaging the text by excluding readings not found in _B_. The supreme example of this is his restoration of the manuscripts' reading _iactate_ for _laxate_ at ix 73. Korn used the collation of _B_ by Harles, which had errors and omissions (in his preface Harles had warned that his report might contain errors[13]), so that at i 9 Korn prints _in istis_ and at x 83 _perstas_, without noting in his apparatus that _B_'s false readings were _ab istis_ and _praestas_ respectively. He was aware that at xi 21 _B_ read _mihi_, but printed _tibi_ nonetheless, although Burman had already explained why _mihi_ was the correct reading. [Footnote 13: 'Diligenter autem et religiose tractaui codicem et singulas epistolas bis, et in locis uexatis saepius contuli. Neque tamen, quae hominum est imbecillitas, aciem oculorum quaedam effugisse, negabo' (xi-xii).] A curious feature of Korn's edition is its dual apparatus: below the report of manuscript variants is a listing of passages where his text differs from those of Heinsius and Merkel: 'Lectiones discrepantes editionum Heinsii et Merkelii adposui, ut et quantopere Ouidius Heinsianus a genuina forma discrepet dilucide perspiciatur, et quibus locis a Merkelio discesserim facilius adpareat' (xxxii). Korn ejects such obviously correct readings as _leuastis_ at vi 44 and _laxate_ at ix 73; in each instance the true reading is printed in large type at the bottom of the page. In addition, Korn rather unfairly included as different readings what were in fact only spellings which did not conform to the purified orthography then coming into use. _Cymba_ does not differ from _cumba_ (viii 28), nor is _Danubium_ a variant for _Danuuium_ (ix 80), nor again is _Vlysses_ different from _Vlixes_ (x 9). Finally, the second apparatus at several points misrepresents what Heinsius actually thought. Korn's confusion on this point is understandable, since determining Heinsius' textual preferences is often more difficult than it might at first appear. Editions were published under his name which did not incorporate all his preferred readings[14]; even the lemmas to his notes are taken from the edition of Daniel Heinsius, and are not a guide to Heinsius' own view of the text, which can only be discovered by reading the actual notes[15]. A good example of this can be found at x 47. Here Heinsius' text reproduces the standard reading _Cratesque_. The lemma in his note is _Oratesque_, the reading of Daniel Heinsius' edition. In the note itself Heinsius indicates his preference for the conjecture _Calesque_, communicated to him by his friend Isaac Vossius. Here Korn, along with all modern editors, prints _Calesque_ in his text; he reports _Cratesque_ as Heinsius' reading. [Footnote 14: A. Grafton has noted that Heinsius' publisher Elzevier seems to have been unwilling to alter the text as it already existed (_JRS_ LXVII [1977], 173). I owe my knowledge of Heinsius' editorial practices as here described to Professor R. J. Tarrant, who has examined the Harvard copies of the 1664 edition of Heinsius' text (without notes), the 1670 Leiden edition of Bernard Cnippingius, which reproduces Heinsius' notes, and the 1663 reprint of Daniel Heinsius' edition.] [Footnote 15: Consequently any statements I make on Heinsius' editorial practices are based on explicit statements in his notes.] Korn made one important conjecture in _Ex Ponto_ IV, printing _decretis_ at ix 44 for the manuscripts' _secretis_. For the third volume of his complete edition of Ovid, published at Leipzig in 1874, Alexander Riese drew on Korn's edition, but was less radical in following the readings of _B_: 'nec eclecticam quam dicunt N. Heinsii nec libri optimi rigide tenacem O. Kornii rationem ingressus mediam uiam tenere studui' (vii). Riese restores Heinsius' preferred reading in only about a quarter of the places where it was deserted by Korn; even so, no editor since has shown such independence in the selection of readings. In 1881 there appeared at London a text of _Ex Ponto_ IV with accompanying commentary by W. H. Williams. The text, which Williams says is drawn from the "Oxford variorum edition of 1825", seems in general to be a reprint of the Heinsius-Burman vulgate with some readings drawn from Merkel's first edition. In spite of occasional conjectures and notes on variant readings, based on information drawn from Burman and Merkel, Williams is not generally concerned with the constitution of the text: his note on x 68 _curasque fefelli_ is 'so Tennyson in the "In Memoriam'". The commentary, which is about eighty pages long, consists largely of discussions of the cognates of various Latin words in other Indo-European languages, 'though the limits of the work preclude more than the _data_ from which a competent teacher can deduce the principles of comparative philology'. A typical note is that on i 11 _scribere_: 'from [root] skrabh = to dig, whence scrob-s and scrofa = 'the grubber,' _i.e._ the pig; Grk. [Greek: graphô] by loss of sibilant and softening'. The edition has been only occasionally useful in editing the poems or writing the commentary. In 1884 Merkel published his second edition of the poems of exile. In his previous edition he had in general followed Heinsius and Burman in the fourth book; in the new edition, without specifically saying so (although in his introduction he mentions the "codex Monacensis uetustior"), he generally alters his text so as to conform with _B_'s readings. He does not always desert his former text, rightly retaining _hanc_ at i 16, _quamlibet_ at iv 45, and _tempus curasque_ at x 67; he also keeps _lux_ at vi 9 and _domitam ... ab Hercule_ at xvi 19. In his 1874 monograph _De codicibus duobus carminum Ouidianarum ex Ponto datorum Monacensibus_ Korn had made known the existence of _C_. S. G. Owen's first edition of the _Ex Ponto_, printed in Postgate's _Corpus Poetarum Latinorum_ in 1894, was the first edition to report this manuscript as well as _B_. His text is unduly partial to the readings of _B_ and _C_, and his well-organized apparatus is so abbreviated as to be deceptive. It cannot be relied upon even for reports of _B_ and _C_. At ix 73 it gives no hint that for four centuries editors had read _laxate_; many of Heinsius' preferred readings are similarly consigned to oblivion. At vi 5-6 he reports Housman's ingenious repunctuation, presumably communicated to him by its author. In 1896 Rudolf Ehwald published his monograph _Kritische Beiträge zu Ovids Epistulae ex Ponto_. I am often indebted to Ehwald for references he has collected; my notes on i 15 _ad summam_ and xiii 48 _quos laus formandos est tibi magna datos_ could not have been written without the assistance of his monograph. This said, the fact remains that Ehwald's judgment and linguistic intuition were exceptionally poor. He had not relied on Korn's apparatus for his knowledge of _B_, but had collated it himself; and the intent of his monograph was to establish _B_'s authority as paramount. A typical example can be seen at ix 71. Here _FILT_ offer _cum ... uacabit_ and _MH_ have _ut ... uacabit_, while the reading of _B_ and _C_ is _quod uacabit_. In one of the examples Ehwald adduces, _Fast_ II 18, _uacat_ is found in only a few manuscripts, and it can easily be seen how it arose from _uacas_; all the other examples are instances of _quod superest_ or _quod reliquum est_. The cumulative effect of these examples is to demonstrate that _quod ... uacabit_ is not a possible reading. This insensitivity to the precise meaning of the passages he discusses is usual with Ehwald, and his book, although useful, is an extremely unsafe guide to the textual criticism of the poems. It has unfortunately exercised a decisive influence on all succeeding editions. The first of these editions was Owen's 1915 Oxford Classical Text of the poems of exile. In the preface Owen acknowledges the influence of Ehwald: "adiumento primario erat R. Ehwaldi, doctrinae Ouidianae iudicis peritissimi, uere aureus libellus ... in quo excussis perpensisque codicibus poetaeque locutione ad perpendiculum exacta rectam Ponticarum edendarum normam uir doctus stabilire instituit' (viii). In most instances Owen follows Ehwald's recommendations, altering _in_ to _ab_ at i 9, _prospicerem_ to _aspicerem_ at ix 23, and at ix 44 abandoning Korn's _decretis_ for the manuscripts' _secretis_. Owen's reliance on Ehwald was noticed by Housman (903-4) in his short and accurate review of Owen's edition: 'In the _ex Ponto_ Mr Owen had displayed less originality [than in his 1889 and 1894 editions of the _Tristia_] and consequently has less to repent of. Most of the changes in this edition are made in pursuance of orders issued by R. Ehwald in his _Kritische Beiträge_ of 1896; but let it be counted to Mr Owen for righteousness that at III.7.37 and IV.15.42 he has refused to execute the sanguinary mandates of his superior officer'. As in Owen's earlier edition, the apparatus is so short as to be misleading. His choice of manuscripts is too small, and exaggerates the importance of _B_ and _C_; even of these two manuscripts his report is inadequate. At ix 73 he rightly prints _laxate_; the apparatus gives no indication that this is a conjecture, and that all manuscripts, including _B_ and _C_, read _iactate_, which he had printed in 1894. At xi 21, where _B_ gives _mihi_, indicated by Burman as the correct reading, Owen prints _tibi_ and does not mention the variant in the apparatus. The situation is naturally worse with readings of manuscripts other than _B_ and _C_, and with conjectures. In general, Owen's apparatus can be trusted neither as a report even of the principal readings of the few manuscripts he used, or as a register of critics' views of the constitution of the text. In the same year as Owen's second text there appeared at Budapest Geza Némethy's commentary on the _Ex Ponto_, of which twenty-six pages are devoted to the fourth book. The notes are too sparse and elementary to form an adequate commentary, consisting largely of simple glosses. They are a useful supplement to a plain text of the poems, however, and Némethy sometimes notices points missed by others: he correctly glosses _Augusti_ as "Tiberii imperatoris" at ix 70. The notes are based on Merkel's second edition; Némethy lists in a preface his few departures from Merkel's text. In 1922 Friedrich Levy published his first edition of the _Ex Ponto_ as part of a new Teubner edition of the works of Ovid. The apparatus was a reduced version of that prepared by Ehwald, 'Qui ut totus prelis subiceretur ... propter saeculi angustias fieri non potuit'. Levy's text is virtually identical to Owen's, but the apparatus is more complete. It contains a full report of _B_ and _C_, and also of the thirteenth-century _Gothanus memb. II 121_. This last manuscript has the correct _cernet_ at ix 46, where most manuscripts read _credet_; but otherwise its readings are of very poor quality, consisting of simple misreadings (i 24 _magnificas_ for _munificas_, vii 30 _uento_ for _uenit_, viii 37 _habendus_ for _abunde_), simplified word order (vi 25 _tuas lacrimas pariter_ for _tuas pariter lacrimas_, xvi 39 _et iuuenes essent_ for _essent et iuuenes_), and intrusive glosses (viii 61 _captiuis_ for _superatis_, xvi 47 _me laedere_ for _proscindere_). The manuscript does not deserve the important place it has in the editions of Levy, Luck, and André[16]; Ehwald presumably included it in his apparatus because of its easy accessibility to him at Gotha, where he lived. No other manuscripts are regularly reported, so Levy's apparatus gives a false impression of the evidence for the text, although he often reports isolated readings from the manuscripts of Heinsius. [Footnote 16: My knowledge of the manuscript is drawn from André's apparatus.] Levy omitted conjectures 'quatenus falsae uel superuacuae uidebantur'; the result is that Korn's elegant _decretis_ does not appear even in the apparatus at ix 44, and the same fate befalls Scaliger's _coactus_ at xiii 27. In 1924 the Loeb Classical Library published A. L. Wheeler's text and translation of the _Tristia_ and _Ex Ponto_. His text is based on Merkel's second edition, on Ehwald's _Beiträge_, and on Owen's Oxford Classical Text. In several places he rightly abandons _B_'s reading, printing _hanc_ for _ah_ at i 16 and _perstas_ for _praestas_ at x 83; at iv 45 he was clearly tempted to print Heinsius' _quamlibet_. His judgment is good, and if Ehwald and Owen had supplied him with more information on other manuscripts and on the Heinsius-Burman vulgate, his text might well have superseded all previous editions. His translation is accurate, and in corrupt passages indicates the awkwardness of the original; I have often quoted from it. In 1938 there appeared the elaborate Paravia edition of F. W. Levy, who in the period following his earlier edition had altered his name to F. W. Lenz. The text is virtually unchanged from his edition of 1922, but has a much larger apparatus, which includes a large number of conjectures omitted from the earlier edition; I am indebted to Lenz for many of the conjectures I report, particularly at xvi 33. The large size of the apparatus is, however, deceptive; most of the manuscripts he knew of only from the reports of Heinsius, Korn and Owen, and the reports are therefore incomplete: the only manuscripts reliably reported are _B_ and _C_. Since Lenz does not usually give the lemma for the variants reported, it is difficult to tell which manuscripts offer the reading in the text. Much space is wasted by reports of the readings of several heavily interpolated mediaeval florilegia; more is wasted by an undue attention to mediaeval spellings and attempts to reproduce abbreviations and to show the precise appearance of secondary corrections. These factors combine to render the apparatus virtually unreadable. In 1963 Georg Luck published the Artemis edition of the _Tristia_ and _Ex Ponto_, with a German translation by Wilhelm Willige. Luck shows some independence from Lenz, at i 16 printing _hanc_ for _ah_, at iii 27 _sed et_ for _subito_, at viii 71 _mauis_ for _maius_, at viii 86 _distet_ for _distat_, at ix 73 _laxate_ for _iactate_, at xii 13 _producatur_ for _ut dicatur_, and at xiv 7 _muter_ for _mittar_, each time rightly. He suggests a new conjecture for the incurable xvi 33, and a new and possibly correct punctuation of xii 19. The apparatus is misleading, consisting of isolated readings from _B_ and _C_ and a small number of readings from other manuscripts. No indication is given that _hanc_ at i 16 or _pars_ at i 35 are found only in a few manuscripts, and not in _B_ or _C_. Luck criticizes modern editors for ignoring the discoveries of their predecessors, and rightly prints Heinsius' _Gigantas_ (codd _-es_) at viii 59. However, he shows no direct knowledge of Heinsius' notes or of the Burman vulgate, making no mention of such readings as _Gete_ for _Getae_ at iii 52, _leuastis_ for _leuatis_ at vi 44, or _fouet_ for _mouet_ at xi 20. The oldest edition named in his apparatus is that of Riese. In 1977 F. Della Corte published an Italian translation of the _Ex Ponto_ with an accompanying commentary, of which fifty-eight pages are devoted to the fourth book. Most of the commentary consists of extended paraphrase of the poems; I have found it of little assistance. The most recent text of the _Ex Ponto_ is the 1977 Budé edition of Jacques André. His text is essentially that of Lenz, although at ix 23 he rightly prints _prospicerem_ instead of _B_'s _aspicerem_. There are a significant number of misprints in the text, apparatus, and notes, and other signs of carelessness as well. André makes full reports of only four manuscripts in his apparatus, _B_, _C_, _T_, and _Gothanus membr. II 121_[17]. This is an inadequate sampling. _B_ and _C_ form a distinct group, and the Gotha manuscript is too corrupt to merit a central part in an apparatus. The result is that _T_ is the sole good representative of the vulgate class of manuscripts that is regularly cited. [Footnote 17: He collated four other manuscripts, _M_, _Bernensis bibl. munic. 478_, _Diuionensis bibl. munic. 497_, and _British Library Burney 220_, but gives their readings only occasionally.] For knowledge of many of his secondary manuscripts, André seems to have depended on the edition of Lenz. Since much of Lenz's information was drawn from Heinsius and other earlier editors, this means that André is often giving unverified information from collations made more than three centuries previously. He did not realize that the Antwerp manuscript he collated (our _M_) was Heinsius' _codex Moreti_, whose readings Lenz sometimes reports; the result is that he reports the same manuscript twice, under the sigla _M_ and _N_. At ix 127 he cites the sixth-century Wolfenbüttel fragment in support of the unassimilated spelling _adscite_ (the assimilated form _ascite_ is supported by the inscriptions and by the ancient manuscripts of Virgil). In fact, the word is not found in the fragment, which preserves only the first three letters of the line. Finally, André shows insufficient knowledge of the Heinsius-Burman vulgate; this is evident not only from the text but from the introduction, where he prefaces his list of principal editions by saying 'Nous ne mentionnerons que les editions fondées sur des principes scientifiques, dont la première est celle de R. Merkel, Berlin, 1854' (the edition was published at Leipzig in 1853). In spite of what I have said against it, André's edition has considerable merit. His apparatus is the first to supply a lemma for each variant reading reported, and is clear and easy to read. His selection of manuscripts is inadequate, but at least he makes a full report of the four manuscripts he uses. The apparatus is in every way a great improvement on that of Lenz. At the same time, he provides a clear prose translation, an informative introduction, ample footnotes, and thirteen pages of "notes complémentaires". His notes sometimes come close to forming a true commentary, and I often quote from them. In preparing this edition of the fourth book of the _Ex Ponto_, I have carefully read all the editions discussed above, and have attempted to include a comprehensive list of conjectures in the apparatus. I have read Burman's variorum edition with particular attention, and have often restored readings favoured by Heinsius to the text. A complete examination of the manuscripts must await a full edition of all four books of the _Ex Ponto_; but on the basis of published editions I have selected the nine manuscripts that appeared most likely to assist in establishing the text, and have included full reports of their readings in the critical apparatus. I believe that even this preliminary apparatus gives a clearer picture of the evidence for the text of _Ex Ponto_ IV than any previous edition. P. OVIDI NASONIS EPISTVLARM EX PONTO LIBER QVARTVS CONSPECTVS SIGLORVM _G_ Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel: Cod. Guelf. 13.11 Aug. 4° (fragmentum Guelferbytanum) saec v/vi continet ix 101-8 et 127-33, xii 15-19 et 41-44. uersus saepe non integri. _B_ Monacensis lat. 384 saec xii _C_ Monacensis lat. 19476 saec xii _M_ Antuerpiensis Musei Plantiniani Denucé 68 saec xii/xiii codex Moreti Heinsianus _F_ Francofortanus Barth 110 saec xiii _H_ Holkhamicus 322, nunc British Library add. 49368 saec xiii _I_ Laurentianus 36 32 saec xiii primus Mediceus Heinsii _L_ Lipsiensis bibl. ciu. Rep. I 2° 7 saec xiii _T_ Turonensis 879 saec xii/xiii * * * * * Interdum aduocatur: _P_ Parisinus lat. 7993 saec xiii Regius Heinsii I Accipe, Pompei, deductum carmen ab illo debitor est uitae qui tibi, Sexte, suae. qui seu non prohibes a me tua nomina poni, accedet meritis haec quoque summa tuis; siue trahis uultus, equidem peccasse fatebor, 5 delicti tamen est causa probanda mei. non potuit mea mens quin esset grata teneri; sit precor officio non grauis ira pio. o quotiens ego sum libris mihi uisus in istis impius in nullo quod legerere loco! 10 o quotiens, alii uellem cum scribere, nomen rettulit in ceras inscia dextra tuum! incipit liber quartus _B2_ incipit quartus sexto pompeio _M_ liber ·iiii· sexto pompeio _F_ incipit ·iiii· sexto pompeio _H2(?)_ ad pompeium lib ·iiii· _I2_ hanc epistulam mittit sexto pompeio _L_ || 1 deductum carmen] carmen deductum _M_ || qui] cui _Williams_ || seu] si _ILF2ul_ || 4 accedet] accedat _M_ || summa] summe _C_ || 5 trahis] trahes _Owen (1894)_ || uultus _om C_ || equidem] equid e _B_ || 7 quin esset] esset quin _H_ || 9-10 _add F2 in marg_ || 9 o] di _B_ dii _I_ || in] ab _B_ || istis] illis _F_ || 10 quod] quid _F2_ || 11 alii] aliis _L_ aliIS _M2c_ || uellem cum scribere] cum uellem scribere _B_ uellem conscribere _F1_ uellem describere _P_ ipse mihi placuit mendis in talibus error, et uix inuita facta litura manu est. 'uiderit! ad summam,' dixi 'licet ipse queratur, 15 hanc pudet offensam non meruisse prius.' da mihi, si quid ea est, hebetantem pectora Lethen, oblitus potero non tamen esse tui; idque sinas oro, nec fastidita repellas uerba, nec officio crimen inesse putes, 20 et leuis haec meritis referatur gratia tantis; si minus, inuito te quoque gratus ero. numquam pigra fuit nostris tua gratia rebus, nec mihi munificas arca negauit opes. nunc quoque nil subitis clementia territa fatis 25 auxilium uitae fertque feretque meae. 13 mendis] mensis _C_ || 14 manu est] manu _T_ || 15 summam] summum _LT_ finem _F2(gl)_ || ipse _FTP_ ille _BCMHIL_ || 16 hanc _HI_ ha _MFLT_ ah _B_ a _C_ hunc _J. N. Grant_ || meruisse] merunisse _Mac_ || 18 non] nec _L_ || 19 _quid pro_ nec _H, incertum_ || fastidita] fastidia _F1_ || 20 putes] putas _L_ puta _I_ puto _Bac, ut uid_ || 21 et] sed _fort legendum_ || leuis] lenis _L_ || haec meritis] e meritis _F1T_ emeritis _HM2_ || 23 numquam] non quam _M_ || 24 mihi _om C_ || negauit] negabit _C_ || 25 nunc] hunc _C_ || quoque] quisque _C_ || nil] non _MpcF1_ nunc _P_ || 26 feretque _Heinsius_ refertque _MFHILTB2_ referta _C_ refert _B1_ unde rogas forsan fiducia tanta futuri sit mihi? quod fecit quisque tuetur opus, ut Venus artificis labor est et gloria Coi, aequoreo madidas quae premit imbre comas, 30 arcis ut Actaeae uel eburna uel aerea custos bellica Phidiaca stat dea facta manu, uindicat ut Calamis laudem quos fecit equorum, ut similis uerae uacca Myronis opus, sic ego sum rerum non ultima, Sexte, tuarum 35 tutelaeque feror munus opusque tuae. 27 unde] un* _B1_ || futuri] futura _ITF2_ || 28 quisque _ex_ quique _C, ut uid_ || 29 ut] et _T_ || est] et _Iac_ || 30 aequoreo] equoreas _Tac_ || 31 arcis] artis _LP_ || ut Actaeae] et actee _T_ ut athee _L_ utaaceae _C, ut uid_ || eburna] uberna _C_ || aerea _fragmentum Louaniense Heinsii (Korn, Lenz), codex Iunianus Heinsii (Korn); uide Haupt Opuscula 584_ aurea _Heinsius_ enea _(=aenea) BMFHILT, contra metrum_ anea _C_ || 32 Phidiaca] phasadica _C_ || facta] ficta _Heinsius_ || 33 Calamis _BCIacL_ calais _MFIpcTP_ cala bis _H, ut uid_ || laudem] laudes _B2_ || quos] quas _Bac_ que _Iac, ut uid_ || sum] pars _excerpta Politiani_ res _M2(gl?)_ || non] pars _F_ _om P_ || ultima] ultimæ (=ultimae) _C_ || 36 tuae] teuæ (=teuae) _C_ II Quod legis, o uates magnorum maxime regum, uenit ab intonsis usque, Seuere, Getis; cuius adhuc nomen nostros tacuisse libellos, si modo permittis dicere uera, pudet. orba tamen numeris cessauit epistula numquam 5 ire per alternas officiosa uices; carmina sola tibi memorem testantia curam non data sunt--quid enim quae facis ipse darem? quis mel Aristaeo, quis Baccho uina Falerna, Triptolemo fruges, poma det Alcinoo? 10 fertile pectus habes, interque Helicona colentes uberius nulli prouenit ista seges. 'mittere ad hunc carmen frondes erat addere siluis.' haec mihi cunctandi causa, Seuere, fuit. seuero _B2H2_ seuero amico suo _M_ ad mauximum _F1 [sic]_ ad seuerum _F2I2_ hanc epistulam mittit seuero _L_ || 1 regum] rerum _C_ uatum _M1FIL_ || 2 intonsis] intensis _H_ euxinis _M1_ inuisis _F2ul_ || 5 orba ... numeris] uerba ... numerus _C_ || cessauit] cessabit _B1_ || 6 uices] uias _T_ || 8 quae] quod _T_ || 9 Falerna] falerno _M_ || 10 triptolemo] triptolomo _CL_ tritolemo _F_ tritolomo _IT_ || det] dat _FT_ || 11 interque] inter _I_ || 13 ad hunc carmen] carmen ad hunc _fragmentum Louaniense Heinsii (Lenz)_ || 14 cunctandi] cunctanti _FH_ cunctadi _I_ nec tamen ingenium nobis respondet ut ante, 15 sed siccum sterili uomere litus aro; scilicet ut limus uenas excaecat *in undis*, laesaque suppresso fonte resistit aqua, pectora sic mea sunt limo uitiata malorum, et carmen uena pauperiore fluit. 20 si quis in hac ipsum terra posuisset Homerum, esset, crede mihi, factus et ipse Getes. da ueniam fasso: studiis quoque frena remisi, ducitur et digitis littera rara meis. impetus ille sacer qui uatum pectora nutrit, 25 qui prius in nobis esse solebat, abest; uix uenit ad partes, uix sumptae Musa tabellae imponit pigras, paene coacta, manus, 17 uenas excaecat _MFIT_ cum uenas cecat _BCHL_ uenas cum caecat _Castiglioni (Lenz)_ || in undis] in unda _F_ in aruis _Dalzell_ inundans _Madvig (Lenz)_ apertas _uel_ aquarum _Tarrant_ hiulcas _Merkel olim (1884)_ || 18 laesaque] lessaque _Mac_ lapsaque _Merkel (1884)_ || resistit] resistat _L_ || 21 Homerum] homorum _H1_ _quid Cac, incertum (hameo?)_ || 22 ipse _MFH_ ille _BCILT_ || 23 studiis] studii _FIMpc_ || quoque frena] frena quoque _Iac_ || 26 _quid pro_ qui _HP, incertum_ || nobis] uobis _M_ || abest] adest _T_ || 27 uix sumptae ... tabellae _BCMFHL_ (uix _ex_ uin _C, ut uid_) uix sumpta ... tabella _T_ assumpte ... tabelle _I_ || 28 imponit] imposuit _I_ paruaque, ne dicam scribendi nulla uoluptas est mihi, nec numeris nectere uerba iuuat, 30 siue quod hinc fructus adeo non cepimus ullos, principium nostri res sit ut ista mali, siue quod in tenebris numerosos ponere gestus quodque legas nulli scribere carmen idem est. excitat auditor studium, laudataque uirtus 35 crescit, et immensum gloria calcar habet. hic mea cui recitem nisi flauis scripta Corallis, quasque alias gentes barbarus Hister obit? sed quid solus agam, quaque infelicia perdam otia materia surripiamque diem? 40 29 ne] nec _L_ || uoluptas] uolumptas _CM1_ uoluntas _FL_ || 30 numeris] humeris _Cac_ || nectere] flectere _T_ || _32 add in marg I1, ut uid_ || 32 sit ut] fuit _I (in ras?)_ fiat ut _H1_ fiat _H2_ || ista] illa _FIP_ || 33 gestus] gressus _I1PF2ul_ gestus [_sic_] _F3ul_ || 34 legas] legam _L_ legant _F2ul_ || idem est] obest _F1I1LP_ || 36 calcar] carcar _C_ || habet] habes _Bac_ || _37 om P_ || 37 hic] haec _T_ || Corallis] coraillis _Mac_ || 38 Hister] inster _L_ || obit _Damsté (Mnemosyne LXVI 32)_ habet _codd_ || 39 quaque] quamque _BC_ || 40 materia] materiam _Bac_ || diem] **dem _Mac_ nam quia nec uinum nec me tenet alea fallax, per quae clam tacitum tempus abire solet, nec me, quod cuperem si per fera bella liceret, oblectat cultu terra nouata suo, quid nisi Pierides, solacia frigida, restant, 45 non bene de nobis quae meruere deae? at tu, cui bibitur felicius Aonius fons, utiliter studium quod tibi cedit ama, sacraque Musarum merito cole, quodque legamus huc aliquod curae mitte recentis opus! 50 41 quia nec _BCH(Iac)_ me nec _IpcP_ neque me _MFLT_ || uinum] unum _C_ || nec me] neque me _T_ || 42 tacitum _add I1 in marg_ tantum _C_ || 43 nec me] nec _Iac_ hec me _C, ut uid_ || 45 frigida] frigora _C_ || restant] restat _IP_ || 46 meruere] metuere _L_ || 47 at] ac _LP_ || Aonius] adonius _I_ | | 48 cedit] cedat _T_ || ama] amas _M2ul_ || 50 aliquod] aliquid _CP_ III Conquerar an taceam? ponam sine nomine crimen, an notum qui sis omnibus esse uelim? nomine non utar, ne commendere querela, quaeraturque tibi carmine fama meo. dum mea puppis erat ualida fundata carina, 5 qui mecum uelles currere primus eras; nunc, quia contraxit uultum Fortuna, recedis, auxilio postquam scis opus esse tuo. dissimulas etiam, nec me uis nosse uideri, quisque sit audito nomine Naso rogas. 10 ille ego sum, quamquam non uis audire, uetusta paene puer puero iunctus amicitia; ad ingratum _MFB2H2_ ad inuidum _I2_ || 1 conquerar] con****ar _M1_ (confitear _primitus?_) || sine _add M2_ || 2 qui sis] quis sis _HLTM2_ || 3 ne] nec _(Bac)CH_ || commendere] commendare _CL_ || querela] querelam _Cpc_ quelelam _Cac_ || 4 carmine] carmi/ne _I_ nomine _H_ || 5 dum] cum _M_ || 7 nunc quia] dum mea _F1_ || contraxit] traxit _M1_ abtraxit [_sic_] _M2_ || 9 me uis] uis me _IpcT_ uis _Iac_ || uideri] fateri _M2ulF2ul_ tueri _P_ || 10 quisque] quique _HacP_ || sit _add C1?_ || 11-12 _post 13-14 ponit B_ || 11 quamquam] qVAMQVAM _I2?c_ qUm _C (=quoniam)_ quamuis _M2ul_ || 12 iunctus] uinctus _HP_ || amicitia] amicia _M_ ille ego qui primus tua seria nosse solebam, et tibi iucundis primus adesse iocis; ille ego conuictor densoque domesticus usu; 15 ille ego iudiciis unica Musa tuis. ille ego sum quem nunc an uiuam, perfide, nescis, cura tibi de quo quaerere nulla subit. siue fui numquam carus, simulasse fateris; seu non fingebas, inueniere leuis. 20 aut age, dic aliquam quae te mutauerit iram; nam nisi iusta tua est, iusta querela mea est. 13 tua] sua _L_ || 14 iocis] locis _M2ul_ locus _P_ || 15 ille ego] ille _Bac_ || DOMESticus _F1c_ denso _(Fac)_ || 16 unica] uinea _L_ || 17 ille] i/LE _B1c_ idem _(Bac)CM1H_ || ego sum] ego _Tac_ ego iudicii _Bac_ || quem nunc an uiuam _Leidensis Heinsii_ qui nunc an uiuam _BCMFHILT_ quem nunc an uiuat _Heinsius_ || 18 subit _Heinsius_ fuit _codd_ || 19 fui] fuit _(Bac)CP_ || simulasse] simulare _F1_ || fateris] fereris _Heinsius_ || 20 leuis] lenis _H_ || 21 aut age] eia age _'uterque Medonii [=Bodleianus Rawl G 105, 106] pro diuersa lectione', probante Heinsio_ || aliquam quae te mutauerit [mutauerat _C_ mutauit _F_] iram _BCMFHIL_ aliquid quod te mutauit in iram _T_ || 22 est, iusta] est ista _Iac_ quod te nunc crimen similem uetat esse priori? an crimen coepi quod miser esse uocas? si mihi rebus opem nullam factisque ferebas, 25 uenisset uerbis charta notata tribus. uix equidem credo, sed et insultare iacenti te mihi nec uerbis parcere fama refert. quid facis, a demens? cur, si Fortuna recedat, naufragio lacrimas eripis ipse tuo? 30 haec dea non stabili quam sit leuis orbe fatetur quem summo dubium sub pede semper habet. quolibet est folio, quauis incertior aura: par illi leuitas, improbe, sola tua est. 23 quod te nunc crimen similem] quod te nunc similem crimen _H_ quae te consimilem res nunc _FIL_ || uetat] ueta _L1_ || 24 an] aut _B_ || 25 facTisque _B2c_ || 26 charta notata tribus] parcere fama refert _C_ || 27 sed et] sed te _I_ subito _(B1)C_ || 28 te ... nec] et ... non _T_ || parcere fama refert] charta notata tribus _C_ || 29 a] o _M1FILT_ || recedat _TM2_ recedit _BCM1FHIL_ 30 tuo] meo _HI_ || 31 stabili] stabilis _L_ || quam sit leuis orbe] quam leuis orbe _C_ quantum sit in orbe _L_ || 32 quem _fragmentum Boxhornianum Heinsii (=Leid. Bibl. Publ. 180 G)_ quae _BCMFHILT_ || summo dubium _scripsi_ summo dubio _C_ summum dubio _BMFILT_ mundum dubio _H_ dubio summum _fort scribendum_ || 33 quauis] quamuis _MLP_ || aura] aura est _MF_ || 34 par _ex_ per _M, ut uid_ || sola] fTa _L(=facta)_ || tua est] tuE E _C_ omnia sunt hominum tenui pendentia filo, 35 et subito casu quae ualuere ruunt. diuitis audita est cui non opulentia Croesi? nempe tamen uitam captus ab hoste tulit. ille Syracosia modo formidatus in urbe uix humili duram reppulit arte famem. 40 quid fuerat Magno maius? tamen ille rogauit summissa fugiens uoce clientis opem. cuique uiro totus terrarum paruit orbis . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 omnia] omina _M1FILT_ euentus _F2(gl)_ || pendentia] pedentia _I_ || 36 ruunt] cadunt _M2ul_ || 38 tamen] etiam _Riese_ || 39 Syracosia _Heinsius_ syracusia _CMFHILT_ siracuNa _B2c_ syracusa _Gothanus II 121, saec xiii (André) 'etiam bene'--Heinsius_ || formidatus] fortunatus _M_ || 40 famem] famen _C_ famE _L_ || 41 Magno maius] maius magno _I_ || ille] ipse _MI_ || 43-44 _damnat Bentley_ || 44 _om B1C_ indigus effectus omnibus ipse magis _MHILTF2_ [(indigus: indiguus _M_ indigens _F2ul_) (indigus ... omnibus: omnibus ... indigus _I_) (effectus: est factus _IL_ effectis _Ellis[Owen 1894]_) (ipse: ille _T_) (magis: fuit _F2ul_)] achillas pharius abstulit ense caput _F1_ _fragmentum Louaniense Heinsii (Burman)_ ille Iugurthino clarus Cimbroque triumpho, 45 quo uictrix totiens consule Roma fuit, in caeno latuit Marius cannaque palustri, pertulit et tanto multa pudenda uiro. ludit in humanis diuina potentia rebus, et certam praesens uix facit hora fidem. 50 'litus ad Euxinum' si quis mihi diceret 'ibis, et metues arcu ne feriare Gete', 'i bibe' dixissem 'purgantes pectora sucos, quicquid et in tota nascitur Anticyra'. sum tamen haec passus nec, si mortalia possem, 55 et summi poteram tela cauere dei. tu quoque fac timeas, et quae tibi laeta uidentur dum loqueris fieri tristia posse puta. 45 ille] ipse _I_ || Iugurthino] iuigurtino _M, ut uid_ || Cimbroque] cimboque _B_ || 47 latuit Marius _M_ iacuit marius _H_ marius latuit _L_ marius iacuit _BCFIT_ || 50 uix] non _M2ul_ || facit _R.J. Tarrant_ feret _BC_ habet _MFHILT_ || 52 Gete _Heinsius e codicibus_ Getae _edd_ || 53 i bibe] ebibe _B_ || purgantes pectora sucos] purgantia pocula sompnos _F2ul_ || 54 Anticyra] anticera _MI_ || 55 nec] ne _L_ || 57 laeta] lenta _Iac_ IIII Nulla dies adeo est australibus umida nimbis non intermissis ut fluat imber aquis, nec sterilis locus ullus ita est ut non sit in illo mixta fere duris utilis herba rubis; nil adeo Fortuna grauis miserabile fecit 5 ut minuant nulla gaudia parte malum. ecce domo patriaque carens oculisque meorum, naufragus in Getici litoris actus aquas, qua tamen inueni uultum diffundere causam possim fortunae nec meminisse meae. 10 nam mihi cum fulua solus spatiarer harena uisa est a tergo penna dedisse sonum. de consulatu sexti pompe(i)i _FB2H2_ pompeio amico suo _M_ ad sextum pompeium _I2_ || 3 nec] non _F_ || 4 rubis _ex_ iubis _F_ || 6 ut] quin _M2ul_ || nulla] ulla _M2ul_ || parte _BCMFHILT, sicut coni Bentley_ pace _P_ || 8 aquas] aquis _H_ || 9 uultum] uultumque _L_ || diffundere] defendere _P, I ut uid_ || causam] causa _BCT_ || 10 possim] possem _L_ possum _F_ || nec] non _I_ || 11 cum] dum _FIT, sicut coni Bentley_ || solus _BC_ tristis _MFHILT_ || spatiarer] spatiare _Fac_ paciarer _Mpc_ paciare _Mac_ || 12 penna] pinna _C_ respicio, neque erat corpus quod cernere possem; uerba tamen sunt haec aure recepta mea: 'en ego laetarum uenio tibi nuntia rerum, 15 Fama, per immensas aere lapsa uias: consule Pompeio, quo non tibi carior alter, candidus et felix proximus annus erit.' dixit et, ut laeto Pontum rumore repleuit, ad gentes alias hinc dea uertit iter. 20 at mihi dilapsis inter noua gaudia curis excidit asperitas huius iniqua loci, ergo ubi, Iane biceps, longum reseraueris annum, pulsus et a sacro mense December erit, purpura Pompeium summi uelabit honoris, 25 ne titulis quicquam debeat ille suis. cernere iam uideor rumpi paene atria turba et populum laedi deficiente loco, 13 neque _CMHL_ nec _BFIT_ || erat corpus _BCFL_ corpus erat _MHIT_ || 19 rumore] sermone _H_ || 20 ad gentes] agentes _C_ || 23 reseraueris] reseruaueris _L_ || 25 summi ... honoris] summo ... honore _I_ || uELABit _F2c, ut uid_ || 27 paene atria] penetralia _I, F2ul ut uid_ laeta atria _Burman, qui et_ plena atria _coniecit_ templaque Tarpeiae primum tibi sedis adiri et fieri faciles in tua uota deos, 30 colla boues niueos certae praebere securi, quos aluit campis herba Falisca suis, cumque deos omnes, tum quos impensius aequos esse tibi cupias, cum Ioue Caesar erunt. curia te excipiet, patresque e more uocati 35 intendent aures ad tua uerba suas. hos ubi facundo tua uox hilarauerit ore, utque solet tulerit prospera uerba dies, 29 tibi ... adiri] tibi ... adire _L_ te ... adire _H2ul_ || 31 certae] cerno _Owen (1915)_ certant _Damsté (Mnemosyne XLVII 33-34)_ || 32 Falisca] falesca _B_ palistra _F2ul ut uid_ || _post 32 distichon excidisse putat Ehwald (_KB_ 63)_ || 33 omnes, tum quos _HL_ omnes tunc quos _BCMFIT_ tunc hos ores _P_ omnes, tunc hos _Ehwald_ || 34 cupias] capias _B, ut uid_ cupies _fort scribendum_ || erunt _B, sicut coni Heinsius_ erit _MFHILT_ _om C_ || 35 curia te] cura te _H_ curiaque _Heinsius_ || excipiet] excipias _C_ || patresque] partesque _C_ || e _BCM_ ex _FHILT_ || uocati] uocari _C_ || 36 intendent] intendunt _BC_ || ad _ex_ at _C_ || 37 hilarauerit] hilauerit _Mac_ egeris et meritas superis cum Caesare grates (qui causam facias cur ita, saepe dabit), 40 inde domum repetes toto comitante senatu, officium populi uix capiente domo. me miserum, turba quod non ego cernar in illa nec poterunt istis lumina nostra frui! quamlibet absentem, qua possum, mente uidebo: 45 aspiciet uultus consulis illa sui. di faciant aliquo subeat tibi tempore nostrum nomen, et 'heu' dicas 'quid miser ille facit?' haec tua pertulerit si quis mihi uerba, fatebor protinus exilium mollius esse meum. 50 40 qui] que _Bac, ut uid_ || facias cur ita, saepe dabit _Riese_ facias cur ita saepe, dabit _edd_ || dabit] dabunt _LF2ul_ || 43 cernar] cernor _MIL_ cenor _H_ || 45 quamlibet _Heinsius_ qua libet _H1_ qua licet _MacP_ quo licet _L_ quod licet _BCMpcFIT_ et licet _H2ul_ scilicet _Castiglioni (Lenz)_ || mente _in ras F2_ || 46 aspicIET _I1c_ aspicuum _(Iac)_ || 47 di _B_ dii _CMFHILT_ || nostrum] nomen nostrum _C_ || 48 miser ille facit] facit ille miser _T_ || 49 pertulerit] protulerit _H_ || 50 mollius] micius _F2ul(=mitius)_ V Ite, leues elegi, doctas ad consulis aures, uerbaque honorato ferte legenda uiro. longa uia est, nec uos pedibus proceditis aequis, tectaque brumali sub niue terra latet. cum gelidam Thracen et opertum nubibus Haemon 5 et maris Ionii transieritis aquas, luce minus decima dominam uenietis in urbem, ut festinatum non faciatis iter. protinus inde domus uobis Pompeia petetur; non est Augusto iunctior ulla foro. 10 si quis ut in populo qui sitis et unde requiret, nomina decepta quaelibet aure ferat; sexto pompeio _B2H2_ pompeo amico suo _M_ ad sextum pompeium _F_ ad eundem sextum pompeium _I2_ || 4 latet] letet _Cac_ || 5 cum gelidam] congelidam _F1_ || Thracen] tracem _I_ tracE _F_ || opertum] opertam _L_ || nubibus] niuibus _LP_ || Haemon _Laurentianus 38 39, saec xv (Lenz); Ven. Marcianus XII 106, saec xv (Lenz); editio princeps Bononiensis (Lenz)_ hemum _BCMFHILT_ || 6 Ionii] ycarii _F2ul_ || aquas] aquis _Mac?_ iter aquas _C_ _quid F2ul, incertum (extasis?)_ || 7 luCE _F2c_ 8 faciatis] facietis _Cpc_ facetis _Cac_ || 9 Pompeia] ponpeia _C_ || petetur _FT_ petatur _BCMHIL_ || 10 ulla] illa _CI_ || 11 qui] que _Iac_ || requiret _BMFH_ requirat _CILT_ ut sit enim tutum, sicut reor esse, fateri uera, minus certe ficta timoris habent. copia nec uobis nullo prohibente uidendi 15 consulis, ut limen contigeritis, erit: aut reget ille suos dicendo iura Quirites, conspicuum signis cum premet altus ebur, aut populi reditus positam componet ad hastam, et minui magnae non sinet urbis opes, 20 aut, ubi erunt patres in Iulia templa uocati, de tanto dignis consule rebus aget, aut feret Augusto solitam natoque salutem, deque parum noto consulet officio. tempus ab his uacuum Caesar Germanicus omne 25 auferet; a magnis hunc colit ille deis. 13 fateri] fatendum _F_ futuri _(Bac)_ uerum _L2(gl)_ || 14 uera _Hilberg, Die Gesetze der Wortstellung im Pentameter des Ovid 35-36 (fateri uera)_ uerba _codd (uerba ... habent)_ ficta _ex_ minus ficta _M_ || 15 uobis] nobis _L_ || nullo] ullo _P, probante Heinsio_ || 18 cum premet] comprimet _F1_ || altus] alter _B1_ || 19 positam] ualidam _H_ || componet] componit _L_ || ad] in _F_ || 20 opes] opem _I_ || 21 aut] at _H1_ || ubi erunt] ubi _C_ || uocati] uoocati _M_ || 23 aut feret _BCFHILTM3ul_ aFferet _M2c_ || 24 parum noto] parum nato _C_ patrum toto _Burman_ || 25 ab] et _BC_ || uacuum] uacuo _Heinsius_ cum tamen a turba rerum requieuerit harum, ad uos mansuetas porriget ille manus, quidque parens ego uester agam fortasse requiret. talia uos illi reddere uerba uolo: 30 'uiuit adhuc uitamque tibi debere fatetur, quam prius a miti Caesare munus habet. te sibi, cum fugeret, memori solet ore referre barbariae tutas exhibuisse uias, sanguine Bistonium quod non tepefecerit ensem, 35 effectum cura pectoris esse tui, addita praeterea uitae quoque multa tuendae munera, ne proprias attenuaret opes. pro quibus ut meritis referatur gratia, iurat se fore mancipii tempus in omne tui. 40 27 turba] cura _Heinsius_ || requieuerit] requierit _Cac_ requieurit _F1_ || 30 reddere uerba] uerba reddere _I_ || 32 a miti] * miti _Fac_ amiti _BM1H_ amitti _L_ _om Iac_ || 33 referre] fateri _F_ || 35 Bistonium] bistanium _L_ || tepefecerit] tepefecerat _M_ tepecerit _Iac_ || 36 cura] pura _Iac_ || _37-40 add B2 in margine_ || 37 uitae quoque] sunt uite _M_ || 40 mancipii ... tui _CB2_ mancipium ... tuum _MFHILTB3_ mancipio ... tuo _Brissonius ('lib. VI. de Form. pag. 517'--Burman)_ mancipio ... tuum _Merkel (1853)_ || tempus] tepus _M_ nam prius umbrosa carituros arbore montes, et freta ueliuolas non habitura rates, fluminaque in fontes cursu reditura supino, gratia quam meriti possit abire tui.' haec ubi dixeritis, seruet sua dona rogate; 45 sic fuerit uestrae causa peracta uiae. 41 carituros] carituras _L_ || ueliuolas] ueliferas _M1_ || 44 possit] posset _L_ 45 haec] hoc _MT_ || 46 peracta] peraC ta _F2c_ VI Quam legis ex illis tibi uenit epistula, Brute, Nasonem nolles in quibus esse locis. sed tu quod nolles, uoluit miserabile fatum; ei mihi, plus illud quam tua uota ualet. in Scythia nobis quinquennis Olympias acta 5 iam tempus lustri transit in alterius. perstat enim Fortuna tenax, uotisque malignum opponit nostris insidiosa pedem. certus eras pro me, Fabiae laus, Maxime, gentis, numen ad Augustum supplice uoce loqui; 10 bruto _B2H2_ bruto amico suo _M_ ad brutum _FI2_ || 1 illis] ipsis _T_ || 3 tu quod] tu qui _Lac, ut uid_ quod tu _IT_ || 4 ei _edd_ hei _Barberinus lat. 26, saec xiii (Lenz)_ et _BCM1FILT_ si _H_ heu _M2ul_ || illud] istud _H_ || ualet] ualent _FIT_ _H, ut uid_ || 5 Scythia] sythia _HIL_ scithica _M_ || Olympias acta _LT_ olympias acta est _BMFHI_ olimpia facta est _C_ || 5-6 Olympias acta iam _Housman (Owen)_ Olympias acta est. iam _edd_ || 7 perstat] praestat _CP_ || 8 opponit] opposuit _H_ || nostris _in loco a prima manu relicto add F2_ nostrIs _B2c_ || insidiosa] insidiosam _Cac_ inuidiosa _FHM2_ || 9 eras] erat _(B1)C_ || pro me, Fabiae] fabie pro me _I_ || laus _BCMHILTF3_ dux _F1_ lux _F2, probante Burman_ || maxime] maxima _CP_ occidis ante preces, causamque ego, Maxime, mortis (nec fueram tanti) me reor esse tuae. iam timeo nostram cuiquam mandare salutem; ipsum morte tua concidit auxilium. coeperat Augustus detectae ignoscere culpae; 15 spem nostram terras deseruitque simul. quale tamen potui de caelite, Brute, recenti uestra procul positus carmen in ora dedi; quae prosit pietas utinam mihi, sitque malorum iam modus et sacrae mitior ira domus. 20 te quoque idem liquido possum iurare precari, o mihi non dubia cognite Brute nota; nam cum praestiteris uerum mihi semper amorem, hic tamen aduerso tempore creuit amor, 11 occidis] occidit _(B1)C_ || preces] pedes _M_ || causamque] causAQVE _B2c_ || ego _add F2_ || 12 fueram] fuero _BC_ fuerim _British Library Burney 220, saec xii-xiii (André)_ || 13 timeo nostram cuiquam] timeo cuiquam nostram _F_ nostram cuiquam timeo _I_ || 14 tua] tuæ _C(=tuae)_ || concidit] consul _Bac_ constitit _Némethy_ || 15 Augustus] augstus _Iac_ augustum _Lac_ || detectae _scripsi_ deceptae _codd_ decepti _J. N. Grant_ || 18 positus] positis _C_ || 21 te quoque] teque _I_ || idem] iam _F_ || possum] possim _F_ possem _T_ || 22 cognite] condite _M2ul_ || nota] fide _LTM2ulF2ul_ || 24 hic] plus _T_ || aduerso] auerso _H_ || creuit _ex_ creauit _H_ quique tuas pariter lacrimas nostrasque uideret 25 passuros poenam crederet esse duos. lenem te miseris genuit Natura, nec ulli mitius ingenium quam tibi, Brute, dedit, ut qui quid ualeas ignoret Marte forensi posse tuo peragi uix putet ore reos. 30 scilicet eiusdem est, quamuis pugnare uidentur, supplicibus facilem, sontibus esse trucem. cum tibi suscepta est legis uindicta seuerae, uerba uelut taetrum singula uirus habent; hostibus eueniat quam sis uiolentus in armis 35 sentire et linguae tela subire tuae, quae tibi tam tenui cura limantur ut omnes istius ingenui pectoris esse negent. 26 crederet] diceret _F2ul_ || 27 lenem] lene _C_ || 29 ignoret] ignorat _TP_ || Marte _BCHI_ in arte _MFLT_ || 30 tuo] tuos _M_ || 31 eiusdem est] eisdem est _Fac, ut uid_ eiusdem _Heinsius 'cum tribus libris'_ || uidentur _BMFH, sicut coni Bentley_ uidetur _CILT_ || 33 est] est seuere _Mac_ || 34 taetrum _R. J. Tarrant_ tinctum _BCM1FHILT_ tritum _M2ul_ coctum _M2ul_ tinctu _Ehwald (_KB_ 83)_ tinguat _Merkel (1884)_ || 36 linguae _ex_ linge _B_ || 37 limantur] limatur _C_ || 38 ingenui pectoris _scripsi_ ingenium corporis _codd_ ingenium nominis _D. R. Shackleton Bailey_ at si quem laedi fortuna cernis iniqua, mollior est animo femina nulla tuo; 40 hoc ego praecipue sensi, cum magna meorum notitiam pars est infitiata mei. immemor illorum, uestri non immemor umquam qui mala solliciti nostra leuastis, ero, et prius hic nimium nobis conterminus Hister 45 in caput Euxino de mare uertet iter, utque Thyesteae redeant si tempora mensae, Solis ad Eoas currus agetur aquas, 40 auxilium subito tu sibi [_sic_] ferre soles _M2 in marg_ || 41 hoc] haec _FHL_ || 43 uestri] uestrum _Heinsius_ || 44 mala _F2 in ras_ || solliciti _BCM2ul_ sollicite _M1FHILT_ || leuastis _Barberinus lat. 26, saec xiii (Heinsius)_ leuatis _BCMFHILT_ || ero] ope _C_ || 45 hic] hinc _HTP_ || nimium nobis] nimium uobis _BC_ nobis nimium _IacT_ || Hister] inster _L_ || 46 Euxino] euxini _I_ euxinum _T_ eximio _F_ || uertet] uertit _FP_ || 47 utque] atque _BHL2_ ante _codd Feschii et Hafniensis Heinsii_ || si] ceu _Heinsius ('ante, Thyesteae redeant ceu tempora mensae, / solis ad Eoas currus agetur aquas')_ || tempora] fercula _'malim reponi, sed obstant libri ueteres'--Heinsius_ quam quisquam uestrum qui me doluistis ademptum arguat ingratum non meminisse sui. 50 49 doluistis] lugetis _T_ || ademptum] adempto _Basileensis F IV 26, saec xiii-xiv (Korn), probante Heinsio_ adeptum _LP_ || 50 arguat] arguar _B_ VII Missus es Euxinas quoniam, Vestalis, ad oras, ut positis reddas iura sub axe locis, aspicis en praesens quali iaceamus in aruo, nec me testis eris falsa solere queri; accedet uoci per te non irrita nostrae, 5 Alpinis iuuenis regibus orte, fides. ipse uides certe glacie concrescere Pontum, ipse uides rigido stantia uina gelu, ipse uides onerata ferox ut ducat Iazyx per medias Histri plaustra bubulcus aquas, 10 aspicis et mitti sub adunco toxica ferro, et telum causas mortis habere duas; uestali _B2H2_ ad uestalem amicum suum _M_ ad uestalem _FI2_ hanc epistulam misit uostali _L_ || 1 Euxinas] exunias _I_ || horas [=_oras_] _CI_ undas _BMFHLT_ || 2 locis] getis _T_ || 3 praesens] praeses _P_ || iaceamus] aceamus _Cac_ || 4 queri] loqui _IM2ul_ || 5 nostrae] semper _Iac_ || 6 Alpinis] Arpinis _Verpoorten (Lenz)_ || 8 uina] rura _F2ul_ || 9 ut ducat Iazyx _BCMFHIT_ [Iazyx _Merula (Burman)_ iahis _B_ ayzys _C1_ iazys _C1?ul_ iatis _M_ iazis _F_ yacis _H_ hiacis _I_ yases _T_] trahat ut glatiati _L_ educat ut altas _P_ || 10 bubulcus] bububcus _B_ || _11-12 post 13-14 ponit T_ || 11 et mitti] et miti _Iac_ admitti _F2ul_ || adunco] aduuco _Lac_ || 12 telum] ferum _T_ uulnus _F2ul_ atque utinam pars haec tantum spectata fuisset, non etiam proprio cognita Marte tibi! tenditur ad primum per densa pericula pilum, 15 contigit ex merito qui tibi nuper honor; sit licet hic titulus plenis tibi fructibus ingens, ipsa tamen uirtus ordine maior erit. non negat hoc Hister, cuius tua dextera quondam puniceam Getico sanguine fecit aquam, 20 non negat Aegissos, quae te subeunte recepta sensit in ingenio nil opis esse loci; 13 spectata] speculata _L_ || 14 _quid pro_ etiam _H, incertum_ || proprio] propria _B_ || 15 tenditur _Owen_ tenditis _BCMFHIpcL_ tendis et _T_ tendet _Iac, ut uid_ tendisti _Merkel_ tendit is _Oberlin ('sc. Mars, cf. 45'--Owen 1894)_ tendis at [_uel_ et] ad _temptauit Castiglioni (Lenz)_ || 17 plenis] plenus _(Fac)I_ || plenis tibi fructibus ingens, _edd_ plenus tibi fructibus, ingens _Ehwald_ || ingens _'corruptum'--Riese; om Mac_ || 18 erit] erat _duo codd Burmanni_ inest _Heinsius_ adest _Heinsius_ || 19 hoc] hIc _B2c_ haec _I, ut uid_ || 19-21 negat ... negat] neget ... negat _unus ex Thuaneis Heinsii (=Parisinus lat. 8256 uel 8462)_ neget ... neget _Burman_ || 21 Aegissos _uide _CIL_ III pag. 1009_ egisos _I1T_ ecisos _I2, ut uid_ egiros _FLP_ egyros _H_ egilos _C_ egylos _B_ egypsos _M_ || recepta] recepto _F1HP_ || 22 opis] opIS _I1c_ opus _FH(Iac)_ nam, dubium positu melius defensa manune, urbs erat in summo, nubibus aequa, iugo. Sithonio regi ferus interceperat illam 25 hostis, et ereptas uictor habebat opes, donec fluminea deuecta Vitellius unda intulit exposito milite signa Getis. at tibi, progenies alti fortissima Donni, uenit in aduersos impetus ire uiros; 30 nec mora: conspicuus longe fulgentibus armis fortia ne possint facta latere caues, ingentique gradu contra ferrumque locumque saxaque brumali grandine plura subis. nec te missa super iaculorum turba moratur, 35 nec quae uipereo tela cruore madent: 23 dubium] dubium est _CL_ dubum _Iac_ || manune _BCT_ manuue _MpcFHIL_ manu _Mac_ || 24 urbS/ _F2c_ || iugo] loco _I_ || 25 Sit(h)onio _BCMFIT_ sidonio _H_ scithonio _L_ || 26 ereptas] erectas _Bac_ eruptas _C_ || 27 deuecta] deuectus _L_ || 29 Donni _CB1?ul_ domni _IT, M ut uid_ dOni _H_ dompni _L_ dauni _F_ domu _B1_ || 30 uiros] globos _Heinsius_ || 31 conspicuus] conspicuis _IP_ || 34 saxaque ... plura] pluraque ... saxa _F_ || subis] su/bis _H_ || 35 moratur] miratur _C_ || 36 madent] rubent _Gottorphianus Heinsii_ uirent _Heinsius_ spicula cum pictis haerent in casside pennis, parsque fere scuti uulnere nulla uacat. nec corpus cunctos feliciter effugit ictus, sed minor est acri laudis amore dolor; 40 talis apud Troiam Danais pro nauibus Aiax dicitur Hectoreas sustinuisse faces. ut propius uentum est admotaque dextera dextrae, resque fero potuit comminus ense geri, dicere difficile est quid Mars tuus egerit illic, 45 quotque neci dederis quosque quibusque modis: ense tuo factos calcabas uictor aceruos, impositoque Getes sub pede multus erat. pugnat ad exemplum primi minor ordine pili, multaque fert miles uulnera, multa facit, 50 37 haerent] horrent _L_ || pennis] pinnis _C_ || 38 parsque _ex_ pasque _M_ || fere] fero _Heinsius_ || uacat] caret _PM2(gl)F2(gl)_ || 39 ////ictus _I_ || 40 minor] minus _BacP_ || acri] acro _B_ acer _P_ actae _Iunianus Heinsii_ altae _auctor electorum Etonensium_ || 41 Aiax] iaiax _C_ || 42 Hectoreas] hectoas _Bac_ || 43 ut] et _M2ul_ || propius] proprius _FacH_ || dextera dextrae] dextre dextera _Iac_ dextera dextre est _B (dextre E)_ dextera dextra est _C (dextraE)_ || 44 potuit _om C_ || ense] esse _C_ || 46 quotque] quodque _CP_ || dederis] dederas _L_ || quosque] quotque _H_ || 47 aceruos] acerbos _C, Mac ut uid_ || 48 multus] uictus _H_ || erat] eat _Cac_ sed tantum uirtus alios tua praeterit omnes ante citos quantum Pegasus ibat equos. uincitur Aegissos, testataque tempus in omne sunt tua, Vestalis, carmine facta meo. 51 tantum] tamen et _M_ || aliOs _M2?c_ || 52 ibat] ibit _BP_ || 53 Aegissos _uide ad 21_ egisos _T_ egiros _CFHL_ egyros _B_ egipsos _I_ egypsos _M_ || 54 sunt] sint _F1_ || facta] ficta _C_ VIII Littera sera quidem, studiis exculte Suilli, huc tua peruenit, sed mihi grata tamen, qua, pia si possit superos lenire rogando gratia, laturum te mihi dicis opem. ut iam nil praestes, animi sum factus amici 5 debitor: et meritum uelle iuuare uoco. impetus iste tuus longum modo duret in aeuum, neue malis pietas sit tua lassa meis. ius aliquod faciunt adfinia uincula nobis (quae semper maneant inlabefacta precor), 10 nam tibi quae coniunx, eadem mihi filia paene est, et quae te generum, me uocat illa uirum. ei mihi, si lectis uultum tu uersibus istis ducis, et adfinem te pudet esse meum! swillio _B2_ suillo amico suo _M_ ad suillium _F_ suillo _H2_ ad suillum _I2_ hanc epistulam mittit suillo _L_ || 1 exculte] exculta _L_ exulte _M_ || Suilli] suille _TP_ || 3 possit _Gothanus II 121, saec xiii (Lenz), Barberinus lat. 26, saec xiii (Lenz)_ posset _BCMFHILT_ || rogando] precando _T_ || 5 iam nil] mihi nil _HT_ mihi non _ILP_ || 6 uoco] uolo _B1C_ || 7 modo] mihi _MFT_ || Duret _F2c_ || 12 generum] gerum _H1, ut uid_ || 14 te] t* _B1(tu?)_ at nihil hic dignum poteris reperire pudore 15 praeter fortunam, quae mihi caeca fuit; seu genus excutias, equites ab origine prima usque per innumeros inueniemur auos, siue uelis qui sint mores inquirere nostri, errorem misero detrahe, labe carent. 20 tu modo si quid agi sperabis posse precando, quos colis exora supplice uoce deos. di tibi sunt Caesar iuuenis: tua numina placa. hac certe nulla est notior ara tibi. non sinit illa sui uanas antistitis umquam 25 esse preces; nostris hinc pete rebus opem. 15 at] et _T_ || nihil] nil _I_ || reperire] re/perire _F_ || pudore] pudoris _T_ || 16 caeca] saeua _Riese_ laeua _fort legendum_ || 17 seu] si _M1_ || excutias] inquiras _F1M2ul_ || 18 inueniemur _HILB2ulF2ul_ inuenientur _MF1T_ perueniemus _B1C_ || 19 ueliS/ _F2c_ || qui sint mores] qui sunt mores _I, ut uid_ mores qui sint _M_ || inquirere] inquire _M_ || nostri] nostros _I, probante Heinsio_ || 20 detrahe] dete _I1_ || 22 exora] excola _Bac_ || 23 di] at _C_ || sunt] sint _BCFM2ul_ || 24 nulla est] nulla _FT_ || notior] certior _I_ || 25 non] nec _I_ || sinit] sinet _I_ || illa] ara _M1_ || 26 rebus] *ebus _B_ quamlibet exigua si nos ea iuuerit aura, obruta de mediis cumba resurget aquis; tunc ego tura feram rapidis sollemnia flammis, et ualeant quantum numina testis ero. 30 nec tibi de Pario statuam, Germanice, templum marmore; carpsit opes illa ruina meas. templa domus facient uobis urbesque beatae; Naso suis opibus, carmine, gratus erit. parua quidem fateor pro magnis munera reddi, 35 cum pro concessa uerba salute damus; sed qui quam potuit dat maxima gratus abunde est, et finem pietas contigit illa suum, 27 quamlibet] qualibet _I_ qua libet _BpcC_ || iuuerit] pauerit _unus Vaticanus, unde_ fouerit _Heinsius_ || 29 tunc] nunc _C_ || 30 ualeant quantum] quantum ualeant _F_ || 31 Pario] phario _LF2H2I2_ || 32 carpsit] carsit _Cac_ carp*it _B2c_ capsit _Fac_ || meas] meos _L_ || 33 facient uobis] facient nobis _C_ faciant uobis _FI, probante Heinsio_ uobis facIANT _M2c, ut uid_ || urbesque] urbeque _F1_ || beatae] batæ _Cac_ bate _F_ || 37 sed] si _T_ || quam] quantum _B2_ || abunde _C_ ab unde _B_ habunde _MHILT, F2c in ras_ || est _om I1_ nec quae de parua pauper dis libat acerra tura minus grandi quam data lance ualent, 40 agnaque tam lactens quam gramine pasta Falisco uictima Tarpeios inficit icta focos. nec tamen officio uatum per carmina facto principibus res est aptior ulla uiris. carmina uestrarum peragunt praeconia laudum, 45 neue sit actorum fama caduca cauent; carmine fit uiuax uirtus, expersque sepulcri notitiam serae posteritatis habet; tabida consumit ferrum lapidemque uetustas, nullaque res maius tempore robur habet. 50 39 nec quae] nequæ _C_ || pauper dis libat] pauper delibat _F_ dis pauper libat _ML_ || acerra] acerba _C (=acerua)_ || 40 minus] minos _C_ || lance] luce _M_ || 41 lactens] lactans _F1_ || 43 officio] in uita _C_ || 44 aptior] altior _P_ aPtior _F2c_ gratior _Heinsius ex tredecim codicibus_ || ulla] illa _B1C_ || 45 uestrarum] uastarum _Burman_ certarum _Heinsius_ || laudum] laudem _Iac, ut uid_ rerum _M2ul_ || 46 actorum _MFIT_ auctorum _BCHL_ || 47 sepulcri] sepul**ri _Mac_ || _49-50 in marg add F2; post 51-52 ponit B1_ || 49 t//Abida _I2c, ut uid_ || consumit] cumsumit _F2, fort BCI_ scripta ferunt annos: scriptis Agamemnona nosti, et quisquis contra uel simul arma tulit; quis Thebas septemque duces sine carmine nosset et quicquid post haec, quicquid et ante fuit? di quoque carminibus, si fas est dicere, fiunt, 55 tantaque maiestas ore canentis eget: sic Chaos ex illa naturae mole prioris digestum partes scimus habere suas; sic adfectantes caelestia regna Gigantas ad Styga nimbiferi uindicis igne datos; 60 sic uictor laudem superatis Liber ab Indis, Alcides capta traxit ab Oechalia; et modo, Caesar, auum, quem uirtus addidit astris, sacrarunt aliqua carmina parte tuum. _51-54 om F_ || 51 Agamemnona] agamenona _IL_ nosti] nostis _MH_ || contra] _quid B2, non liquet_ || 54 haec] has _Heinsius_ || 55 dicere] credere _T_ || 58 suas] duas _F2ul: 'id est oriens et occidens' (F2gl)_ || 59 Gigantas _Heinsius_ gigantes _codd_ || 60 nimbiferi _scripsi; possis et_ nimbigeri _legere_ nimbifero _BCI_ nibifero _T_ nubifero _MFHL_ fulmineo _P_ fumoso _M2(gl)_ || uindicis] uindice _B_ || datos] das _M1_ || 62 capta traxit] traxit capta _Iac_ || Oechalia _edd_ oethalia _BI_ ethalia _C(Fac)L_ etholia _MHPTFpc_ || 63 addidit] addiuit _Bac_ addit _F1Iac_ abdidit _L_ si quid adhuc igitur uiui, Germanice, nostro 65 restat in ingenio, seruiet omne tibi. non potes officium uatis contemnere uates; iudicio pretium res habet ista tuo. quod nisi te nomen tantum ad maiora uocasset, gloria Pieridum summa futurus eras. 70 si dare materiam nobis quam carmina mauis, nec tamen ex toto deserere illa potes: nam modo bella geris, numeris modo uerba coerces, quodque aliis opus est, hoc tibi lusus erit, utque nec ad citharam nec ad arcum segnis Apollo, 75 sed uenit ad sacras neruus uterque manus, sic tibi nec docti desunt nec principis artes, mixta sed est animo cum Ioue Musa tuo. 65 igitur _om Hac_ || uiui] riui _Hertzberg ad Prop IV i 59_ || 68 iudiciO _B2c_ || tuo _ex_ suo _T, ut uid_ || 69 quod] qui _T_ || nomen] numen _'unus Heinsii cum prima editione, ut Augustus intelligatur'--Burman_ || tantum] tanto _C_ || 71 si _R. J. Tarrant_ sed _codd_ || mauis _IF2ul_ maius _BF1 utrumque legere possis in CMHLT_ || 72 nec] non _I_ || 74 quodque] quod _Bac_ || lusus] ludus _MLI2_ leue _L2(gl)_ || 75 citharam] citharum _C_ || Apollo _FILT_ apollo est _BCMH_ || 77 docti desunt nec _BF1T_ docte desunt nec _LF2_ docti nec desunt _CM_ desunt docti nec _HI_ quae quoniam nec nos unda summouit ab illa ungula Gorgonei quam caua fecit equi, 80 prosit opemque ferat communia sacra tueri atque isdem studiis imposuisse manum, litora pellitis nimium subiecta Corallis ut tandem saeuos effugiamque Getas, clausaque si misero patria est, ut ponar in ullo 85 qui minus Ausonia distet ab urbe loco, unde tuas possim laudes celebrare recentes magnaque quam minima facta referre mora. tangat ut hoc uotum caelestia, care Suilli, numina, pro socero paene precare tuo. 79 nos] uos _Hac_ || summouit] dimouit _H_ || 81 tueri] tuenti _BpcF1_ || 82 atque] at sit _F2ul_ || isdem _CFIac_ iisdem _T_ hi(i)sdem _MHIpcL_ his dem _B1_ his det _B2, ut uid_ || 83 pellitis] peditis _ex_ proditis _C, ut uid_ || Corallis] coraulis _M_ || 84 effugiamque] effugi*m _F1_ || 85 misero patria est] misero est patria _H_ || in _add M2_ || ullo _M_ illo _BCFHILT_ || 86 minus] minor _F2ul_ || Ausonia] ausonio _C_ ausoniA _F2c_ || distet] distat _BCT_ distET _M2c, ut uid_ || loco] locus _F_ || 87 recentes] recenter _Heinsius_ || 88 quam] cum _H_ || minima _BCHILTM2, F2 in ras_ nimia _M1_ || 89 tangat] tangant _CacH_ || care] cara _BacC_ || Suilli] suille _T_ || 90 socero _ex_ cero _M_ || paene] pena _Bac_ IX Vnde licet, non unde iuuat, Graecine, salutem mittit ab Euxinis hanc tibi Naso uadis; missaque di faciant auroram occurrat ad illam bis senos fasces quae tibi prima dabit, ut, quoniam sine me tanges Capitolia consul, 5 et fiam turbae pars ego nulla tuae, in domini subeat partes, et praestet amici officium festo littera nostra die. atqui ego si fatis genitus melioribus essem, et mea sincero curreret axe rota, 10 quo nunc nostra manus per scriptum fungitur, esset lingua salutandi munere functa tui, racino _B2_ grecino amico suo _M_ ad grecinum _FI2_ grecino _H2_ hanc epistulam mittit grecinno _L_ || 1 unde] inde _T_ || iuuat] uiuat _F_ || Graecine] grecinne _LT_ || 2 Euxinis] exinis _C, ut uid_ (ecinis _Lenz, André_) || 3 di _BC_ dii _MFHILT_ || 4 fasces] fascis _C_ faces _F1IacPac_ || 5 ut] et _MITF2ulH2ul_ || 7 domini] domino _Iac_ _om M1_ || partes et praestet _F2 in ras_ || partes] partis _C_ || praestet] pRAt _L_ || 8 officium] officium et _Mac, ut uid_ || festo _Burman_ iusto _T, sicut coni Merkel_ iusso _BCMFHIL_ || littera] litora _C_ || 9 atqui _unus e duobus Hafniensibus Heinsii_ atque _BCM1FHILT_ ast _M2ul_ || genitus] genitis _F1_ || 12 lingua] linga _I1_ || salutandi] salutanti _C_ gratatusque darem cum dulcibus oscula uerbis, nec minus ille meus quam tuus esset honor; illa, confiteor, sic essem luce superbus 15 ut caperet fastus uix domus ulla meos. dumque latus sancti cingit tibi turba senatus, consulis ante pedes ire iuberer eques, et quamquam cuperem semper tibi proximus esse, gauderem lateris non habuisse locum; 20 nec querulus, turba quamuis eliderer, essem, sed foret a populo tum mihi dulce premi. prospicerem gaudens quantus foret agminis ordo, densaque quam longum turba teneret iter; quoque magis noris quam me uulgaria tangant, 25 spectarem qualis purpura te tegeret; 14 minus ... meus quam] meus ... minus quam _M_ minus ... meusque _C_ minor ... meus quam _T_ || tuus _add I in marg_ || 16 ulla] illa _BacMac_ || 17 cingit] cinget _MIF2_ tanget _ F2ul_ || tibi _add F2_ || 18 iuberer] uiderer _unus Vaticanus, probante Heinsio_ || 19 cuperem _add F2_ cuper** _H_ || 20 lateris] lateri _MFL_ || 22 sed] sic _F_ || tum] tunc _MFH_ || 23 prospicerem] aspicerem _B_ respicerem _Riese_ || _25-26 damnant Heinsius Bentley_ || 25 quoque] quodque _L_ utque _F2ulM2gl_ || tangant _BC_ tangunt _MFHILT_ || 26 tegeret] regeret _L_ signa quoque in sella nossem formata curuli et totum Numidae sculptile dentis opus. at cum Tarpeias esses deductus in arces, dum caderet iussu uictima sacra tuo, 30 me quoque secreto grates sibi magnus agentem audisset media qui sedet aede deus, turaque mente magis plena quam lance dedissem, ter quater imperii laetus honore tui. hic ego praesentes inter numerarer amicos, 35 mitia ius urbis si modo fata darent, quaeque mihi sola capitur nunc mente uoluptas, tunc oculis etiam percipienda foret. _27-28 damnat Merkel (1884)_ || 27 curuli] curili _I_ || 28 Numidae _edd_ numidi _BCMHILT_ nimidi _F_ || sculptile] scalpule _C_ scutile _F1_ scVLPTILE _M2c_ || opus] ebur _T_ || 29 at] et _HL_ || arces] artes _Bac_ || 30 dum] cum _CL_ || iussu] iusso _B_ || 31 grates _ex_ magnus _T_ || 33 plena quam] plenaque _CF1_ quam plena _I_ || 34 ter] terque _B2_ || laetus] plenus _T_ || 35 hic] tunc _Housman (Owen 1894)_ hinc _Merkel (1884), Schenkl (Owen)_ sic _Merkel (1853)_ || ego] mihi _C_ || 36 ius urbis si _editio Aldina 1502_ ius uerbis si _B1CMF1IT_ ius uerbi si _H_ ius nobis si _F2_ uim uerbis si _B2, F3 ut uid_ si uerbis uim _L_ || 37 quaeque] quoque _C, ut uid_ non ita caelitibus uisum est, et forsitan aequis: nam quid me poenae causa negata iuuet? 40 mente tamen, quae sola domo non exulat, usus praetextam fasces aspiciamque tuos. haec modo te populo reddentem iura uidebit, et se decretis finget adesse tuis, nunc longi reditus hastae supponere lustri 45 cernet et exacta cuncta locare fide, nunc facere in medio facundum uerba senatu publica quaerentem quid petat utilitas, 39 aequis] aequos _C_ || 40 causa] culpa _Heinsius_ || negata] nagata _C_ || iuuet] foret _Bac, 'unde uerum eliciendum'--Riese_ || 41 domo _scripsi_ loco _codd_ foco _fort legendum_ || usus _Heinsius_ utor _BCL_ utar _MFHIT_ utens _Williams (utens ... aspiciamque)_ || 42 aspiciamque] aspiciensque _Williams (utar ... aspiciensque)_ || 43 haec] nec _Bac_ || 44 decretis _Korn_ secretis _codd_ secreto _Wheeler_ || finget] fingit _B, C ut uid_ || tuis] locis _Etonensis B. k. 6.18, saec xiii (Lenz), probante Heinsio (secretis ... locis)_ || 45 longi] longe _TF2 (=longae)_ || lustri] lutri _Hac_ lustra _F2ul_ || 46 cernet _P, Gothanus membr. II 121, saec xiii (André)_ credet _BCFHILT_ cERNet _M2c_ || exacta] perfecta _M2(gl)I2(gl)_ || _47 om C_ || 48 publica] puplica _LP_ || petat] petit _M_ nunc pro Caesaribus superis decernere grates, albaue opimorum colla ferire boum. 50 atque utinam, cum iam fueris potiora precatus, ut mihi placetur principis ira roges; surgat ad hanc uocem plena pius ignis ab ara, detque bonum uoto lucidus omen apex. interea, qua parte licet, ne cuncta queramur, 55 hic quoque te festum consule tempus agam. altera laetitiae est nec cedens causa priori: successor tanti frater honoris erit. nam tibi finitum summo, Graecine, Decembri imperium Iani suscipit ille die, 60 quaeque est in uobis pietas, alterna feretis gaudia, tu fratris fascibus, ille tuis; 50 albaue _BCI_ albaque _MFHLT_ || opimorum] primorum _IT_ || 51 iam] tu _FT_ || potiora] maiora _P_ || 52 principis] numinis _M_ || 53 pius] prius _Iac_ || 57 laetitiae est _LT_ laetitia est _BCFHI_ letici* est _M_ laetitiae _Heinsius e tribus codd_ || cedens _BCLpcT_ credens _Lac_ cendens _M_ cedet _FHI_ || _59-60 fort spurii_ || 59 Graecine] DEgrecine _M1c_ (= grecine _ex_ decembri[-is?]) || Decembri] decembris _M_ || 60 suscipit] suspicit _(Bac)C_ suscipiet _M2(gl)_ || 61 uobis] nobis _(F1)H_ || alterna] aterna _C, ut uid_ sic tu bis fueris consul, bis consul et ille, inque domo binus conspicietur honor, qui quamquam est ingens, et nullum Martia summo 65 altius imperium consule Roma uidet, multiplicat tamen hunc grauitas auctoris honorem, et maiestatem res data dantis habet; iudiciis igitur liceat Flaccoque tibique talibus Augusti tempus in omne frui! 70 cum tamen a rerum cura propiore uacabit, uota precor uotis addite uestra meis, et si quae dabit aura sinum, laxate rudentes, exeat e Stygiis ut mea nauis aquis. 63 fueris consul] consul fueris _T_ fueris _B1_ || bis consul et ille] bis consul et ipse _H_ et ille _Mac_ || 64 binus] bimus _Gudianus 228 (Owen 1894), probante Heinsio_ || honor] honos _L_ || 65 quamquam] quamque _C_ || nullum] nullium _BacP_ || 67 auctoris] actoris _MFI_ || 69 Flaccoque] flacco _T_ || 71 cum _FILT_ quod _BC_ ut _MH_ quum _Weise (Ehwald _KB_ 48)_ || a] ab _B_ || propiore] propriore _CFL_ || uacabit] uacabis _Riese_ || 72 uotis] uestris _Mac_ || 73 et] _quid B, incertum_ || quae _scripsi_ qua _CMFHIL_ quem _BT_ || sinum] sonum _Williams_ || laxate _editio princeps Romana 1471_ iactate _codd_ || rudentes] rudentis _B_ || 74 exeat] et exeat _C_ || e _BCH_ a _MFILT_ || Stygiis] stigis _Cac_ praefuit his, Graecine, locis modo Flaccus, et illo ripa ferox Histri sub duce tuta fuit: hic tenuit Mysas gentes in pace fideli, hic arcu fisos terruit ense Getas, hic raptam Troesmin celeri uirtute recepit, infecitque fero sanguine Danuuium. 80 quaere loci faciem Scythicique incommoda caeli, et quam uicino terrear hoste roga, sintne litae tenues serpentis felle sagittae, fiat an humanum uictima dira caput, mentiar, an coeat duratus frigore Pontus, 85 et teneat glacies iugera multa freti. 75 praefuit] praefugit _C_ || 77 Mysas gentes _BT_ misas gentis _C_ missas gentes _FI_ missus gentes _L_ gentes missas _MH_ sibi commissas _F2(gl)_ commissas _H2(g1)_ || 78 fisos] fortes _M2ul_ || 79 Troesmin _Heinsius; uide _CIL_ V 6183-88, 6195_ troesmen _C_ troesenen _B1_ troien _L_ troezen _HITB2_ troezem _F_ trozenam _M_ || 80 infecitque] infecit _M1_ || Danuuium _Korn_ danubium _codd_ || 81 quaere] queri _T_ || Scythicique incommoda caeli _add F2_ || Scythicique] siticique _I_ || 82 terrear] terreat _C_ || hoste] ense _H_ || 83 serpentis] serpentes _Iac_ || felle] sola _C_ || 85 mentiar] effluat _FL_ anfluat _P_ * fluAT _M2c_ haec ubi narrarit, quae sit mea fama require, quoque modo peragam tempora dura roga. non sumus hic odio, nec scilicet esse meremur, nec cum fortuna mens quoque uersa mea est; 90 illa quies animo quam tu laudare solebas, illa uetus solito perstat in ore pudor, [sic ego sum longe, sic hic, ubi barbarus hostis ut fera plus ualeant legibus arma facit,] re queat ut nulla tot iam, Graecine, per annos 95 femina de nobis uirue puerue queri. 87 ubi] ubi _uel_ tibi _B_ || narrarit] narraret _C_ narrauit _F1_ || fama] fata _F2_ || 90 nec] hec _C_ || uersa mea] mea uersa _H1_ rapta mea _F_ || 91 animo _'optimus Vaticanus', probante Heinsio_ animi _BCMFHILT_ || 92 perstat] praestat _BC_ || _93-94 damnat Merkel; 93 'uersus suspectus'--Heinsius; post_ longe _hexametri finem, pentametrum, hexametri initium excidisse putat Ehwald_ || 93 sic ego sum longe [-æ _C_] sic hic _BCMFHILT_ sic ego sum, sic hic sanctis _Korn_ sic ego sum longe, Scythicis _Owen (ed. Tristium 1889, p. xxxviii)_ || longe] lenis _Némethy_ || 95 re ... nulla _MHIL_ rem ... nullam _BCFT_ tot iam] iam tot _L_ || 96 uirue] uirque _M_ hoc facit ut misero faueant adsintque Tomitae (haec quoniam tellus testificanda mihi est): illi me, quia uelle uident, discedere malunt; respectu cupiunt hic tamen esse sui. 100 nec mihi credideris: extant decreta quibus nos laudat et immunes publica cera facit; conueniens miseris quae quamquam gloria non sit, proxima dant nobis oppida munus idem. nec pietas ignota mea est: uidet hospita terra 105 in nostra sacrum Caesaris esse domo. 97 hoc] hec _H_ quies animi _H2(gl)_ || facit ut] facit et _BC_ facITVt _F2c_ faciunt _(F1)_ || misero faueant adsintque] faueant assint miseroque _T_ || adsintque] adsinque _Cac_ aDsintque _F2c_ absintque _(F1)_ || 98 quoniam] _quid M2c in ras, incertum (ipsum?)_ || mihi est] michi _M_ || 99 illi] ille _Iac_ || malunt] malint _Heinsius_ || 100 respectu ... sui] respectu ... suo _ML_ || cupiunt] cupiant _Heinsius_ || 101 nec] neu _Heinsius_ || mihi] si _B2(gl?)_ || 102 immunes] in munem _B_ || publica] puplica _LP_ || cera _BCMHILF2ul_ cura _T_ causa _F1F2ul(sic)_ terra _F2ul_ || 103 quae _R. J. Tarrant_ haec _L, probante Heinsio_ et _BCMFHIT_ ea _Heinsius_ || gloria] gratia _Heinsius_ || sit _G_ est _CMFHILT quid B, non liquet_ stant pariter natusque pius coniunxque sacerdos, numina iam facto non leuiora deo, neu desit pars ulla domus, stat uterque nepotum, hic auiae lateri proximus, ille patris. 110 his ego do totiens cum ture precantia uerba, Eoo quotiens surgit ab orbe dies; tota (licet quaeras) hoc me non fingere dicet officii testis Pontica terra mei. [Pontica me tellus, quantis hac possumus ora, 115 natalem ludis scit celebrare dei,] nec minus hospitibus pietas est cognita talis, misit in has si quos longa Propontis aquas; 107 pariter _GBMFHILT_ pariterque _C_ || coniunxque _GBCMpcFHILT_ natusque _Mac_ || 108 iam ... non _GBCMFHLT_ non ... iam _I_ || facto] fato _G_ || 109 neu] ne _BC_ || 110 auiae _BCILM2ul_ liuie _M1FHTI2gl_ || proximus] protimus [_sic_] _H1_ || 112 surgit] fugit _M_ || orbe] ore _H1_ || _113-14 damnat Williams_ || 113 licet] uelim _fort legendum_ || hoc me non _BCT,Hac?_ hec me non _FHIL_ me numquam _M_ || _115-16 damnat R. J. Tarrant_ || 115 possumus] nos possumus _I_ || ora] ara _B_ || 116 dei] diem _HP_ || 117 cognita] condita _F_ || 118 longa] loga _M_ is quoque, quo laeuus fuerat sub praeside Pontus, audierit frater forsitan ista tuus. 120 fortuna est impar animo, talique libenter exiguas carpo munere pauper opes, nec uestris damus haec oculis, procul urbe remoti, contenti tacita sed pietate sumus; et tamen haec tangent aliquando Caesaris aures: 125 nil illum toto quod fit in orbe latet. tu certe scis haec, superis ascite, uidesque, Caesar, ut est oculis subdita terra tuis; 119 is] hic _M1_ his _P_ || laeuus fuerat _TF2ul_ letus fuerat _BC_ leuius fuerat _LP_ leuuus fuerat _M_ leuior fuerat _F1H_ fuerat letuus I || 120 audierit] audierat _F_ || ista] illa _M_ || 121 fortuna est] fortuna _H1_ || 122 exiguas] exiguus _Bac_ || 123 haec] hoc _F_ || urbe] orbe _Iac_ || 124 sed pietate] haec pietate _ex_ haec pietate haec pietate _I_ || /sVmus _B2c_ || 125 et] ut _C_ set _L_ || tamen haec tangent] tanget tamen hoc _F_ || aures] iram _Iac_ || 126 nil] non _CL_ || illum] illi _B1_ || fit _BFI_ sit _LT possis alterutrum legere in CMH_ || 127 tu certe] tu c _seruat G_ _spatium quinque litterarum reliquit C_ en certe _M2ul_ || haec] hoc _FIT_ || ascite] adscite _B_ accite _M_ acs.cite _F_ || 128 ut _'legendum ex ueteribus'--Naugerius_ et _BCMFHILT_ tu nostras audis inter conuexa locatus sidera sollicito quas damus ore preces. 130 perueniant istuc et carmina forsitan illa quae de te misi caelite facta nouo; auguror his igitur flecti tua numina, nec tu immerito nomen mite parentis habes. 129 conuexa] onu _seruat G_ connexa _L_ || 130 sollicito _GB2CMFHILT_ sollito _B1_ || preces _CMHIT_ praeces _G_ Pces _BFL_ || 131 perueniant _GBC_ peruenient _FHILT_ perueniunt _M_ || istuc _GBCMFHI_ illuc _LT_ || forsitan _GBCFHILT_ forsita _M_ || 132 misi] miss _G_ || facta _GBCpcMFHILT_ facto _Cac_ || 133-34 nec ... immerito] nec _seruat G_ nam ... e merito [_unde_ ex merito _C. P. Jones_] _fort legendum_ || 134 mite] mitte _Fac_ || habes] habet _B1_ X Haec mihi Cimmerio bis tertia ducitur aestas litore pellitos inter agenda Getas. ecquos tu silices, ecquod, carissime, ferrum duritiae confers, Albinouane, meae? gutta cauat lapidem, consumitur anulus usu, 5 atteritur pressa uomer aduncus humo. tempus edax igitur praeter nos omnia perdit; cessat duritia mors quoque uicta mea. albinouano _B2_ albino uano _H2_ albinouano amico suo _M_ ad albino uanom _F_ ad albinouanum _I2_ hanc epistulam mittit albinouano _L_ || 1 Haec] hic _MF_ || Cimmerio _British Library Harley 2607 (Tarrant)_ cumerio _M1_ in etiam memori _C_ in ********** _B1_ in hemonio _HITP_ in euxino _F_ in EXINO _B2c_ bistonio _LM2ul_ || aestas] aetas _C_ || 2 pellitos] pellitas _BH_ pellito _C_ || 3 ecquos ... ecquod _Laurentianus 36 2, saec xv (Lenz)_ et quos ... et quod _BMFHILT_ at quos ... et quod _C_ || carissime] h°iNe _L_ || 4 Albinouane] albino uane _H_ || 6 atteritur _Heinsius_ et teritur _codd_ deteritur _Heinsius_ || _post 6 hos uersus habet M:_ set cum nostra malis uexentur corpora multis / aspera non possum perpetiendo mori || 7 perdit _I_ perdet _BCMFHLT_ || 8 cessat duritia] duritia cessat _Cac_ cesset duritia _Castiglioni (Lenz)_ || mea. _edd_ mea? _Riese, Castiglioni_ exemplum est animi nimium patientis Vlixes iactatus dubio per duo lustra mari; 10 tempora solliciti sed non tamen omnia fati pertulit, et placidae saepe fuere morae. an graue sex annis pulchram fouisse Calypso aequoreaeque fuit concubuisse deae? excipit Hippotades, qui dat pro munere uentos, 15 curuet ut impulsos utilis aura sinus, nec bene cantantes labor est audisse puellas, nec degustanti lotos amara fuit: hos ego qui patriae faciant obliuia sucos parte meae uitae, si modo dentur, emam. 20 9 exemplum est animi _BCMFLT_ (anini _T_) exemplum animi est _H_ exemplum animi _I_ || 10 dubio ... mari] 'cbio ... mori _C_ || 11 non] quae _'liber unus Bers[manni]. & ego inueni in editione Vicentina. & Ciofano pro textu est'--Auctor Electorum Etonensium_ || 12 pertulit] non tulit _Auctor Elect. Eton. (quae tamen ... non tulit)_ || morae] m-ore _F_ || 13 pulchram _ex_ pulcham _M_ || Calypso] calipson _FH_ || 14 aequoreaeque] equoreque _Iac_ Aeaeaeque _Merkel_ || concubuisse] incubuisse _T_ || deae] deo _C_ || 15 Hippotades] hypodates _FHT_ || 17 cantantes] cantantis _B_ || audisse _F_ audire _BCMHILT_ || 18 lotos _B1C_ lothos _MFLTH2I2_ lethes _I1P_ sucus _H1_ _quid B2, incertum (votos?)_ || amara] amarus _H1_ || fuit] erat _H_ || 19 faciant] faciunt _H_ || sucos] lucos _C_ || 20 meae] meæ est _C_ nec tu contuleris urbem Laestrygonos umquam gentibus obliqua quas obit Hister aqua, nec uincet Cyclops saeuum feritate Piacchen, qui quota terroris pars solet esse mei! Scylla feris trunco quod latret ab inguine monstris, 25 Heniochae nautis plus nocuere rates. nec potes infestis conferre Charybdin Achaeis, ter licet epotum ter uomat illa fretum, qui, quamquam dextra regione licentius errant, securum latus hoc non tamen esse sinunt. 30 21 urbem _BCMT_ urbes _FHIL_ || Laestrygonos _BC_ lestrigonis _MFIT_ listrigonis _HL_ || 22 quas] quos _T_ || Hister] inster _L_ **ster _C_ || 23 feritate] pietate _BC, Iac ut uid_ || Piacchen _B_ piaechen _C_ phiacem _T_ piacE _MFHIL_ || 24 mei] mihi _T_ || 25 Scylla] silla _CP_ || feris] ferox _IT_ || quod] quae _M2ul_ quamuis _H_ || latret] latrat _FM2ul_ || 26 Heniochae _edd_ enioche _CFH_ en*oche _B1_ emioche _M, ut uid_ enochie _ITB2_ emochee _L_ || nautis] multis _I_ nobis _B2_ || 27 nec] non _L_ || Charybdin] caripdin _I_ charydin _C_ || Achaeis] ach--eis _I_ || 28 epotum _B_ et potum _C_ epotet _MFHILT_ || ter uomat] ter uomet _H1_ euomat _C_ || illa] ore _M2ul_ || 29 quamquam] quamuis _T_ || errant _BCFH_ errent _MILT_ || 30 latus] natus _C_ || hoc non] non _Mac I1_ hic agri infrondes, hic spicula tincta uenenis; hic freta uel pediti peruia reddit hiemps ut, qua remus iter pulsis modo fecerat undis, siccus contempta naue uiator eat. qui ueniunt istinc uix uos ea credere dicunt; 35 quam miser est qui fert asperiora fide! crede tamen; nec te causas nescire sinemus horrida Sarmaticum cur mare duret hiemps. proxima sunt nobis plaustri praebentia formam et quae perpetuum sidera frigus habent; 40 hinc oritur Boreas, oraeque domesticus huic est, et sumit uires a propiore polo. 31 infrondes] frondes _C_ || 32 hic] hec _L_ || uel] quae _I1_ || reddit] fecit _M2ul_ || 34 naue] nauu _Cac, ut uid_ || 35 istinc] istuc _MFI_ || uix uos] uix nos _BL_ uos uix _T_ || credere] crederer _H_ || 36 fert] foret _Cac_ || 37 tamen] tantum _L_ mihi _M2c in ras_ || nec te causas _BCMFHLT_ (te _in ras M2c_) causas nec te _I_ || 39 praebentia] ducentia _F, probante Burman_ || 40 perpetuum _M2ul_ praecipuum _BCM1FHILT_ || 41 hinc] hic _FL_ || huic] hinc _L_ 42 uires ... polo _'Meynke, recte?'--Riese_ uires ... loco _codd_ mores ... locus _Merkel (1884)_ || a propiore] asperiore _H1_ a superiore _H2ul_ at Notus, aduerso tepidum qui spirat ab axe, est procul, et rarus languidiorque uenit. adde quod hic clauso miscentur flumina Ponto, 45 uimque fretum multo perdit ab amne suam. huc Lycus, huc Sagaris Peniusque Hypanisque Calesque influit, et crebro uertice tortus Halys; Partheniusque rapax et uoluens saxa Cinapses labitur, et nullo tardior amne Tyras, 50 43 at _BCMF2HILT_ et _F1_ set _F2[sic]_ || aduerso] auerso _Bentley_ || tepidum] tepidus _MH2c_ tepide _F2ul_ || 46 multo] misto _M2ul(=mixto)_ || 47 Lycus] lucus _I_ || Peniusque _Heinsius ex Plin. _NH_ VI 14_ peneusque _CI_ paneusque _BMHT_ poneusque _L_ panesque _F_ || Hypanisque _Heinsius 'ex libris antiquis'_ hitanisque _B_ hyranisque _C ut uid, M ut uid_ hytanusque _F_ hytanesque _T_ hitaneusque _ex_ hitanque _I_ hythausque _H_ iponesque _L_ || Calesque _I. Vossius ex 'Eustathio Scholiis in Periegeten' (Heinsius)_ catesque _BCMFHLT_ charesque _I_ || 48 crebro] crebo _B_ torto _I_ || tortus] pulsus _M_ || Halys _B_ halis _H_ alis _MFILT_ hilas _C_ || 49 Partheniusque _BHL_ partheniasque _C, ut uid_ parthemiusque _IT_ parthiniusque _M_ partenusque _F_ || Cinapses _BC; fluuius prorsus ignotus_ Cynapses _edd_ cinapsis _L_ tynapses _H_ cinaspes _FIT_ niphates _M (ex Luc. III 245)_ Cinolis _Auctor Electorum Etonensium 'Cinolis emporium Arriano'_ || 50 et nullo] et ullo _I_ hanc aliquo _Leidensis Heinsii_ haud aliquo _Heinsius_ et tu, femineae Thermodon cognite turmae, et quondam Graiis Phasi petite uiris, cumque Borysthenio liquidissimus amne Dirapses et tacite peragens lene Melanthus iter, quique duas terras, Asiam Cadmique sororem, 55 separat et cursus inter utramque facit, innumerique alii, quos inter maximus omnes cedere Danuuius se tibi, Nile, negat; copia tot laticum quas auget adulterat undas, nec patitur uires aequor habere suas. 60 quin etiam, stagno similis pigraeque paludi, caeruleus uix est diluiturque color; 51 Thermodon] themodon _C_ || turmae _BCM_ turbe _FHILT_ || 52 Graiis _CM_ grais _BHILT_ a grais _F_ || Phasi] phasis _H1_ || 53 Borysthenio _editio princeps Romana 1471_ boristenico _BCML_ boristonico _F_ boistronico _I_ boistonico _T_ boistenio _H_ || liquidissimus] rapidissimus _T_ || Dirapses _BCFHLT; fluuius ignotus_ diraspes _I_ daraspes _M_ Lycastus _Auctor Electorum Etonensium, probante Riese_ || 54 Melanthus] melantis _T_ || Cadmique] _add I2 in loco a prima manu relicto_ cathmique _B_ || 56 inter] interque _M_ || 57 alii] amnes _M1_ || omnes] omnis _B_ || 58 Danuuius _Korn_ danubius _codd_ || negat] neget _F1_ || 59 laticum] liticum _L_ || 61 quin] qui _CP, fort Fac_ || pigraeque] nigreque _T_ innatat unda freto dulcis, leuiorque marina est, quae proprium mixto de sale pondus habet. si roget haec aliquis cur sint narrata Pedoni, 65 quidue loqui certis iuuerit ista modis, 'detinui' dicam 'tempus, curasque fefelli; hunc fructum praesens attulit hora mihi. abfuimus solito dum scribimus ista dolore, in mediis nec nos sensimus esse Getis.' 70 at tu, non dubito, cum Thesea carmine laudes, materiae titulos quin tueare tuae, quemque refers imitere uirum; uetat ille profecto tranquilli comitem temporis esse fidem. 63 marina est] marina _ILT_ || 64 pondus] nomen _ILB2_ momen _Wakefield ad Lucr. VI 474_ || 65 roget] rogat _CT_ || 67 detinui ... tempus, curasque _excerpta Politiani_ detinui ... tempus curamque _LT_ detinui ... curas tempusque _BCMFHI_ diminui ... curas tempusque _codex Petri Danielul (Burman), sicut coniecerat Burman_ distinui ... curas, tempusque _Auctor Electorum Etonensium_ || 68 fructum praesens] praesens fructum _F_ || 69 abfuimus] afluimus _B1_ aff*uimus _C_ absumus a _M_ || scribimus] scripsimus _MFL_ || dolore] labore _M_ || 71 dubito] dubiTO _M2cF2c, ut uid_ dubites _F3ul, ut uid_ || cum] tum _C_ || 73 quemque] queque _C_ || imitere] imite** _C (folium lacerum)_ imitare _HLT, Ipc ut uid_ imita _Iac ut uid_ qui quamquam est factis ingens et conditur a te 75 uir tantus quanto debuit ore cani, est tamen ex illo nobis imitabile quiddam, inque fide Theseus quilibet esse potest. non tibi sunt hostes ferro clauaque domandi, per quos uix illi peruius isthmos erat, 80 sed praestandus amor, res non operosa uolenti: quis labor est puram non temerasse fidem? haec tibi, qui perstas indeclinatus amico, non est quod lingua dicta querente putes. 75 quamquam est] quamquam _MP_ || factis ingens] ingens factis _F_ ingens actis _T_ factis uiges _P_ || conditur] conditus _HT_ cognitus _F_ || a te] arte _L_ || 76 uir] uix _LT_ || tantus quanto _L_ tanto quantus _BacCFHITpc_ tantVS quantus _M2c_ tanto quanto _BpcTac_ quanto tantus _fort legendum_ || 77 est] et _I_ || ex] in _C_ || nobis] uobis _H_ || imitabile] imitabibe _C_ || quiddam] quoddam _L_ quidquam _M2ul_ || 78 fide _MFH_ fidem _BCILT_ || 80 quos _in ras M2_ || illi _MFHIL_ ulli _BCT_ || 81 operosa] oNerosa _M2c_ laboriosa _I2(gl)_ || 83 qui] quae _C_ cum _L_ || perstas _IPF2ul_ praestas _BCMF1HT_ pRAs _L_ || 84 non est] non _B1_ XI Gallio, crimen erit uix excusabile nobis carmine te nomen non habuisse meo. tu quoque enim, memini, caelesti cuspide facta fouisti lacrimis uulnera nostra tuis. atque utinam rapti iactura laesus amici 5 sensisses ultra quod quererere nihil; non ita dis placuit, qui te spoliare pudica coniuge crudeles non habuere nefas. nuntia nam luctus mihi nuper epistula uenit, lectaque cum lacrimis sunt tua damna meis. 10 sed neque solari prudentem stultior ausim uerbaque doctorum nota referre tibi, finitumque tuum, si non ratione, dolorem ipsa iam pridem suspicor esse mora. gallioni _B2H2_ gallioni amico suo _M_ pollioni _F_ ad gallionem _I2_ hanc epistulam mittit gallioni _L_ || 1 Gallio] pollio _F_ || 3 cuspide] cupide _Mac_ || 6 quererere] querere _BCP_ || 7 dis placuit] displicuit _(B1)_ || spoliare _ex_ poliare _F_ || 8 habuere] hUere _IT (=habuere)_ hubuere _Cac_ || 9 nam] iam _F_ || 10 damna] uerba _TF2ul_ || meis] nostris _M_ mihi _Ehwald_ || 12 uerbaque] uerba _B1_ || nota] uota _L_ uerba _C_ || 13 dolorem] putarem _C_ || 14 iam] tam _I_ || pridem] prima _Cac_ dum tua perueniens, dum littera nostra recurrens 15 tot maria ac terras permeat, annus abit. temporis officium est solacia dicere certi, dum dolor in cursu est, et petit aeger opem. at cum longa dies sedauit uulnera mentis, intempestiue qui fouet illa, nouat. 20 adde quod (atque utinam uerum mihi uenerit omen!) coniugio felix iam potes esse nouo. 15 perueniens _scripsi_ peruenit _codd_ || 16 ac _BCML_ et _FHIT_ || 17 officium est ... certi] officium ... certi est _M_ || 19 at] aut _C_ || longa] longua _uel_ longna _M_ || dies] quies _L_ || 20 fouet _Heinsius_ mouet _codd_ || nouat] mouet _T(M1)(F1)_ || 21 utinam] utinam ut _F_ || mihi _BF1_ tibi _MHILTF2 om C_ XII Quominus in nostris ponaris, amice, libellis, nominis efficitur condicione tui. aut ego non alium prius hoc dignarer honore, est aliquis nostrum si modo carmen honor. lex pedis officio fortunaque nominis obstat, 5 quaque meos adeas est uia nulla modos. nam pudet in geminos ita nomen scindere uersus desinat ut prior hoc incipiatque minor, et pudeat si te qua syllaba parte moratur artius appellem Tuticanumque uocem. 10 et potes in uersum Tuticani more uenire, fiat ut e longa syllaba prima breuis, tuticano _B2H2F_ tu_[_ti _add M2]_cano amico suo _M_ han _[sic]_ epistulam mittit tuticano _L_ || 3 aut _BC_ ast _MFHILT_ || 5 fortunaque] naturaque _excerpta Scaligeri, probante Heinsio_ || 6 modos] pedes _I_ || 8 desinat] desinet _Iac_ || hoc] hic _T_ || 9 pudeat] pudet _H_ || te qua] te quA _B2c_ qua te _H1P_ || moratur] moretur _FHT_ || 10 Tuticanumque] Tuditanumque _Heinsius olim (Burman); uide Val Max VII viii 1_ || 11 et] non _M_ nec _FIpc_ at _Camps (_CQ_ n.s. IV [1954] 206-7)_ aut producatur quae nunc correptius exit, et sit porrecta longa secunda mora. his ego si uitiis ausim corrumpere nomen, 15 ridear, et merito pectus habere neger. haec mihi causa fuit dilati muneris huius, quod meus adiecto faenore reddet amor, teque canam quacumque nota, tibi carmina mittam, paene mihi puero cognite paene puer, 20 perque tot annorum seriem, quot habemus uterque, non mihi quam fratri frater amate minus, tu bonus hortator, tu duxque comesque fuisti, cum regerem tenera frena nouella manu; 13 aut] nec _R. J. Tarrant (nec potes ... nec producatur)_ || producatur _MHI (ut M2[gl])_ ut ducatur _LTB2F2ul_ ut dicatur _B1CF1_ || correptius _BFLT_ correptior _C, fort recte_ correctius _MHI_ || 14 sit] si _BacP_ || porrecta] producta _F1_ || 16 merito _GBCFHILT_ cunctis _M_ || 17 dilati] lati _G_ || muneris _GBCMF1HILT_ nominis _F2ul_ || 18 reddet _GCMIT_ reddit _BFHL_ || amor _GBCFHI1L_ ager _TI2; add M2 (in ras?)_ || 19 canam quacumque nota, tibi _edd_ canam, quacumque nota tibi _Luck_ || quacumque nota] quacumquenaia _G_ quantumque licet _I_ || tibi _GBCMFHIL_ mea _T_ || 20 mihi ... puer] mihi _om Iac_ puer ... mihi _CT_ || 22 fratRI _F2?c_ || 23 tu duxque] mihi duxque _FL_ saepe ego correxi sub te censore libellos, 25 saepe tibi admonitu facta litura meo est, dignam Maeoniis Phaeacida condere chartis cum te Pieriae perdocuere deae. hic tenor, haec uiridi concordia coepta iuuenta uenit ad albentes inlabefacta comas. 30 quae nisi te moueant, duro tibi pectora ferro esse uel inuicto clausa adamante putem. sed prius huic desint et bellum et frigora terrae, inuisus nobis quae duo Pontus habet, et tepidus Boreas et sit praefrigidus Auster, 35 et possit fatum mollius esse meum, 25 saepe] nempe _M1_ || 26 tibi] tui _L_ tuo _T_ mihi _H2ul, ut uid_ || litura] litV/ra _F2c_ littera _(F1)_ || meo] mea _T_ tuo _H2ul, ut uid_ || 27 dignam _(B1)CTpc_ dignum _MFHILTacB2c_ || Phaeacida] pheatica _IL_ eacida _C_ || 28 cum] cU/ _I (=cum)_ || Pieriae _BCF1T_ pieride _HF2_ pierides _IL_ pyeriDES _M2c_ || deae] tue _M2ul_ || 29 uiridi] in uiridi _L_ || 30 albentes] albentis _B_ || 31 nisi _ex_ ubi _L_ || 32 inuicto] inuito _uel_ inuecto _'libri nonnulli ueteres', unde_ inducto _Heinsius olim_ || 33 desint] desunt _M1_ deerint _M2ul, ut uid_ || 35 praefrigidus] praefigidus _B1Hac_ perfrigidus _ILF2_ quam tua sint lapso praecordia dura sodali; hic cumulus nostris absit abestque malis. tu modo per superos, quorum certissimus ille est quo tuus assidue principe creuit honor, 40 effice constanti profugum pietate tuendo ne sperata meam deserat aura ratem. quid mandem quaeris? peream nisi dicere uix est, si modo qui periit ille perire potest. nec quid agam inuenio, nec quid nolimue uelimue, 45 nec satis utilitas est mihi nota mea. crede mihi, miseros prudentia prima relinquit, et sensus cum re consiliumque fugit; 37 lapso] lasso _BCM_ || dura] clausa _M2ul_ || sodali _ex_ sobali _B_ || 38 nostris _add F2_ || abestque _ex_ absitque _M_ || malis] meis _C_ || 40 honor] amor _C_ || 42 ne _GBCMFHIT_ nec _L_ || deserat _GBCMHILT_ desinat _F_ || 45 nolimue] molimne _B_ || uelimue] uelim _B1_ || 46 mihi ... mea] mea ... mihi _CFT_ || nota] mora _L_ || 47 relinquit] reliquit _MF_ relinquat _Iac, ut uid_ refugit _Cac_ || 48 re] me _Mac, ut uid_ spe _Heinsius_ ipse, precor, quaeras qua sim tibi parte iuuandus, quaque uia uenias ad mea uota, uide. 50 49 quaeras] uideas _M1_ || qua sim] qua sum _L_ sim qua _C_ || tibi _add M2_ || iuuandus] iuuanda _Cac_ || 50 quaque ... uide _LF3_ quaque ... uale _F1T_ quoque ... uide _IacM2ul_ quoque ... uado _BCHIpc_ quoque ... modo _M1_ quoque ... uale _F2I2ul_ || uia uenias _scripsi_ uiam facias _codd_ XIII O mihi non dubios inter memorande sodales, qui quod es, id uere, Care, uocaris, aue! unde saluteris color hic tibi protinus index et structura mei carminis esse potest, non quia mirifica est, sed quod non publica certe; 5 qualis enim cumque est, non latet esse meam. ipse quoque ut titulum chartae de fronte reuellas quod sit opus uideor dicere posse tuum; quamlibet in multis positus noscere libellis, perque obseruatas inueniere notas; 10 prodent auctorem uires, quas Hercule dignas nouimus atque illi quem canis ipse pares. ad sodalem _B2_ caro amico suo _M_ ad carum _FI2_ caro _H2_ || 1 memorande] numerande _C_ || 2 qui quod es, id _BCFI_ qui quod id es _MH_ quique quod es _LT, fort recte_ || aue] ades _T_ || 3 saluteris _MFT_ salutaris _BCHIL_ || protinus] proximus _CT_ || 5 mirifica] miririfica _B_ murifica _C_ || publica] puplica _LP_ || certe] certe est _BC_ || 6 cumQVE _B2c?_ || est, non] non _L_ || 7 ut _add M2_ || 8 quod ... uideor] quid ... uidear _Heinsius_ || tuum] meum _F2ul_ || 11 prodent] produnt _ILF2ul_ credent _C_ || auctorem] actorem _MF_ || dignas] dipnas _Cac_ || nouimus] contra uiam _C (conT uiA)_ || illi] ille _C_ || quem] que _C_ || ipse] esse _MT_ et mea Musa potest proprio deprensa colore insignis uitiis forsitan esse suis; tam mala Thersiten prohibebat forma latere 15 quam pulchra Nireus conspiciendus erat. nec te mirari si sint uitiosa decebit carmina quae faciam paene poeta Getes. a pudet, et Getico scripsi sermone libellum, structaque sunt nostris barbara uerba modis, 20 et placui (gratare mihi) coepique poetae inter inhumanos nomen habere Getas. materiam quaeris? laudes de Caesare dixi; adiuta est nouitas numine nostra dei. 13 et] at _C_ || colore] colure _Cac, ut uid_ || 14 insignis] insiGnis _B2c, ut uid_ ansignis _Cac_ || suis] meis _F1_ || 15 Thersiten] therseten _C_ || prohibebat] prohibebit _H1, ut uid_ || forma latere] latere forma _Iac_ || 16 Nireus _edd_ nereus _codd_ deus maris _F2(gl)_ || 17 sint] sunt _L_ || decebit] licebit _L (fort ex_ decebit_)_ || 18 Getes] gethas _F1_ || 19 Getico scripsi] geticos scripsi _(Bac)_ || libellum] libellos _I_ || 20 structaque] scriptaque _I_ || nostris] nobis _H1_ || 22 inhumanos] inhumanas _Cpc_ humanas _Cac_ || 23 laudes de Caesare dixi _edd olim_ laudes: de Caesare dixi _J. Gilbert, Jahrb. für kl. Ph. 1896, 62 (Owen 1915)_ || laudes] laudem _M_ nam patris Augusti docui mortale fuisse 25 corpus, in aetherias numen abisse domos, esse parem uirtute patri qui frena coactus saepe recusati ceperit imperii, esse pudicarum te Vestam, Liuia, matrum, ambiguum nato dignior anne uiro, 30 esse duos iuuenes firma adiumenta parentis qui dederint animi pignora certa sui. haec ubi non patria perlegi scripta Camena, uenit et ad digitos ultima charta meos, et caput et plenas omnes mouere pharetras, 35 et longum Getico murmur in ore fuit, 25 mortale] immortale _Tac_ || 26 aetherias ... domos] ethereos ... deos _I_ || numen] nomen _BC(M1)L_ || 27 parem ... patri] parem ... patr* _B_ patrem ... patri _(Hac)_ patri ... parem _M_ || uirtute] in uirtute _L_ || coactus _excerpta Scaligeri_ rogatus _codd_ || 28 recusati] recusari _C_ || ceperit] ceperat _L_ cepit _F, fort ex_ recepit || inPERIi _F2c_ || 29 Vestam] uestem _M_ deam _M2(gl)_ uastam _FacP_ testem _H_ || 30 ambiguum] ambiguum est _MFIL2(gl)_ || 31-32 esse duos iuuenes firma adiumenta parentis qui _interpunxi_ esse duos iuuenes, firma adiumenta parentis, qui _edd_ || 32 qui] cui _'editi plures'--Burman_ || dederint] dederAnt _M2c_ dederit _L1_ || certa] cara _I_ || sui] fui _C_ atque aliquis 'scribas haec cum de Caesare,' dixit 'Caesaris imperio restituendus eras.' ille quidem dixit; sed me iam, Care, niuali sexta relegatum bruma sub axe uidet. 40 carmina nil prosunt; nocuerunt carmina quondam, primaque tam miserae causa fuere fugae. at tu, per studii communia foedera sacri, per non uile tibi nomen amicitiae (sic uincto Latiis Germanicus hoste catenis 45 materiam uestris adferat ingeniis, sic ualeant pueri, *uotum commune deorum*, quos laus formandos est tibi magna datos), 37 haec] hac _C_ || de] tu _BacC_ tu de _Bpc_ || 38 imperio] imperii _C_ || eras] eris _M1ILF2ul_ || 39 me iam] iam me _T_ || Care] kare _M_ || 40 uidet] tenet _F_ || 43 at tu] ast ego _F1_ || studii] studui _C_ || foedera] federe _Bac_ || 45 uincto _scripsi_ capto _codd_ || 46 uestris] nostris _MIL_ || adferat] afferet _F1_ praebeat _I_ offerat _Heinsius_ 47 pueri, uotum commune deorum _edd_ pueri, uotum commune, deorum _Postgate (Owen 1894)_ || uotum commune deorum _corruptum_ || deorum] duorum _M1F2ul_ augusti et liuie _F2gl_ suorum _Heinsius_ || 48 quos ... formandos] quos ... formandOs _M2c_ quis ... formandis _LPF2ul_ || laus est] est laus _F_ tibi ... est _H_ (laus _H2[gl] ad finem uersus)_ || magna] mag** _L_ maga _F1_ || datos] datOs _M2c_ deos _I?ul_ data _L_ datis _F2ulP_ datur _F2ul_ quanta potes, praebe nostrae momenta saluti, quae nisi mutato nulla futura loco est. 50 49 potes] potest _Bac_ || praebe nostrae] nostrae praebe _FI_ || momenta _Vaticanus 1595, saec xv (Mercati [Lenz]), sicut coni Scaliger et Gronouius_ monimenta _BCMFHILT_ || 50 mutato _ex_ muto _B_ XIV Haec tibi mittuntur quem sum modo carmine questus non aptum numeris nomen habere meis, in quibus, excepto quod adhuc utcumque ualemus, nil te praeterea quod iuuet inuenies. ipsa quoque est inuisa salus, suntque ultima uota 5 quolibet ex istis scilicet ire locis; nulla mihi cura est terra quo muter ab ista, hac quia quam uideo gratior omnis erit. epistula ad tuticanum _B2_ tuticano amico suo _M_ tuticano _F2H2_ ad tuticanum _I2_ || 1 quem _BMFLT; add I2 in spatio a prima manu relicto_ que _CH_ || sum modo] summo _(B1)_ || 4 te _Berolinensis Diez. B. Sant. 1, saec. xiii (Lenz), Bodleianus Rawlinson G 105ul (Tarrant)_ me _BCMFHILT_ || 5 est _om I1_ || inuisa] non uisa _C_ || 6 ex istis] ex illis _C_ Euxinis _Castiglioni (Lenz)_ || scilicet] ilicet _fort legendum_ || 7 terra quo muter [mutar _F2_] ab ista _F1, Bodleianus Canon. lat. 1, saec xiii (Tarrant), Barberinus lat. 26, saec xiii (Lenz)_ terra quo mittar ab ista _BCMFHILT_ terra quam muter ut ista _Heinsius_ [nulla prior cura est] terra quam muter ut ista _Heinsius_ terra nisi muter ut ista _Heinsius_ terrae quo muter ab Histro _Williams_ || 8 quia quam] quamquam _C_ in medias Syrtes, mediam mea uela Charybdin mittite, praesenti dum careamus humo. 10 Styx quoque, si quid ea est, bene commutabitur Histro, si quid et inferius quam Styga mundus habet. gramina cultus ager, frigus minus odit hirundo, proxima Marticolis quam loca Naso Getis. talia suscensent propter mihi uerba Tomitae, 15 iraque carminibus publica mota meis. ergo ego cessabo numquam per carmina laedi, plectar et incauto semper ab ingenio? ergo ego, ne scribam, digitos incidere cunctor, telaque adhuc demens quae nocuere sequor? 20 9 medias] medi*s _B_ || Syrtes] syr*tis _B1, ut uid_ systes _C_ || Charybdin _CH_ caribdim _BT_ caribdI _MFL_ caripdI _I_ || 10 mittite _BpcILF2ul_ mitte _MH_ mittat _BacC_ mittant _F1_ mutE _T_ (mittE _legit André)_ || 12 inferIVS _F1c_ || 13 gramina] carmina _C_ flamina _Bentley_ || 14 Marticolis] in articolis _C_ || 15 suscensent _C_ succensent _BMpcFHILT_ successent _Mac_ || 16 publica] puplica _LP_ || mota meis] nota meis _H_ meis _I1_ est [meis] _I2(gl?)_ || 17 laedi] læde _Cac_ || 18 plectar] plectat _L_ || incauto] incapto _M_ || 19 incidere] incindere _F_ || 20 telaque] tela _M_ || sequor] sequar _CP_ ad ueteres scopulos iterum deuertor et illas in quibus offendit naufraga puppis aquas? sed nihil admisi, nulla est mea culpa, Tomitae, quos ego, cum loca sim uestra perosus, amo. quilibet excutiat nostri monimenta laboris: 25 littera de uobis est mea questa nihil. frigus et incursus omni de parte timendos et quod pulsetur murus ab hoste queror. in loca, non homines, uerissima crimina dixi; culpatis uestrum uos quoque saepe solum. 30 esset perpetuo sua quam uitabilis Ascra ausa est agricolae Musa docere senis; 21 deuertor] deuertar _B_ || et] ad _M2, 'quinque libri. quod placet'--Heinsius_ || 22 offendit] effudit _F1_ || naufraga] naufagra _H_ || 23 sed] at _fort legendum_ || 24 Quos _B2c_ || 25 excutiat] excuriat _L_ || 27 frigus] frugus _C_ || de _om I1_ || timendos] timendus _L_ || 29 in] non _C_ || crimina] carmina _H_ || 30 culpatis] culpatus _BacC_ || solum] locum _MH_ || 31 _'uersus suspectus'--Heinsius_ || quam uitabilis] quam miserabilis _H_ quam uitiabilis _A. G. Lee (PCPhS 181 [1950-51] 3), fort recte_ ut illaudabilis _Bentley_ || Ascra] ascre _BCH, fort recte_ || 32 agricolae] argolici _I2ul_ et fuerat genitus terra qui scripsit in illa, intumuit uati nec tamen Ascra suo. quis patriam sollerte magis dilexit Vlixe? 35 hoc tamen asperitas indice docta loci est. non loca, sed mores scriptis uexauit amaris Scepsius Ausonios, actaque Roma rea est; falsa tamen passa est aequa conuicia mente, obfuit auctori nec fera lingua suo. 40 at malus interpres populi mihi concitat iram, inque nouum crimen carmina nostra uocat. 33 et] **t _M1_ at _Puteaneus Heinsii (=Parisinus lat. 8239, saec xiii) (Lenz), Laurentianus 36 2, saec xv (Lenz), edd ante Korn_ non _uel_ nec _fort legendum_ || in] ut _L_ || 34 intumuit] intimuit _I1_ || Ascra] illa _I_ || 36 indice] iudice _IL_ || docta _B_ doctus _C_ dicta _MFHILT_ nota _excerpta Scaligeri, sex codd Heinsii, probante Riese_ || loci est] loci _FT_ in est _C_ (I E) || _37 om C_ || 37 non] nec _L_ || sed mores] sermones _L_ || 38 Scepsius _Scaliger, Castig. in Catull. 15, 19 (=32, ed. 2) (Lenz)_ sceptius _C_ septius _MFT_ sepTius _B2c_ septiVS _L2c_ septi _L1, ut uid_ sepcius _I_ celsius _H_ || Ausonios] ausononios _uel_ ausonomos _L_ || actaque _MFT_ actaue _BHIL_ acte ue _C_ || 39 falsa] fassa _M1_ || est _om C_ || 40 auctori] actori _CacF1_ || fera] sua _F1_ || 41 populi ... concitat iram] populum ... uertit in iram _L_ || 42 inque] isque _F_ tam felix utinam quam pectore candidus essem! extat adhuc nemo saucius ore meo. adde quod Illyrica si iam pice nigrior essem, 45 non mordenda mihi turba fidelis erat. molliter a uobis mea sors excepta, Tomitae, tam mites Graios indicat esse uiros; gens mea Paeligni regioque domestica Sulmo non potuit nostris lenior esse malis. 50 quem uix incolumi cuiquam saluoque daretis, is datus a uobis est mihi nuper honor: solus adhuc ego sum uestris immunis in oris, exceptis si qui munera legis habent; 43 tam] iam _C_ || pectore] pectorore _H_ || candidus] callidus _H_ || _44-45 in marg add B1F2_ || 44 nemo ... meo] meo ... nemo _H1_ || 45 Illyrica] ilira _L_ || essem] eem _M_ || 46 non] nec _(Fac?)L_ || mordenda] mordeda _M_ || 47 uobis] nobis _L_ || 48 Graios _edd_ gratos _BCMFHIL_ raros _T_ geticos _'unus Vaticanus ... aeque bene [ac "Graios"!], nisi uis rectius'--Ciofanus_ || 49 gens] ius _C_ || Paeligni] pEligni _L_ || 50 lenior _MpcFpcHIT_ leuior _BC(Mac)FacL_ || 51 uix] uos _F2_] || Incolumi] incolumi _B2c_ in colonia _C_ || 52 is] i/s _B_ est _M_ || est] is _M_ || 53 adhuc] ad hunc _C_ || sum _om F1_ || oris] aruis _L_ || 54 si qui] siquid _T_ || munera] mumera _C_ tempora sacrata mea sunt uelata corona, 55 publicus inuito quam fauor imposuit. quam grata est igitur Latonae Delia tellus, erranti tutum quae dedit una locum, tam mihi cara Tomis, patria quae sede fugatis tempus ad hoc nobis hospita fida manet. 60 di modo fecissent placidae spem posset habere pacis, et a gelido longius axe foret. 57 grata] gata _Hac_ || IGITVR Latone _F2c_ || 59 cara] cala _Cac_ grata _B2_ || 59 Tomis _HLB2_ tomus _B1T_ thOmVS _I2c, ut uid_ domus _CF1_ thomos _MF2ul_ || quae _BMLT_ quae a _CFHI_ || 61 placidae] placidam _B_ || 62 foret] forent _F2, ut uid_ XV Si quis adhuc usquam nostri non immemor extat, quidue relegatus Naso requirit, agam: Caesaribus uitam, Sexto debere salutem me sciat; a superis hic mihi primus erit. tempora nam miserae complectar ut omnia uitae, 5 a meritis eius pars mihi nulla uacat, quae numero tot sunt, quot in horto fertilis arui Punica sub lento cortice grana rubent, sexto pompeio _B2MFH2_ ad sextum pompeium _I2_ || 1 usquam ... extat] usquam ... extet _Guethling (Lenz)_ extat ... usquam _M_ || 2 requirit _Bodleianus Auct. F 2 1 (Tarrant), Laurentianus 38 39 (Lenz), editio princeps Bononiensis (Lenz), 'ex duobus' Heinsius_ requirat _BCMFHLT_ requiret _I, British Library Burney 220 (Tarrant), Bodleianus Rawlinson G 105 (Tarrant), Othob. lat. 1469, saec xv (Tarrant)_ || agam] agat _fort legendum_ || 5 miserae] supere _H_ || 6 pars] noster pars _Bac_ || 7 horto ... arui] hasto ... arui _C_ horto ... agri _TP_ horti ... aruo _Williams_ || 8 lento] lecto _'Basil. et hoc probat Barth. Aduers. xxxvii.10'--Burman_ Africa quot segetes, quot Tmolia terra racemos, quot Sicyon bacas, quot parit Hybla fauos. 10 confiteor; testere licet--signate, Quirites! nil opus est legum uiribus, ipse loquor. inter opes et me, rem paruam, pone paternas, pars ego sum census quantulacumque tui; quam tua Trinacria est regnataque terra Philippo, 15 quam domus Augusto continuata foro, quam tua rus oculis domini Campania gratum, quaeque relicta tibi, Sexte, uel empta tenes, tam tuus en ego sum, cuius te munere tristi non potes in Ponto dicere habere nihil. 20 9 Tmolia terra _BM2ul_ tinolia t. _C_ thimolia t. _L_ thimola t. _T_ timula t. _I, ut uid_ mollia t. _HP_ etholia t. _F1_ gnosia t. _F2ul_ habet methina _M1_ || racemos] ramos _Mac_ || 10 Sicyon] sicio _B1_ scithion _T_ || Hybla] hilba _Bac_ || 11 testere] testare _(M1)LI1P_ tristare _F1_ narare _I2ul_ || signate] signare _LP_ || 12 est _om Fac_ || loquor] loquar _Mpc_ || 13 rem paruam _MHIT_ paruam rem _BCFL, fort recte_ || 15 Trinacria] tinacria _H_ || regnataque terra] regnaque terra _I1_ tellus regnata _M_ || philippo] phiUppo _C_ || 19 tristi] cristi _L_ || 20 potES _H2c_ atque utinam possis, et detur amicius aruum, remque tuam ponas in meliore loco! quod quoniam in dis est, tempta lenire precando numina perpetua quae pietate colis. [erroris nam tu uix est discernere nostri 25 sis argumentum maius an auxilium.] nec dubitans oro; sed flumine saepe secundo augetur remis cursus euntis aquae. et pudet et metuo semperque eademque precari ne subeant animo taedia iusta tuo; 30 uerum quid faciam? res immoderata cupido est; da ueniam uitio, mitis amice, meo. 21 amicius] micius _Bpc (=mitius)_ amicitius _L_ || aruum] auum _Mac_ || 23 precando] rogando _HF2ul_ || _25-26 spurios puto. 'ambiguus hic locus est, eoque difficilior quoque, et obscurior'--Micyllus; 'xv 25 libri "Erroris nam", quod nisi aegre intellegi nequit, quamquam nec correctio satisfacit'--Merkel (1884), qui_ maeroris _pro_ erroris _coniecit_ || 25 nam] iam _FI_ discernere] decernere _MI1_ || 26 maius] magis _I_ nauis _F1_ || auxilium] axilium _M_ xilium _I1_ || 27 flumine] flAmine _M2c, ut uid_ || saepe secundo] saepe _F1_ secundo saepe _Iac_ || 29 semperque] semper _C_ || 30 iusta] iussa _F1_ || 31 uerum quid] colloquio _C_ || faciam] fac in _I_ scribere saepe aliud cupiens delabor eodem; *ipsa locum per se littera nostra rogat.* seu tamen effectus habitura est gratia, seu me 35 dura iubet gelido Parca sub axe mori, semper inoblita repetam tua munera mente, et mea me tellus audiet esse tuum; audiet et caelo posita est quaecumque sub ullo (transit nostra feros si modo Musa Getas), 40 33 aliud cupiens] uolens aliud _I_ || delabor] dilabor _L_ || _34 uix sanus; seclusit Merkel (1884)_ || 34 ipsa locum ... rogat] inque locum ... redit _temptauit Tarrant_ || per se littera ... rogat] pro se tristia ... rogant [_uel_ petunt] _temptaui_ || per se ... rogat] per se ... petit _unus Heinsii_ per se ... facit _unus Heinsii_ pro se ... facit _Heinsius_ || 35 me] nos _M2ul_ || 37 munera] carmina _F1_ munere _F2ul_ nomina _F3ul, ut uid_ || 38 mea] tua _H_ || me] te _(F1)_ || audiet _FHIT_ audiat _BCML_ || 39 audiet] audiat _L_ || est _om M_ || ullo] illo _Mac, sicut coni Bentley_ || 40 transit nostra feros] transierit seuos _T_ teque meae causam seruatoremque salutis meque tuum libra norit et aere magis. 41 seruatoremque] serut.atoremque _M_ seruataremque _L_ || 42 meque] neque _C_ || tuum libra norit et aere magis _Barberinus lat. 262ul (Lenz), F3? (M = magis)_ tuum libra norit et aere minus _BCMHILT_ (libra _ex_ liba _I_) tuum libra norit et aere datum _F1_ || suum [libra norit et aere] minus _F2ul_ [tellus ... quaecumque ... ] meque, tuum libra, nouit, et aere, minus _Gronouius, _Obs._ II i_ meque tuum libra norit et aere tuum _Heinsius_ tuae libra norit et aere manus _Rappold (Owen 1915)_ tuae libra norit et aere domus _temptaui; cf Suet _Aug_ 61 1_ XVI Inuide, quid laceras Nasonis carmina rapti? non solet ingeniis summa nocere dies, famaque post cineres maior uenit. at mihi nomen tum quoque, cum uiuis adnumerarer, erat. cum foret et Marsus magnique Rabirius oris 5 Iliacusque Macer sidereusque Pedo, et, qui Iunonem laesisset in Hercule, Carus, Iunonis si iam non gener ille foret, quique dedit Latio carmen regale, Seuerus, et cum subtili Priscus uterque Numa, 10 ad inuidum _B2MI2_ ad inimicum _H2_ || 1 carmina] carmia _M_ || 3 uenit. at _scripsi_ uenit et _BCMFILT_ ueniet _H_ || nomen] uoto _H (noto?)_ || 4 tum] tunc _F_ || uiuis] uiuus _H_ || erat] eat _Cac_ || 5 cum foret et _FHT_ cumque foret _BCMIL_ || Rabirius _MFI_ sabirius _BC_ rabarius _T_ rabirtius _H_ rabilinus _L_ Sabellius _Barth, _Adu._ xxxvii 10 (Burman)_ || 6 Iliacusque] iliacus _H_ || sidereusque] sidere/usque _B_ Cecropiusque _Bentley; cf x 71 'cum Thesea carmine laudes'_ || PEdo _M2c_ || 7 Iunonem laesisset] iunonem lesissent _Bac, ut uid_ lesisset iunonem _M_ || Carus] karus _B_ || 8 Iunonis] iunonisque _H_ || si iam] siam _C1_ || gener ... foret _BCMFHT (_fOret _M1c)_ neger foret _L_ foret genus _I_ quique uel imparibus numeris, Montane, uel aequis sufficis, et gemino carmine nomen habes, et qui Penelopae rescribere iussit Vlixem errantem saeuo per duo lustra mari, quique suam *Trisomen* imperfectumque dierum 15 deseruit celeri morte Sabinus opus, ingeniique sui dictus cognomine Largus, Gallica qui Phrygium duxit in arua senem, 11 imparibus numeris] imparibus _[spatium septem litterarum]_ his _H_ || 12 sufficis, et] sufficis _Mac_ || 13 Penelopae] penelopi _H_ penolope _CI_ || 13 solinus _H2(gl) in marg_ || 15 Trisomen _C (trisoM)_ trisomem _B1_ trosenE _L_ trionE _F_ troinE _I_ trozenen _M_ troezen _T_ tr****m _H_ troilem _B2_ Troezena _quidam apud Micyllum_ Tymelen _temptauit Heinsius_ Thressen _[=Hero] M. Hertz (Lenz)_ Chrysen _Roeper (Riese)_ Troesmin _Ehwald_ Troesmen _Owen_ Sinatroncen _['Parthorum regis nomen'] Bergk, _Opusc._ I 664 pro_ suam t. || imperfectumque] imperfectamque _H_ imperfectum _I1_ interruptumque _Bergk_ || 16 deseruit] destituit _Bergk_ || Sabinus] salinus _(M1)T_ solius _F2ul_ || 17 dictus] dignus _I_ || 18 Gallica] gallia _M1_ || duxit] dixit _M1_ || arua] arma _B1?ulHI_ quique canit domito Camerinus ab Hectore Troiam, quique sua nomen Phyllide Tuscus habet, 20 ueliuolique maris uates, cui credere posses carmina caeruleos composuisse deos, quique acies Libycas Romanaque proelia dixit, et Marius scripti dexter in omne genus, Trinacriusque suae Perseidos auctor, et auctor 25 Tantalidae reducis Tyndaridosque Lupus, 19 domito ... ab Hectore] domitam ... ab hectore _FM2ul_ domitam ... ab hercule _Gothanus II 121, saec xiii (André), probante Korn_ || Camerinus] caMinus _T_ caminus _F_ || 20 sua nomen Phyllide Tuscus] fata nomen pillide tuscus _C_ sua tuscus phillide nomen _L_ sua nomen Phyllide Fuscus _Heinsius ('nomen magis Romanum')_ || 21 ueliuolique] ueiiuolique _C_ || uates] nomen _Merkel ad Ibin p. 377 (Owen)_ || posses _BCMHILT_ possis _F, fort recte_ || 23 quique] cuique _C_ || proelia] pretia _C_ || dixit] salustius _M2gl_ || 24 Marius scripti] marius scriptor _C_ scriptor marius _B_ || 24 dexter] promptus _M, fort in ras_ _P_ || 25 Trinacriusque _BCFL_ tinacriusque _IT_ tenar*sque _H_ eticiusque _M_ || Perseidos] perseidis _BCI_ Peneidos _Ehwald (=Daphnes)_ || auctor ... auctor] auctor ... actor _H_ actor ... actor _F_ || et] set _F2_ || Tyndaridosque] tyndaridisque _MI_ et qui Maeoniam Phaeacida uertit, et une Pindaricae fidicen tu quoque, Rufe, lyrae, Musaque Turrani tragicis innixa coturnis, et tua cum socco Musa, Melisse, leuis; 30 cum Varius Gracchusque darent fera dicta tyrannis, Callimachi Proculus molle teneret iter, 27 Maeoniam] meonidE _H_ || Pheacida _L_ PHEAcida _M2c_ pheatida _I_ pheicida _H_ ecaeida _B1_ aeacida _C_ hetaterA _F_ hecateida _T_ ecateida _B2_ || et une _HLB2_ et unE _M2c_ et una _IT_ et uni _B1C_ in anguem _F; 'latet aliquid'--Burman_ || 28 lyrae] l*ræ _Cac_ || 29 Musaque] uisaque _C_ || 29 Turrani _BCMLT_ turani _FI_ tiranni _H_ Thorani _Heinsius_ || tragicis] gtragicis _T_ || innixa] innexa _T_ || _30 (in ras?) add C2_ || 30 et tua] ipseque _C2_ || socco] socio _C2, ut uid_ || Melisse _MFB2_ mel isse _B1_ molisse _IL_ molasse _T_ melose _H_ molesse _C2_ (malesse _legunt Lenz, André_) || leuis] leui _H_ _Othob. lat. 1469, saec xv (Tarrant), sicut coni Heinsius_ || 31 Varius _LTB2ul_ uariis _C_ uarus _B1MFHI_ || Gracchusque _edd olim_ graccusque _T, probante Ehwald_ gra*ccusque _B_ gracusque _HIL_ gratusque _CMF_ || 31 darent] daret _F_ parent _(B1)C_ || tyrannis _BC, sicut coni Heinsius_ tyranni _MFHILT_ || 32 Proculus] proculuus _M_ pro cuIus _B2c_ prochius _C_ *Tityron antiquas Passerque rediret ad herbas,* 33 aptaque uenanti Grattius arma daret, _33 locus desperatus. 'haec nec Latina sunt, nec satis intelligo quid sibi uelint'--Heinsius_ Tityron antiquas Passerque rediret ad herbas _B1C_ (Passerque _ex_ passerque _Riese_) titirus antiquas et erat qui pasceret herbas _HILT_ (titirus: tiarus _Iac_) (pasceret: diceret _L_) [tityron antiquas] et erat qui gigneret [herbas] _B3ul_ titirus eternas caneret qui procreet herbas _F_ (procreet: pasceret _F2ul_) titirum et antiquas recus.basse referret ad umbras _M_ [tityron antiquas] recubasse refertur [ad herbas] _B2_ Tityron aprica recubantem pangeret umbra _Heinsius (Korn)_ Tityron aprica recubasse referret in umbra _Heinsius (Korn)_ Tityron apricus recubasse referret ad umbras [_uel_ undas] _Heinsius (Korn)_ Tityrus antiquis armentaque pasceret herbis _Withof (Korn)_ Tityrus antiquas pastorque rediret ad herbas _Korn_ Tityrus antiquas rursus reuocaret ad herbas _Madvig (Adu. crit. II praef)_ Tityrus antiquas capras ubi pasceret herbas _Madvig (Adu. crit. II 105)_ Tityrus apricans, ut erat, qui pasceret, herbas _Bergk (Opusc. I 667)_ Tityron Andinasque esset qui diceret herbas _Roeper (Korn)_ Tityron antiquas pastorem exciret ad herbas _Owen (1915)_ Tityron antiquas carmenque referret ad herbas _Schneiderhan (Lenz)_ Tityron antiquas Passer reuocaret ad herbas _Luck_ 33 antiquas] eternas _F_ intactas _uel_ ac uacuas _uel_ ac uirides _Riese_ || 34 aptaque ... arma] altaque ... arma _M_ armaque ... apta _I_ || uenanti] uenati _C_ uenandi _F2ul_ || Grattius _Buecheler e cod illius poetae (RhM 35 [1880] 407)_ gratius _CFLT_ gracius _BMHI_ Naiadas Satyris caneret Fontanus amatas, 35 clauderet imparibus uerba Capella modis, cumque forent alii, quorum mihi cuncta referre nomina longa mora est, carmina uulgus habet, essent et iuuenes quorum, quod inedita cura est, appellandorum nil mihi iuris adest 40 (te tamen in turba non ausim, Cotta, silere, Pieridum lumen praesidiumque fori, 35 Naiadas _C. P. Jones_ naiadas a _HLI2_ nayades a _MT_ naidas a _BCFI2_ || Fontanus] fontusanus _M_ montanus _H, ut uid_ || 38 longa mora] mora longa _L_ || uulgus habet] uulgus habent _HIac_ fama tenet _T_ || _39-40 spurios putat Williams_ || 39 essent et iuuenes] _quid pro_ essent _C, incertum_ et iuuenes essent _H_ || iuuenes quorum, quod _interpunxi_ iuuenes, quorum quod _edd_ || cura _unus Thuaneus Heinsii (=Parisinus lat. 8256 uel 8462)_ causa _BCMFHILT_ || 41 tamen in] tanta in _M1L_ tamen e _Heinsius_ || 42 lumen] numen _'editi aliquot'--Burman_ || praesidiumque fori] praesidiumque meum _H1; uide Hor _Carm_ I i 2_ maternos Cottas cui Messallasque paternos, Maxime, nobilitas ingeminata dedit), dicere si fas est, claro mea nomine Musa 45 atque inter tantos quae legeretur erat. ergo summotum patria proscindere, Liuor, desine neu cineres sparge, cruente, meos. omnia perdidimus; tantummodo uita relicta est, praebeat ut sensum materiamque mali. 50 [quid iuuat extinctos ferrum demittere in artus? non habet in nobis iam noua plaga locum.] 43 maternos] fraternos _B1CH_ || Cottas] coctas _L_ || cui _om FIL_ || Messallasque _BCM_ messalosque _IL_ messalinosque _HT_ messalanosque _F_ || 44 Maxime _B1CMpc, sicut coni Burman_ maxima _MacFHILTB2_ || ingeminata] cui geminata _F_ || 46 legeretur] regeretur _BCpc_ regaretur _Cac_ || 47 proscindere] procindere _Fac_ praescindere _T_ discindere _I_ || 48 neu] nec _IF_ ne _H_ || 49 relicta] retenta _T, ut uid (retNta)_ || 50 ut] ut ca _Tac_ || _51-52 spurios puto_ || 51 demittere _Berolinensis Diez. B. Sant. 1, saec xiii (Lenz), Laurentianus 36 2, saec xv (Lenz), editio princeps Bononiensis (Lenz)_ dimittere _BCMFHILT_ || artus] albis _C_ (astus _Lenz; André dubitanter_) || explicit liber ouidii de ponto fe li ci ter sint bona scribenti sint uita salusque legenti _B_ explicit liber ouidii de ponto _C_ explicit liber publii·o·n·de ponto _M_ explicit ouidius de ponto uade sed incultus qualem decet exulis esse _F_ explicit o de ponto _H_ hic liber explicit gratia christo detur _L_ COMMENTARY =EPISTVLARVM EX PONTO LIBER QVARTVS.= The precise title of these poems is uncertain. The one mention Ovid makes of the poems' title is of little assistance: 'inuenies, quamuis non est miserabilis index, / non minus hoc illo triste quod ante dedi' (_EP_ I i 15-16). The earliest manuscript of the poems, the ninth-century _Hamburgensis scrin. 52 F_ (extant to III ii 67), gives no title at the start of the poems, but has 'EX PONTO LIBER ·II· EXPLICIT' at the end of the second book. Later manuscripts generally call the poems the _De Ponto_ or _Epistulae de Ponto_. The original name was probably not present in the archetype; these titles were perhaps invented with the aid of the first distich of the first poem: 'Naso Tomitanae iam non nouus incola terrae / hoc tibi _de Getico litore_ mittit opus'. Heinsius strongly preferred _Ex Ponto_ to _De Ponto_ ('nihil magis inscitum aut barbarum hac inscriptione'), citing in its support the first line of _Tr_ V ii 'Ecquid, ut _e Ponto_ noua uenit epistula, palles'. In reality _ex_ and _de_ are equally acceptable Latin (Cic _Att_ XV xxvi 5; _Fam_ XIV xx), but _Ex Ponto_ is the title found in the oldest manuscript of the poems and has become usual since Heinsius' time; in the absence of further evidence it may be allowed to stand. Heinsius made two other suggestions for the poems' title. The first, _Pontica_, seems best suited for a poem describing the geography of the area around Tomis or the characteristics of its inhabitants. His second suggestion, _Epistulae Ponticae_, is attractive, but without any particular probability. I. To Sextus Pompeius Sextus Pompeius, _consul ordinarius_ in AD 14, is the most illustrious of Ovid's correspondents in the _Ex Ponto_; patron of Valerius Maximus, he was related to Pompey the Great (Sen _Ben_ IV 30 2) and to Augustus (Dio LVI 29 5). For discussions of his career, see Syme _HO_ 156-62, Pauly-Wissowa XXI,2 2265 61, and Dessau _PIR_ P 450. He is the recipient of four poems in the fourth book, but is nowhere mentioned in the first three books of the _Ex Ponto_. Since Pompeius helped Ovid during his journey to exile (v 31-38), their relationship must have been of long standing; clearly Pompeius had indicated to Ovid his preference not to be mentioned in his verse, even after it had become clear to most of Ovid's friends that being named by him would carry no penalty. In _EP_ III vi, Ovid exhorts a timid friend to allow him to name him; there is no indication, however, that the poem was addressed to Pompeius. Ovid seems to have been best served in exile by those of his friends who were of no particular eminence. In _Tr_ III iv 3-8 & 43-44 he complains not only of the treatment he has received from Augustus, but also of the lack of assistance from those of his friends most in a position to help. Once Sextus Pompeius had indicated he was willing to be named publicly, Ovid could not ignore the influence that a man of such position could bring to bear; hence the number of poems addressed to him in the fourth book. Ovid starts the poem with an elaborate assertion of his past and present desire to mention Pompeius in his verse (1-22), and then briefly recounts the services Pompeius has rendered to him, and will continue to render (23-26). The reason he is confident that Pompeius will continue to assist him is that Pompeius' past assistance has been such that he is now, in effect, Pompeius' creation, and brings glory to him in the way that great works of art do for their creators (27-36). =1. DEDVCTVM.= 'Composed'. _Deducere_ is often used in reference to the drawing of fibres from the wool on the distaff and the shaping of the thread (Catullus LXIV 311-14). From this meaning derive the two senses the word can have when referring to poetry, 'composed' and 'finely spun, delicate'. The first sense is seen here and at _Tr_ I i 39, _EP_ I v 13, and at _Tr_ V i 71 'ipse nec emendo, sed ut hic _deducta_ legantur', and the second at _Ecl_ VI 4-5 'pastorem, Tityre, pinguis / pascere oportet ouis, _deductum_ dicere carmen', where _deductum ... carmen_ represents the [Greek: Mousan ... leptaleên] of Callimachus _Aetia_ I 24; Servius comments on the metaphor from spinning. It has been suggested that _Met_ I 4 'ad mea perpetuum _deducite_ tempora carmen' shows this meaning as well; see Kenney _Ouidius Prooemians_ 51-52. Hor _Ep_ II i 225 'tenui deducta poemata filo' stands somewhere between the two senses. =2. DEBITOR ... VITAE.= See v 33-36 (Ovid's letter speaking to Pompeius) 'te sibi, cum fugeret, memori solet ore referre / barbariae tutas exhibuisse uias, / sanguine Bistonium quod non tepefecerit ensem, / effectum cura pectoris esse tui'. The passage suggests that Pompeius supplied Ovid with a bodyguard for his journey overland from Tempyra to Tomis, either in an official capacity--Dessau suggests (_PIR_ P 450) that Pompeius might have been proconsul of Macedonia--or, more probably, from his Macedonian estates, for which Dessau and Syme (_HO_ 157) cite xv 15. =3. QVI.= Williams' CVI is possibly correct; the line would then refer to the _titulus_ of the poem in a published text. =3. SEV NON PROHIBES.= 'If you do not try to prevent'. The context makes it clear that Pompeius will not in fact prevent Ovid from mentioning Pompeius in his poem. This conative sense is much more commonly found with the imperfect than with the present; the only way it can be dispensed with in this passage is if _cui_ is read and, as Professor R. J. Tarrant suggests, _prohibes_ taken to refer to the later inclusion of the poem in a published collection. =4. ACCEDET MERITIS.= Pompeius' even allowing Ovid to name him would count as a favour. Nowhere in the poem does Ovid specify why Pompeius might prefer not to be named. =4. ACCEDET MERITIS HAEC QVOQVE SVMMA TVIS.= 'This sum will be added to the favours you have done me'. Professor J. N. Grant points out to me the technical terms of finance used in the passage: _debitor ... accedet ... summa_. I once thought that _summa_ was equivalent in sense to _cumulus_ ('addition') at _EP_ II v 35-36 'hoc tibi facturo, uel si non ipse rogarem, / _accedat cumulus_ gratia nostra leuis', but have found no parallel for this sense of _summa_. =5. TRAHIS VVLTVS.= 'Frown'--compare iii 7 'contraxit uultum Fortuna', viii 13-14 'ei mihi, si lectis uultum tu uersibus istis / ducis', _Am_ II ii 33 'bene uir traxit uultum rugasque coegit', and _Met_ II 774 'ingemuit uultumque una ac [_Housman_: ima ad _codd_] suspiria duxit'. =5-6. EQVIDEM PECCASSE FATEBOR, / DELICTI TAMEN EST CAVSA PROBANDA MEI.= 'Yes, I shall certainly confess my guilt, but the reason for my offence is one that necessarily wins approval'. Ovid uses the correct legal terminology; compare Cic _Mur_ 62 _'fatetur_ aliquis se _peccasse_ et sui [_Halm_: cui _uel_ eius _codd_] _delicti_ ueniam petit'. Other instances in Ovid of _peccasse fateri_ at hexameter-ends are _Am_ III xiv 37, _Met_ III 718, VII 748 & XI 134, and _EP_ II iii 33. For Ovid's close acquaintance with the law see at xv 12 (pp 434-35). =7. NON POTVIT MEA MENS.= Compare _Tr_ V ix 25-26 'nunc quoque se, quamuis est iussa quiescere, quin te / nominet inuitum, uix mea Musa tenet'. =8. OFFICIO.= Used again of Ovid's writing of verse-epistles at _Tr_ V ix 33-34 'ne tamen _officio_ memoris laedaris amici, / parebo iussis--parce timere--tuis'. =8. OFFICIO ... PIO.= The words similarly combined at _Tr_ III iii 84 and _Tr_ V vi 4 'officiique pium ... onus'. The adjective ('loyal') is a favourite term of commendation in the poems of exile, applied to _fides_ (_Tr_ V xiv 20, _EP_ III ii 98), coupled with _memor_ (_Tr_ IV v 18, V iv 43), or used to characterize the inseparable friends of myth such as Theseus and Pirithous (_Tr_ I ix 31) or Castor and Pollux (_Tr_ IV v 30). =9.= IN. _B_'s AB is possibly correct, _ab istis_ meaning 'to judge by them, on the basis of their evidence'. Professor R. J. Tarrant cites Prop III iii 38 'ut reor _a facie_, Calliopea fuit'. =11. ALII VELLEM CVM SCRIBERE.= The line confirms that Ovid was not at liberty to name Sextus Pompeius in his poems even after he had begun the composition of the first three books of the _Ex Ponto_. Ovid similarly indicates his frustrated desire to name his correspondent at _Tr_ IV v 10 'excidit heu nomen quam mihi paene tuum' and at _EP_ III vi 1-2 'Naso suo (posuit nomen quam paene!) sodali / mittit ... hoc breue carmen'. =11. VELLEM CVM.= _B_ offers CVM VELLEM, which I take to be a simple corruption to prose word-order. It is however the reading printed by Owen; and it could be argued that _cum uellem_ is the correct reading, and was altered to _uellem cum_ for metrical reasons. Lucretius and Catullus were fond of placing a spondaic word in the fourth foot of the hexameter; in the Augustan age practice altered, and the pattern was generally avoided; compare _Aen_ I 1 'Arma uirumque cano, _Troiae qui_ primus ab oris'. It was, however, permitted occasionally, especially when the previous foot ended in a long monosyllable (Platnauer 20-22). Scribes quite often alter such lines so as to remove the spondaic word from coinciding with the fourth foot; an instance of this can be seen at line 7 'non potuit mea mens quin esset grata teneri', where _H_ offers the scribal alteration _esset quin_. For a full discussion see Housman 269. =13. MENDIS.= This is probably a form of _mendum_ rather than of _menda_; compare Cic _II Ver_ II 104 'quid fuit istic antea scriptum? quod _mendum_ ista litura correxit?' and _Att_ XIII xxiii 2 ' tantum librariorum _menda_ tolluntur'. I have found no earlier instance in verse of _mendum_ meaning 'error' in this sense; Ovid in his poems of exile uses the terms of his craft more readily than any of his predecessors. =14. VIX INVITA FACTA LITVRA MANV EST.= _Vix_ goes with _facta_; André seems to take it with _inuita_ ('ma main l'effaçait presque à regret'). =15. VIDERIT= is a complete sentence meaning 'let him look to himself'. Compare the following examples: 'nona terebatur miserae uia; _"uiderit_ [_sc_ Demophoon]" inquit / et spectat zonam pallida facta suam' (_RA_ 601-2), '"uiderit! insanos" inquit "fateamur amores"' (_Met_ IX 519), 'cur tamen est mihi cura tui tot iam ante peremptis? / _uiderit_! intereat, quoniam tot caede procorum / admonitus non est' (_Met_ X 623-25), '_uiderit_! audentes forsque deusque iuuat' (_Fast_ II 782), '_uideris_! [_cod Ambrosianus G 37 sup (saec xiv), sicut coni Heinsius_: uiderit _codd plerique_] audebo tibi me scripsisse fateri' (_EP_ I ii 9). The idiom is found with an expressed subject at _AA_ II 371 '_uiderit_ Atrides: Helenen ego crimine soluo' and _AA_ III 671-72 '_uiderit_ utilitas: ego coepta fideliter edam: / Lemniasin gladios in mea fata dabo'. It is clearly derived from the use of _uiderit_ 'look after, take care of' with an expressed object, as at _Her_ XII 209-11 'quo feret ira sequar! facti fortasse pigebit-- / et piget infido consuluisse uiro. / _uiderit_ ista deus qui nunc mea pectora uersat!'. Although _uiderit_ in these passages clearly has a jussive sense, it is probably future perfect in origin, since _uidero_ 'I shall look after' is quite frequent in Terence and Cicero: see Martin on Ter _Ad_ 437 'de istoc ipse uiderit' and _OLD uideo_ 18b. =15. AD SVMMAM= means 'in short' or 'to sum up', and is used to introduce a recapitulation of what has just been expressed or concluded. The line should therefore be taken as the end of a debate which Ovid has had with himself. For the idiom, Ehwald (_KB_ 45) cites Cic _Att_ VII vii 7, XIV i 1, Hor _Ep_ I i 106 'ad summam, sapiens uno minor est Ioue, Petronius _Sat_ 37 5 'ad summam, mero meridie si dixerit illi tenebras esse, credet', 37 10, 57 3 & 9, 58 8 (in all these passages the narrator's neighbour at table is the speaker) and 71 1 (Trimalchio speaking). Professor R. J. Tarrant cites Sen _Apoc_ 11 3 'ad summam, tria uerba cito dicat et seruum me ducat'. AD SVMMVM is the reading of _L_ and _T_ and is printed by Burman (who punctuates _uiderit ad summum_) and Merkel (_ad summum dixi_). _OLD summus_ 8b gives only one instance of _ad summum_, where it means 'at most' (Scribonius Largus 122). The phrase does not seem appropriate to the present context. =15. IPSE= (_FTP_) is so much better in sense ('although _he_ may object') than the ILLE of most manuscripts that I have followed all previous editors in accepting it. =16. HANC.= This, the reading of _H_ and _I_ (perhaps recovered by conjecture), must be preferred to HA (AH, A), the reading of the other manuscripts, since without it _licet ipse queratur_ would have to be linked to _uiderit_, which seems awkward. The corruption of _hAc_ to _ha_ is not difficult, especially in view of the following _pudet_; compare _Met_ IX 531 'pudet, a pudet edere nomen'. =17. SI QVID EA EST.= 'If it really exists'. The affirmation would be 'est aliquid Lethe'; compare Prop IV vii 1 'Sunt aliquid Manes: letum non omnia finit'. =17. HEBETANTEM PECTORA.= I have found no other instance in Ovid of this transferred sense of _hebetare_, but compare _Aen_ II 604-6 'omnem quae nunc obducta tuenti / mortalis hebetat uisus tibi ... nubem eripiam' and _Aen_ VI 731-32. The transferred sense is found at Celsus II i 11 'Auster aures hebetat ... omnis calor ... mentem hebetat'; compare as well Pliny _NH_ XVIII 118 '[faba ...] hebetare sensus existimata' and Suet _Cl_ 2 'animo simul et corpore hebetato'. _Oblitus_ in 18 indicates that _pectus_ is virtually equivalent to 'mind' or even 'memory'. In Ovid it often has the sense 'poetic feeling', as at xii 16 'pectus habere neger'. =17. LETHEN.= Compare _Tr_ IV i 47-48 'utque soporiferae biberem si pocula Lethes, / temporis aduersi sic mihi sensus abest'. =21. ET= can be construed, as connecting with the preceding _nec_; compare _Fast_ VI 325 '_nec_ licet _et_ longum est epulas narrare deorum'. SED should however possibly be read, the word contrasting with the preceding _nec_ as at ii 15-16 'nec tamen ingenium nobis respondet ut ante, / _sed_ siccum sterili uomere litus aro'. The error could easily be induced by the final _s_ of the preceding _putes_; compare _Med_ 55-56 'par erui mensura decem madefiat ab _ouis_ / (_sed_ [_uar_ et] cumulent libras hordea nuda duas)'. =21. LEVIS HAEC ... GRATIA.= 'This unimportant expression of gratitude'. The same use of _leuis_ at _EP_ II v 35-36 'hoc tibi facturo, uel si non ipse rogarem, / accedat cumulus gratia nostra leuis'. =21. HAEC MERITIS REFERATVR GRATIA.= Similar phrasing at _Met_ V 14-15 'meritisne haec gratia tantis / redditur?', _Tr_ V iv 47 'plena tot ac tantis referetur gratia factis', _EP_ I vii 61 'emeritis referenda est gratia semper', and _EP_ III i 79-80 'nec ... debetur meritis gratia nulla meis'. =23. NVMQVAM PIGRA FVIT NOSTRIS TVA GRATIA REBVS.= Wheeler rightly points out Ovid's play in 21-23 on the varying senses of _gratia_ (thanks), _gratus_ (grateful), and _gratia_ (favour, kindness). =26. FERETQVE= is Heinsius' correction for the REFERTQVE of the manuscripts (REFERT _B1_, REFERTA _C_); it is made necessary by the following _fiducia tanta futuri_. Owen, Lenz, and André report _feretque_ as the reading of the thirteenth-century _Canonicianus lat 1_, but Professor R. J. Tarrant, who has examined the manuscript, informs me that it in fact reads _refertque_. For the pattern compare _Tr_ III viii 12 'quae non ulla tibi _fertque feretque_ dies' and _Tr_ II 155-56 'per superos ... qui _dant_ tibi longa _dabuntque_ / tempora'. The corruption was natural enough, particularly in view of such passages as _Fast_ VI 334 'errantes _fertque refertque_ pedes', _Tr_ I vii 5-6 (to a friend who owned a ring with Ovid's portrait) 'hoc tibi ... senti ... dici, / in digito qui me _fersque refersque_ [_codd_: ferasque _Heinsius_] tuo', and _Tr_ V xiii 29 'sic _ferat ac referat_ tacitas nunc littera uoces'. =28. QVOD FECIT QVISQVE TVETVR OPVS.= 'Everyone protects the work he has created'. This is hardly a commonplace of ancient poetry, and the catalogue which follows of famous works of art does not serve to illustrate it. =29-34.= Ovid's description of the works of Apelles, Phidias, Calamis, and Myron was influenced by Propertius' catalogue of artists at III ix 9-16; in particular, he imitates 10-12 'exactis Calamis se mihi iactat equis; / in Veneris tabula summam sibi poscit Apelles; / Parrhasius parua uindicat arte locum', and 15 'Phidiacus signo se Iuppiter ornat eburno'. Professor E. Fantham points out to me the inclusion of Apelles, Calamis, and Myron as canonical figures in a catalogue of artists at Cic _Brut_ 70 and of all four in a similar catalogue at Quint XII x 6-9. =29. VENVS.= Ovid is speaking of the famous Aphrodite Anadyomene painted by Apelles (fourth century BC) in Cos; hence the epithet _Coi_ later in the line--Apelles was in fact from Colophon. Ovid had probably seen the picture in Rome, for Augustus brought it there from Cos (Strabo XIV 2 19; Pliny _NH_ XXXV 91). Ovid refers to the painting at _Am_ I xiv 33-34 and _Tr_ II 527-28. At _AA_ III 223-24 (quoted in the next note) Ovid seems to be describing a cut gem copied from the painting. =30. AEQVOREO MADIDAS QVAE PREMIT IMBRE COMAS.= _Imbre_ depends on _madidas_. _Premit_ is equivalent to _exprimit_, as is shown by _AA_ III 224 'nuda Venus madidas _exprimit_ imbre comas'. For _exprimere_ taking as object that out of which something is pressed or squeezed see Celsus IV 24 and Pliny _NH_ XXIX 31. The Romans would not have found _aequoreo ... imbre_ strange. Although the primary transferred sense of _imber_ would be rain-water, it is used of sea-water as early as Ennius _Ann_ 497-98 Vahlen 'ratibusque fremebat / imber Neptuni', and without defining qualifier at _Aen_ I 123. =31. ACTAEAE= = the metrically difficult _Atheniensis_. The word is generally confined to high poetry (_Ecl_ II 24, _Met_ II 554 & 720, VI 711, VII 681 & VIII 170), but its first occurrence is in prose, at Nepos _Thras_ 2 1 'hoc initium fuit salutis Actaeorum'; some manuscripts read _Atticorum_, which may be right. =31. VEL EBVRNA VEL AEREA CVSTOS.= There were at Athens two famous statues of Athena sculpted by Phidias: 'Phidias ... fecit ex _ebore auroque_ [_Mayhoff_: aeque _codd_] Mineruam Athenis quae est in Parthenone stans, ex _aere_ uero ... Mineruam tam eximiae pulchritudinis ut formae cognomen acceperit ['was named the Minerva Formosa']' (Pliny _NH_ XXXIV 54); the second, less famous statue is described at Pausanias I 28 2. Heinsius' note is something of an oddity. He begins by reading AVREA for the AENEA of most manuscripts, taking _uel eburna uel aurea custos_ to refer to the chryselephantine statue in the Parthenon, 'sed altius consideranti locum apparet de duplici statua Mineruae agi, altera eburnea, altera aenea'. _Aenea_ therefore continued to be the accepted reading until 1873, when Haupt (_Opuscula_ 584) pointed out that it was unmetrical, and restored _aerea_, found in some manuscripts. The inverse error occurs at _Her_ VI 32, where most manuscripts have the unmetrical _aeripedes_ for _aenipedes_. But Merkel, followed by Palmer, considered 31-38 an interpolation; and _aeripedes_ may have been what the interpolator wrote. =32. PHIDIACA ... MANV.= Ovid is recalling Prop III ix 15 'Phidiacus ... Iuppiter'. For the Latin poets' use of a personal adjective for the genitive of the noun, see Austin's interesting note on _Aen_ II 543 _Hectoreum_. =33. VINDICAT VT CALAMIS LAVDEM QVOS FECIT EQVORVM.= 'As Calamis lays claim to the praise given his horses'. Calamis, a sculptor of the fifth century BC, was particularly famous for his statues of horses; see Pliny _NH_ XXXIV 71 'habet simulacrum et benignitas eius ['Praxiteles' generosity is seen in one of his statues']; Calamidis enim quadrigae aurigam suum imposuit, ne melior in equorum effigie defecisse in homine crederetur. ipse Calamis et alias quadrigas bigasque fecit equis sine aemulo expressis'. =33. QVOS FECIT EQVORVM.= Similar instances of hyperbaton at 28 'quod fecit quisque tuetur opus', _Met_ IV 803 'pectore in aduerso quos fecit sustinet angues', and _Fast_ VI 20 'tum dea quos fecit sustulit ipsa metus'. =34. VT SIMILIS VERAE VACCA MYRONIS OPVS.= The _Cow_ of Myron (late fifth century BC) was his most famous work. Praise of the statue's lifelike appearance was a stock theme of Hellenistic writers of epigram; it appears from Pliny _NH_ XXXIV 57 that the poetry written about the statue was as notable as the statue itself. Thirty-six poems of the Palatine Anthology deal with the theme (IX 713-42 & 793-98). Ausonius wrote eight epigrams on the same subject (_Ep_ LXVIII-LXXV), of which I quote LXVIII as a typical example of what both the Greek and Latin epigrams are like: Bucula sum, caelo ['chisel'] genitoris facta Myronis aerea: nec factam me puto, sed genitam, sic me taurus init, sic proxima bucula mugit, sic uitulus sitiens ubera nostra petit. miraris quod fallo gregem? gregis ipse magister inter pascentes me numerare solet. The statue was in Athens during Cicero's lifetime (_II Verr_ IV 135); Ovid is likely to have seen it during his visit to the city (_Tr_ I ii 77). He would certainly have seen the four statues of cattle sculpted by Myron which Augustus placed in his temple of Apollo, and which Propertius described: 'atque aram circum steterant armenta Myronis, / quattuor artificis, uiuida signa, boues' (II xxxi 7-8). =35. VLTIMA.= 'Smallest, least important'. For this rare sense compare Hor _Ep_ I xvii 35 'principibus placuisse uiris non ultima laus est', _Cons ad Liuiam_ 44 'ultima sit laudes inter ut illa tuas', Vell Pat I 11 1, and the other instances cited by _OLD ultimus_ 9. =35. SVM= ('I am not the least of your possessions') seems unobjectionable enough; most editors have, however, accepted PARS from the _excerpta Politiani_. =36. MVNVS OPVSQVE= is a Latin phrase with the general meaning of 'creation'. It is used in this sense at Cic _Tusc_ I 70 'haec igitur et alia innumerabilia cum cernimus, possumusne dubitare quin iis praesit aliquis uel effector ... uel ... moderator tanti _operis et muneris_?', _ND_ II 90, _Off_ III 4 'nulla enim eius ingenii [_sc_ Africani] monumenta mandata litteris, nullum _opus_ otii, nullum solitudinis _munus_ extat', and _Met_ VII 435-36 (to Theseus) 'quodque suis securus arat Cromyona colonus, / _munus opusque_ tuum est'. II. To Cornelius Severus Cornelius Severus (Schanz-Hosius 268-69 [§ 317]) was one of the most famous poets contemporary with Ovid; of him Quintilian said 'etiam si uersificator quam poeta melior ['even if his facility outruns his inspiration'], si tamen (ut est dictum) ad exemplar primi libri bellum Siculum perscripsisset, uindicaret sibi iure secundum locum [_sc_ after Virgil]' (X i 89). The elder Seneca quoted with approval Severus' lines on the death of Cicero, as the finest lament produced on the subject (_Suas_ VI 26: Winterbottom _ad loc_ refers to a commentary by H. Homeyer, _Annales univ. Saraviensis [phil. Fak.]_ 10 [1961], 327-34). _EP_ I viii was addressed to a different Severus: in the third and fourth lines of the present poem, Ovid expresses his embarrassment at having addressed no poem to Severus previously, and in the earlier poem no mention is made of the addressee's poetry. The poem is an apology to Severus for Ovid's not having sent a poem to him before; he offers two excuses for the omission. In the first fourteen lines, he flatters Severus by saying that so good a poet hardly needs to receive verse from someone else; in the twenty-four lines that follow he describes how his poetry, because of the conditions at Tomis, is now less abundant and of poorer quality than before. The subject is one Ovid had employed before: _Tr_ III xiv, a request for indulgence to Ovid's verse, and _Tr_ V xii, a reply to a friend who had urged him to write more poetry, treat the same topic in much the same way. The theme is similar to that of Catullus LXVIII 1-40, where the poet explains that his brother's death has caused his lack of interest in poetry. In 39-46 Ovid moves to the somewhat discordant topic (which serves however to re-emphasize his misery at Tomis) of how he continues to write poetry to take his mind off present evils, a theme he had used several times before, most notably in _EP_ I v. He ends the poem with a request that Severus send him some of his recent work (47-50). =1. QVOD LEGIS.= Similar beginnings to verse-epistles at _Her_ III 1 '_Quam legis_ a rapta Briseide littera uenit', _Tr_ V vii 1, _EP_ I vii 1-2 'Littera pro uerbis tibi, Messaline, salutem / _quam legis_ a saeuis attulit usque Getis', and _EP_ III v 1 '_Quam legis_ unde tibi mittatur epistula quaeris?'. Compare as well _Her_ X 3-4 '_Quae legis_ ex illo, Theseu, tibi litore mitto / unde tuam sine me uela tulere ratem'. This poem has suffered from two separate interpolations at its beginning. Certain manuscripts start the poem with the distich 'Illa relicta feris etiam nunc, improbe Theseu, / uiuit et haec aequa mente tulisse uelis', which is universally condemned; but the formulaic nature of 3-4 suggests that 1-2 'Mitius inueni quam te genus omne ferarum, / credita non ulli quam tibi peius eram', found in all manuscripts, is a second interpolation. Micyllus was the first to see this; a recent discussion at Kirfel 69-70. =1. VATES MAGNORVM MAXIME REGVM.= Severus apparently wrote a poem dealing with pre-Republican Rome, to judge from xvi 9 his most famous work: 'quique dedit Latio carmen regale, Seuerus'. Heinsius took the two passages as meaning that Severus was a writer of tragedy, citing _Tr_ II 553 'et dedimus tragicis scriptum regale cothurnis'; compare as well Hor _Sat_ I x 42-43 'Pollio regum / facta canit pede ter percusso ['in iambic trimeter']'. Heinsius' suggestion is possible enough, but since Seneca and Quintilian speak of Severus as an epic poet and there is no mention of the stage in this poem, it should be rejected. Similar language is used of epic poetry at _Ecl_ VI 3 'cum canerem _reges_ et proelia' and Prop III iii 1-4 'Visus eram ... reges, Alba, tuos et _regum facta_ tuorum, / tantum operis, neruis hiscere posse meis'. =1. REGVM.= VATVM (_M1FIL_) is a conscious or unconscious attempt to extend the etymological figure seen in _magnorum maxime_. =5-6. ORBA TAMEN NVMERIS CESSAVIT EPISTVLA NVMQVAM / IRE PER ALTERNAS OFFICIOSA VICES.= Other mentions of what was clearly an extensive prose correspondence between Ovid and his friends at _Tr_ V xii 1-2 and _EP_ I ix 1-2. =6. OFFICIOSA.= 'Attentive'. The preface to Martial XII gives a good illustration of the sense: 'consequimur ut molesti potius quam ut officiosi esse uideamur'. _Officiosus_ occurs five times in the _Ex Ponto_, but only four times in the rest of Ovid's poetry. =9-10.= Aristaeus was famous for his beekeeping (Virgil _G_ IV 315-558). Bacchus was the god of wine, and Triptolemus had disseminated the knowledge of grain-farming (_Met_ V 646-61). Alcinous might seem a strange companion to these three, but evidently Homer's description of Alcinous' orchard (_Od_ VII 112-31) made a strong impression on the Latin poets. From Ovid compare _Am_ I x 56 'praebeat Alcinoi poma benignus ager' and _Met_ XIII 719-20 'proxima Phaeacum felicibus obsita pomis / rura petunt', from Propertius III ii 13 'nec mea Phaeacas aequant pomaria siluas', and from Virgil _G_ II 87 'pomaque et Alcinoi siluae' 'the fruit-trees of Alcinous'. =9. BACCHO VINA FALERNA.= Heinsius preferred _M_'s BACCHO VINA FALERNO. But the passage he cited in its support, Silius III 369-70 'Tarraco ... uitifera, et Latio tantum cessura Lyaeo' is not in fact parallel: _Lyaeo_ there stands for _uino_, and the passage means 'Tarraco, rich in vines, conceding priority to Latin wine alone'. Ovid wished to balance the hexameter with the pentameter, and used a standard epithet to fill out the metre. =10. ALCINOO.= Note the quadrisyllable ending, and compare _EP_ II ix 41-42 'quis non Antiphaten Laestrygona deuouet? aut quis / munifici mores improbet _Alcinoi_?'. In his later poetry Ovid shows a steadily increasing willingness to allow his pentameters to end with words other than disyllables. Every pentameter of the amatory poems and the first fifteen _Heroides_ ends in a disyllable. Two quadrisyllabic endings occur in the later books of the _Fasti_: V 582 _fluminibus_ and VI 660 _funeribus_. In the first five books of the _Tristia_ there are eight such endings, in the first three books of the _Ex Ponto_ there are seven, while in the fourth book there are no less than fourteen instances of quadrisyllabic endings: nearly as many as in all the rest of Ovid's corpus put together.[18] 'Sermo magis etiam quam illic [_sc_ in the _Tristia_] ... neglectus est et degenerauit' Riese remarked, but it can reasonably be doubted that a poet of Ovid's facility would break the rule of the disyllabic ending except by choice. A moderation of the rule became general: the author of _Her_ XVI-XXI (whom I do not believe to have been Ovid) allowed _pudicitiae_ (XVI 290), _superciliis_ (XVII 16), and _deseruit_ (XIX 202) (Platnauer 17); a count of pentameters in Martial V shows the proportion of non-disyllabic endings at 20%--the shorter the poem, the more freely they are admitted. Quadrisyllable endings are frequent in the metrically strict Claudian. [Footnote 18: These figures are taken from Platnauer 17 and from page vii of Riese's preface to his edition.] Ovid admitted quadrisyllable endings more freely if they were proper names. Of the twenty-one quadrisyllable verse-endings in the _Ex Ponto_, six involve proper nouns: II ii 76 _Dalmatiae_, ix 42 _Alcinoi_, the present passage, IV iii 54 _Anticyra_, viii 62 _Oechalia_, and ix 80 _Danuuium_. Professor E. Fantham points out to me that Ovid follows Propertius' similar practice: 42 of the 166 quadrisyllable pentameter endings in Propertius are proper names (Platnauer 17). The fifteen other instances in the _Ex Ponto_ of quadrisyllabic pentameter-endings are II ii 6 _perlegere_, ii 70 _imperium_, iii 18 _articulis_, v 26 _ingenium_, III i 166 _aspiciant_, IV v 24 _officio_, vi 6 _alterius_, vi 14 _auxilium_, ix 48 _utilitas_, xiii 28 _imperii_, xiii 46 _ingeniis_, xiv 4 _inuenies_, xiv 18 _ingenio_, xiv 56 _imposuit_, and xv 26 _auxilium_. For Ovid's use of trisyllabic and pentasyllabic endings, see at ix 26 _tegeret_ (page 294) and iii 12 _amicitia_ (p 181). =11. FERTILE PECTVS HABES.= Compare _Tr_ V xii 37-38 'denique non paruas animo dat gloria uires, / et _fecunda_ facit _pectora_ laudis amor'. =11. INTERQVE HELICONA COLENTES.= Poets are also described as being on Parnassus at _Tr_ IV i 50, x 23 & x 120. Helicon is the goal of poets at Hor _Ep_ II i 218 (cited at 36). =12. PROVENIT= continues the agricultural metaphor of _fertile pectus_. For _prouenire_ = 'grow', see _AA_ III 101-2 'ordior a cultu: cultis bene Liber ab uuis / prouenit', _Fast_ IV 617 'largaque prouenit cessatis messis in aruis', and _Nux_ 10; for the metaphorical sense see _Am_ I iii 19-20 'te mihi materiem _felicem_ in carmina praebe-- / _prouenient_ causa carmina digna sua' and _Her_ XV 13-14 'nec mihi dispositis quae iungam carmina neruis / _proueniunt_'. For _uberius ... prouenit_ compare Caesar _BG_ V 24 'eo anno frumentum in Gallia propter siccitates _angustius prouenerat_'. =13. MITTERE AD HVNC CARMEN.= Burman printed without comment MITTERE CARMEN AD HVNC, the reading of Heinsius' _fragmentum Louaniense_. It seems to be a mere normalization of the hyperbaton; the elimination of the elision (_mittere ad_) may have been a factor as well. =13. AD HVNC= indicates that Ovid cannot have addressed these words in the first instance directly to Severus, but must here be recollecting his earlier thoughts. I have therefore placed the line in quotation marks. =15. NEC TAMEN.= 'This was the principal reason; a second reason, however, was that ...' =15. INGENIVM= = 'poetic talent', as often. Compare viii 66, xvi 2, _Tr_ III vii 47, _EP_ II ii 103, _EP_ II v 21 (quoted at 20 _uena pauperiore_), _EP_ II v 26, and _EP_ III iv 11. =15. RESPONDET= introduces the agricultural image of 18 'sed siccum sterili uomere litus aro', for the word here means 'yield'. _OLD_ _respondeo_ 8c cites for the literal sense Virgil _G_ II 63-64 'truncis oleae melius, propagine uites / respondent', Columella II 1 3 'humus ... magno faenore ... colono respondet', Col III 3 4; for a transferred use see Sen _Ep_ LXXXI 1 'non respondeant [_sc_ beneficia] potius quam non dentur'. =16. SICCVM ... LITVS ARO.= Proverbial for a useless activity. See Otto _harena_ 4 and compare _Tr_ V iv 47-48 'plena tot ac tantis referetur gratia factis, / nec sinet ille [Ovid] litus arare boues'. _Sterili_ is transferred by hypallage from _litus_; _siccum_ serves no purpose beyond providing a balancing epithet. =17. VENAS EXCAECAT=, the reading of most codices, is obviously correct as against the VENAS CVM CAECAT of _BCHL_. Ovid uses _excaecare_ again at _Met_ XV 270-72 'hic fontes natura nouos emisit, at illic / clausit ... flumina prosiliunt aut _excaecata_ [_uar_ exsiccata] residunt'. =17. IN VNDIS= is probably corrupt; if it is retained, from the context it must mean 'in the water of springs' (Professor A. Dalzell). Williams suggests 'in the case of water', marking the analogy with _pectora sic mea sunt limo uitiata malorum_ in 19. For _undis_ as a corrupt hexameter ending, compare _Met_ XV 276 'redditur Argolicis ingens Erasinus in aruis [_codd_: in undis _Sen_ NQ _III 26 4_]', _Met_ VIII 162 'liquidus Phrygiis Maeandros in aruis [_uar_ liquidis Phrygius ... in undis]', and _Met_ XIV 155 'sedibus Euboicam Stygiis emergit in urbem [_uar_ sedibus euboicis stigiis emersus ab undis]'. The line seems to have passed without comment until Merkel's second edition: '_in undis_ minus bene positum uidetur; temptabam _hiulcas,_ quod expressisset Statius Theb. VIIII 450 _hiulcis flumina uenis Suggerit_ ['he (the river Asopos) opens his springs wide and adds his streams']'. There seems no obvious reason, however, for Ovid to define the springs as 'gaping'. Madvig conjectured INVNDANS, the corruption of which would be easy; but _uenas_ seems more in need of a modifier than _limus_--Professor R. J. Tarrant suggests APERTAS or AQVARVM, Professor A. Dalzell IN ARVIS. Professor Tarrant also suggests to me that _in undis_ could well have originated as a gloss on _uenas_. =18. LAESAQVE.= There seems no reason to replace this with Merkel's LAPSAQVE ('flowing back'?), which even seems to contradict the sense of _resistit_. The same sense of _laesus_ at _Am_ III vii 32 'deficiunt laesi carmine ['spell'] fontis aquae'. =20. VENA PAVPERIORE.= The same image of Ovid's poetic talent at _Tr_ III xiv 33-34 'ingenium fregere meum mala, cuius et ante / fons infecundus _paruaque uena_ fuit' and _EP_ II v 21-22 'ingenioque meo, _uena_ quod _paupere_ manat, / plaudis, et e riuo flumina magna facis'. =23. DA VENIAM FASSO.= As a poet himself, Severus would be particularly shocked at Ovid's admission he has virtually ceased to write poetry. Similar phrasing at III ix 45-46 'confesso ignoscite, docti: / uilior est operis fama salute mea'. =23. FRENA REMISI.= 'I have let go of the reins' = 'I have stopped writing poetry'; for the sense, compare _Aen_ VII 599-600 (of Latinus) 'nec plura locutus / saepsit se tectis rerumque reliquit habenas'. The metaphor of the poet as driver is found as early as Bacchylides (V 176-78) and Pindar (_Ol_ VI 22 ff). A full list of Greek and Latin passages is included in Henderson's note on _RA_ 397-98; the image is particularly frequent in Roman didactic poetry, being found even at Columella X 215-16. See as well Kenney _Nequitiae Poeta_ 206. In Ovid the image is found at _AA_ I 39-40 & 264, II 426, III 467-68 & 809-10, _RA_ 397-98, _Fast_ I 25-26, II 360, IV 10, and VI 586. The only instances I have found that are not from Ovid's didactic verse are the present passage and xii 23-24 'tu bonus hortator, tu duxque comesque fuisti, / cum regerem tenera frena nouella manu'. =24. DVCITVR.= 'Is formed, written'. The same sense at _Met_ I 649 (of Io) '_littera_ ... quam pes in puluere _duxit_' and _Met_ X 215-16 'AI AI / flos habet inscriptum, funestaque _littera ducta_ est'. =25. IMPETVS ILLE SACER.= 'The famous divine impulse'. Similar phrasing at _Fast_ VI 5-6 'est deus in nobis; agitante calescimus illo: / impetus hic sacrae semina mentis habet'. =25. VATVM PECTORA NVTRIT.= _Nutrit_ here seems to mean 'sustain'. Its usual transferred sense is 'cause to grow', as at III iv 26 (the only other passage I have found where the verb is used of poetry) and Hor _C_ IV iv 26. =27. VIX VENIT AD PARTES ... MVSA.= 'My Muse with difficulty performs her functions'. _Partes_ in the sense of 'theatrical role' (Ter _Ph_ 27) early acquired the extended sense of 'role', 'function', or 'duty'. Burman cites as parallels _Am_ I viii 87 'seruus et _ad partes_ sollers ancilla parentur' and _Nux_ 68; compare as well _AA_ II 546 'cum, tener, _ad partes_ tu quoque, somne, uenis' and _EP_ III i 41-42 'utque iuuent alii, tu debes uincere amicos, / uxor, et _ad partes_ prima uenire tuas'. =27. SVMPTAE ... TABELLAE.= Compare _Met_ IX 523-25 'scribit damnatque _tabellas_ ... inque uicem _sumptas_ ponit positasque _resumit_'. =29. NE DICAM.= I have found no other instance of the expression in verse, but it is common in Cicero (Kühner-Stegmann II i 825). =30. NVMERIS NECTERE VERBA.= 'Bind words to metre'. I take _numeris_ as a dative; no close parallel presents itself, but compare _Aen_ IV 239-40 'pedibus talaria nectit / aurea'. =33. NVMEROSOS ... GESTVS.= Compare _Am_ II iv 29 'illa placet _gestu numerosaque bracchia_ ducit', _AA_ II 305 '_bracchia_ saltantis, uocem mirare canentis', and Prop II xxii 5-6 'siue aliquis molli diducit candida _gestu_ / bracchia, seu uarios incinit ore modos'. Heinsius thought GRESSVS (_I1PF3ul_) possible as well, citing Varro _LL_ IX 5 '_pedes_ male _ponere_ atque imitari uatias ['bow-legged men'] coeperit', Martianus Capella IX 909 'licet pulchris rosea numeris ac libratis _passibus_ moueretur', and Maximianus (6th century) _El_ III 27 'suspensos ponere _gressus_'. But the strong manuscript authority for _gestus_ and the parallels in Ovid mark it as clearly preferable to _gressus_. =33. PONERE.= The verb seems strange, but Burman cited in its support Val Max VIII vii 7 'Roscius ... nullum umquam spectante populo _gestum_, nisi quem domi meditatus fuerat, _ponere_ [_codd_: promere _E. Schulze_] ausus est'. =35-36. LAVDATAQVE VIRTVS / CRESCIT.= For this commonplace of ancient literature see _Otto_ _ars_ 3 and compare _RA_ 393 'nam iuuat et studium famae mihi creuit honore', _Tr_ V xii 37-38 'denique non paruas animo dat gloria uires, / et fecunda facit pectora laudis amor', _EP_ III ix 21 'scribentem iuuat ipse fauor minuitque laborem', Prop IV x 3, and Cic _Tusc_ I 4. =36. IMMENSVM GLORIA CALCAR HABET.= The same metaphor at _Tr_ V i 75-76 'denique nulla mihi captatur gloria, quaeque / ingeniis _stimulos subdere_ fama solet', _EP_ I v 57-58 'gloria uos _acuat_; uos, ut recitata probentur / carmina, Pieriis inuigilate choris', and Hor _Ep_ II i 217-18 'uatibus addere _calcar_ / ut studio maiore petant Helicona uirentem'. _Immensum_ seems rather strange; I have found no good parallel for it. =37. HIC MEA CVI RECITEM ... CARMINA.= A constant complaint of Ovid in exile. Compare _Tr_ III xiv 39-40 'nullus in hac terra, recitem si carmina, cuius / intellecturis auribus utar, adest', _Tr_ IV i 89-90, and _Tr_ V xii 53 'non liber hic ullus, non qui mihi commodet aurem'. Perhaps it is significant that Ovid does not complain in the present passage that he has no books available: certainly he must have had a substantial library at hand when he composed the _Ibis_. =38. BARBARVS HISTER.= The same phrase in the same position (leaving space for the disyllable) at _EP_ III iii 26 'et coit astrictis _barbarus Hister_ aquis'. _Hister_ was the name of the lower course of the Danube (Pliny _NH_ IV 79). Ovid uses the metrically convenient _Hister_ fifteen times in the _Ex Ponto_, as against two instances only of _Danuuius_ (IV ix 80 & x 58). =38. OBIT= _Damsté_ HABET _codd_. In support of _obit_ Damsté cited x 22 'gentibus obliqua quas _obit_ Hister aqua' (_Mnemosyne_ XLVI 32). As Professor R. J. Tarrant points out, the only meaning that can be attached to _quasque alias gentes barbarus Hister habet_ is 'the other people that live in the Danube'; he compares _Her_ VI 135-36 'prodidit illa patrem; rapui de clade Thoanta. / deseruit Colchos; me mea Lemnos habet' and _Aen_ VI 362 (Palinurus speaking) 'nunc me fluctus habet'. _EP_ III ii 43-44 'nos ... quos procul a uobis Pontus et [_uar_ barbarus] Hister habet', cited by Lenz in support of _habet_, is not a good parallel in view of the different subject (_Pontus et Hister_ instead of _Hister_ alone). Lenz cited _Tr_ II 230 'bellaque pro magno Caesare Caesar obit' for a variant _habet_; Professor Tarrant cites another instance of the corruption at _Met_ I 551-52 'pes modo tam uelox pigris radicibus haeret, / ora cacumen obit'. =39. MATERIA= = 'means' (_OLD materia_ 8). =41. NEC VINVM NEC ME TENET ALEA FALLAX.= The same statement at _EP_ I v 45-46 'nec iuuat in lucem nimio marcescere uino, / nec tenet incertas alea blanda manus'. For Ovid's temperance, compare _EP_ I x 30 'scis mihi quam solae paene bibantur aquae'. _Me tenet_ in the present passage should perhaps be translated 'holds my attention' (_OLD teneo_ 22) rather than 'attracts' (Wheeler). =41. VINVM.= For wine as a diversion from sorrow, compare Tib I ii 1 'Adde merum uinoque nouos compesce dolores' (with Smith's note) and Tib I v 37 'saepe ego temptaui curas depellere uino'. =42. TACITVM TEMPVS.= Similar phrases at _AA_ II 670 'iam ueniet _tacito_ curua senecta pede', _Fast_ VI 771 '_tacitis_ ... senescimus annis', _Tr_ III vii 35-36 'senectus / quae _strepitus passu non faciente_ uenit', _Tr_ IV vi 17 '_tacito_ pede lapsa uetustas' and _Tr_ IV x 27 '_tacito_ passu labentibus annis'. =43. QVOD CVPEREM.= At _EP_ I viii 39-62 Ovid, having detailed the urban pleasures he has lost, speaks of his agricultural pursuits in Italy, and laments that this diversion is not available to him at Tomis. The two passages add personal meaning to his description at _Met_ XIV 623-34 of Pomona's gardening and his prescription at _RA_ 169-98 of agriculture as a diversion from an unhappy love-affair. =43. SI PER FERA BELLA LICERET.= Compare _EP_ II vii 69-70 'tempus in agrorum cultu consumere dulce est: / non patitur uerti barbarus hostis humum' and _EP_ III viii 6 'hostis ab agricola uix sinit illa [_sc_ loca] fodi'. At _Tr_ III x 57-66 Ovid gives a vivid description of what could happen to the farmers of Tomis in a raid. =44. NOVATA= = 'restored to fertility through ploughing'. Ovid more commonly uses _renouare_, as at _Tr_ V xii 23-24 'fertilis, assiduo si non renouetur aratro, / nil nisi cum spinis gramen habebit ager', _Am_ I iii 9, _Met_ I 110 & XV 125, _Fast_ I 159, and _Tr_ IV vi 13. =45. RESTANT= is not strictly logical, but a similar attraction of number is confirmed by metre at _Tr_ I ii 1 'Di maris et caeli--quid enim nisi uota _supersunt_?'; RESTAT (_IP_) must therefore be rejected. Similar confusions occur in the manuscripts at _Met_ XIV 396 'nec quicquam antiqui [_Berolinensis Heinsii_: antiquum _codd plerique_] Pico nisi nomina _restant_' and _Tr_ IV x 85 'si tamen extinctis aliquid nisi nomina _restant_'. =47. TV, CVI BIBITVR FELICIVS AONIVS FONS.= For the image of the poet drinking from Hippocrene see Prop III iii 5-6 'paruaque tam magnis admoram fontibus ora, / unde pater sitiens Ennius ante bibit'. Both here and at II x 25 Propertius speaks of Hippocrene as the spring of epic poetry specifically. =47. FELICIVS.= 'With happier result'; compare _Ibis_ 559 'nec tibi, si quid amas, felicius Haemone [=_quam Haemoni_] cedat'. =47. AONIVS FONS.= Platnauer (13) cites only four instances from the elegiac poets of hexameters ending in monosyllables: Prop II xxv 17 'amor, qui', _Am_ II ix 47 'Cupido, est', the present passage, and _EP_ IV ix 101 'quibus nos'. Ehwald and Levy compare _Met_ V 573 'quae tibi causa fugae, cur sis, Arethusa, sacer _fons_'. The coincidence suggests that in both passages Ovid was recalling a line-ending from an earlier poet. Alternatively, Professor E. Fantham suggests to me that Ovid may here have deliberately created an awkward line-ending so as to mock himself and bear out his claim of waning inspiration. =47-50.= Ovid returns to the subject of his poem's opening, Severus' poetry. =48. VTILITER ... CEDIT.= Similar phrasing at _EP_ II vii 19 '[iam liquet ...] obseruare deos ne quid mihi _cedat amice_'. =49. MERITO.= 'With justification'; Severus' previous service to the Muses has brought him fame and not, as in Ovid's case, disaster. =50. HVC ALIQVOD CVRAE MITTE RECENTIS OPVS.= A similar request at _EP_ III v 29-30 (to Cotta Maximus) 'quod licet, ut uidear tecum magis esse, legenda [_Burman_: legendo _uel_ loquendo _codd_] / saepe precor studii pignora mitte tui'. =50. CVRAE= = 'poetic toil', as at _Tr_ II 11-12 'hoc pretium _curae_ [_fragmentum Treuirense (saec x)_: uitae _codd plerique_] uigilatorumque laborum / cepimus', _EP_ I v 61 'cur ego sollicita poliam mea carmina _cura_?', and _EP_ III ix 29. At xvi 39 and _Tr_ II 1 the word means 'product of poetic toil'. III. To An Unfaithful Friend By the time Ovid wrote this poem, the letter of reproach was a genre familiar to him: each book of the _Tristia_ (with the obvious exception of II) contains such a poem (I viii; III xi; IV ix; V viii), and in the _Ibis_ Ovid had, by the extended treatment of a number of standard topics within the subject, created a poem of over six hundred lines. Ovid begins the poem by stating that he has heard about his friend's faithlessness; he asks what possible excuse there might be for this behaviour (1-28). He then warns his friend that Fortune is changeable, and gives four examples of famous men who fell from prosperity (29-48). He ends the poem by stating once again that Fortune is undependable, and gives his own catastrophe as an instance; his friend should remember this, and moderate his behaviour accordingly (49-58). The poem has points of contact with the earlier poems of reproach. _Tr_ I viii is addressed to a friend who failed to visit Ovid after his disaster: he can scarcely believe his friend is human. In _Tr_ III xi, Ovid asks his enemy why through his actions he makes his punishment even worse. _Tr_ IV ix is a warning that if Ovid's enemy does not cease attacking him, he will through his poetry make his enemy's name infamous throughout the world. _Tr_ V viii, the poem closest in theme to the present one, is a warning to his enemy that Fortune is changeable and Augustus merciful, so he and Ovid might one day change situations. The _Ibis_, being primarily a catalogue of literary curses, stands somewhat apart from the other poems of reproach in structure as in size; yet the opening of the poem, in which Ovid describes his enemy's conduct and the ways he might respond, offers a number of parallels to the present poem. =1. CONQVERAR AN TACEAM.= Kenney (_Nequitiae Poeta_ 204-5), commenting on _AA_ I 739 'conquerar an moneam', cites other instances of the same rhetorical device at _Aen_ III 39 ' eloquar an sileam?' and _Met_ IX 147 'conquerar an sileam?', as well as the present passage. =1. CONQVERAR.= The choice of verb is significant: this poem is a rhetorical _conquestio_ transferred to verse. Kenney cites Cicero's definition of _conquestio_ at _Inu_ I 106: 'conquestio est oratio auditorum misericordiam captans ... id locis communibus efficere oportebit, per quos Fortunae uis in omnes et hominum infirmitas ostenditur; qua oratione ... animus hominum ... ad misericordiam comparatur, cum in alieno malo suam infirmitatem considerabit'. =1. PONAM SINE NOMINE CRIMEN.= 'Shall I put my accusation in my poem without naming you?'. The same sense of _ponere_ at _Tr_ I v 7 '_positis_ pro nomine signis', _Tr_ IV iv 7, and _EP_ III vi 1-2 'Naso suo (_posuit_ nomen quam paene!) sodali / mittit ab Euxinis hoc breue carmen aquis'. =2. QVI SIS.= The boundary between adjectival _qui_ and pronominal _quis_ in Latin was not absolute; and just as one finds such forms as _quis clamor_ (_Met_ III 632), so it seems to have been Latin practice to use _qui_ before forms of _esse_ in indirect discourse, perhaps in order to avoid a double _s_-sound. Some instances of this from verse are _Ecl_ I 18 'iste deus _qui sit_ da, Tityre, nobis', _Ecl_ II 19 'nec _qui sim_ quaeris, Alexi', _Aen_ III 608-9 '_qui sit_ fari ... hortamur', _Met_ XIV 841 'mihi nec _quae sis_ dicere promptum est', _Met_ XV 595 'is _qui sit_ signo, non nomine dicam', _Fast_ V 191 'ipse doce _quae sis_', _Ibis_ 52 'teque breui _qui sis_ dissimulare sinam', _Ibis_ 61 '_qui sis_ nondum quaerentibus edo', and _EP_ III vi 57 'teque tegam, _qui sis_'. In some of these passages _quis_ is found as a variant reading; given the ease of corruption, the rule should perhaps be made canonical, and such passages as _Met_ I 248-49 '_quis sit_ laturus in aras / tura' supplied with forms of _qui_ even when, as in this instance, there is only weak manuscript support. (Professor R. J. Tarrant prefers, however, to retain _quis_ at _Met_ I 248, seeing a difference between expressions of identity [_qui sis ... dicam_] and of description [_sit_ and _laturus_ go closely together]). The use of _qui_ seems to have extended to past subjunctives of _esse_ as well as present: compare _Met_ XI 719 'qui [_uar_ quis] foret ignorans'. For discussions see Löfstedt II 79-96 and Shackleton Bailey on _Att_ III x 2 'possum obliuisci _qui fuerim_, non sentire qui sim?'. In preclassical Latin _qui_ is found for _quis_ even in direct questions: _OLD qui_ A4a cites Pl _Capt_ 833 'qui uocat', Ter _Ph_ 990 'qui nominat me', and Scipio minor V 19 Malcovati3 'qui spondet mille nummum'. The usage must have continued in spoken Latin, for it is found at Vitruvius VII 5 6 and Petronius 62 8. =3. NOMINE NON VTAR, NE COMMENDERE QVERELA.= An interesting indication of the confidence Ovid felt in his poetry. In his earlier poems of reproach, Ovid had represented his not naming the person as an act of forbearance (_Tr_ IV ix 1-4; _Ibis_ 51-54). =3. COMMENDERE QVERELA.= Oxymoron. =5. DVM MEA PVPPIS ERAT VALIDA FVNDATA CARINA.= The common ancient metaphor of shipwreck also used of Ovid's exile at _Tr_ I i 85-86, _Tr_ II 99-102, _Tr_ III iv 15-16 'dum tecum uixi, dum me leuis aura ferebat, / haec mea per placidas cumba cucurrit aquas', _Tr_ V xii 50, and _EP_ II iii 25-28. =7. CONTRAXIT VVLTVM.= See at i 5 _trahis uultus_ (p 149). =9-10= form a tricolon, where each phrase represents the same action in progressively more specific terms: (1) 'dissimulas etiam' (2) 'nec me uis nosse uideri' (3) 'quisque sit audito nomine Naso rogas'. =9. DISSIMVLAS.= The same word in similar contexts at _Tr_ I i 62 'dissimulare uelis, te liquet esse meum', _Tr_ III vi 2, _Tr_ IV iii 54, _Tr_ IV iv 28, and _EP_ I ii 146. =9. NEC ME VIS NOSSE VIDERI.= 'You don't want others to think you know me'. Similar thought and language at _Tr_ IV iii 51 'me miserum si turpe putas mihi nupta uideri!' and _EP_ II iii 29-30 'cumque alii _nolint_ etiam _me nosse uideri_, / uix duo proiecto tresue tulistis opem'. =10. QVISQVE SIT. QVIQVE SIT= (_HacP_) could be defended, _sit_ determining the form _qui_, even with the intervening enclitic, but given the prevalence of relative _quique_ at line-beginnings in Ovid (compare xvi 9, 11, 15, 19 & 23) it seems better to take it as a trivial error. =11, 13, 15, 17. ILLE EGO.= The same idiom to stir someone's memory at _Fast_ III 505-6 '_illa ego sum_ cui tu solitus promittere caelum: / ei mihi, pro caelo qualia dona fero' and _EP_ I ii 129-32 '_ille ego sum_ qui te colui, quem festa solebat / inter conuiuas mensa uidere tuos: / _ille ego qui_ duxi uestros Hymenaeon ad ignes, / et cecini fausto carmina digna toro'. R. G. Austin, discussing the spurious proem to the _Aeneid_ (_CQ_ LX, n.s. XVIII [1968] 110-11), cites _Tr_ V vii 55-56 '_ille ego_ Romanus uates--ignoscite, Musae!-- / Sarmatico cogor plurima more loqui', _Met_ I 757-58 '_ille ego_ liber, / ille ferox tacui', Statius _Sil_ V v 38 & _Theb_ IX 434, and Silius XI 177-82: 'It will be noticed ... that all these examples represent the new situation as a fall from grace'. =12. AMICITIA.= Ovid allows pentasyllabic words to end the pentameter only in the poetry of exile (Platnauer 17). There are eight such words in the _Tristia_, and four in the _Ex Ponto_: I ii 68 _patrocinium_, II ix 20 _Ericthonius_, this passage, and xiii 44 _amicitiae_ (Platnauer 17; Riese vii). This distribution contrasts with Ovid's increasing fondness in the _Ex Ponto_ for trisyllabic and quadrisyllabic endings, for which see at ix 26 _tegeret_ and ii 10 _Alcinoo_. The later _Heroides_ have two pentasyllabic pentameter-endings, XVI 290 _pudicitiae_ and XVII 16 _superciliis_. =13-14. ILLE EGO QVI PRIMVS TVA SERIA NOSSE SOLEBAM, / ET TIBI IVCVNDIS PRIMVS ADESSE IOCIS.= The same joining of _seria_ and _ioci_ (or _lusus_) at _Tr_ I viii 31-32, _EP_ I ix 9-10, _EP_ II iv 9-10 '_seria_ multa mihi tecum conlata recordor, / nec data _iucundis_ tempora pauca _iocis_', and _EP_ II x 41-42. It is found in prose and early Latin: Luck at _Tr_ I viii 31-32 cites Cic _Fin_ II 85 'at quicum _ioca, seria, ut dicitur_, quicum arcana, quicum occulta omnia? tecum, optime', Pliny _Ep_ II xiii 5 'cum hoc _seria_, cum hoc _iocos_ miscui', Pliny _Ep_ IV xvii 5 'nihil a me ille secretum, non _ioculare_, non _serium_, non triste, non laetum', and Ennius _Ann_ 239-40 Vahlen3 'cui res audacter magnas paruasque iocumque / eloqueretur'. =15. CONVICTOR.= The word belongs properly to prose, the only other occurrences in verse being two passages in Horace's _Satires_: I iv 96 'me ... _conuictore_ usus amicoque' & I vi 47 'quia sim tibi, Maecenas, _conuictor_'. _Conuictus_ is similarly found in verse twice only, in Ovid's poetry of exile (_Tr_ I viii 29-30 '_conuictu_ causisque ualentibus ... temporis et longi iunctus amore tibi' & _EP_ II x 9-10 'quam [_sc_ curam] tu uel longi debes _conuictibus_ aeui, / uel mea quod coniunx non aliena tibi est'). =15. DENSOQVE.= 'Frequent, often recurring'. This sense of _densus_ is not found elsewhere in Ovid, but compare Virgil _G_ IV 347 '_densos_ diuum numerabat amores', Statius _Theb_ VI 421, and Juvenal IX 35-37 'quamuis ... blandae assidue _densaeque_ tabellae / sollicitent'. The closest parallel for the poetic singular cited by _OLD densus_ 3a is Martial IX lxxxvii 1-2 'Septem post calices Opimiani / _denso_ cum iaceam triente[19] blaesus'. [Footnote 19: A drinking-vessel holding one third of a _sextarius_ (_OLD_ _triens_ 3).] =15. DOMESTICVS.= Apparently the only instance of the substantive in verse. The word is common enough in prose, and formed part of the spoken language, for it is found in reported speech at Petronius 45 6. =17. QVEM= _Leidensis Heinsii_ QVI _codd plerique_. _Qui_ cannot be connected with _nescis_, and so is without antecedent. The scribe was probably influenced by 11, 13, and 15, in which _ille ego_ is completed by a nominative clause. For _quem ... an uiuam_ compare _EP_ III vi 57 '_te_que tegam, _qui sis_'. =17. VIVAM.= Heinsius' VIVAT is unnecessary: the assimilation of person seems reasonable enough in view of such passages as _EP_ I ii 129-31 'ille ego sum qui te _colui_ ... ille ego qui _duxi_ uestros Hymenaeon ad ignes'. =18. SVBIT= _Heinsius_ FVIT _codd_. The preceding _nescis_ requires a verb with present meaning; and _fuit_ seems impossible to construe as a true perfect (with present result). Heinsius' _subit_ seems an elegant solution: certain manuscripts offer the same corruption of _subit_ to _fuit_ at _Met_ IX 93-94 'lux _subit_, et primo feriente cacumina sole / discedunt iuuenes' and _Met_ XIV 827-28 'pulchra _subit_ facies et puluinaribus altis / dignior'. =19-20. SIVE FVI NVMQVAM CARVS, SIMVLASSE FATERIS; / SEV NON FINGEBAS, INVENIERE LEVIS.= For a similar opposition (either alternative being discreditable), see _Met_ IX 23-24 'nam, quo te iactas, Alcmena nate, creatum, / Iuppiter aut falsus pater est aut crimine uerus'. =21. AVT.= 'Otherwise'. For the use of _aut_ as a disjunctive adverb rather than a conjunction compare xii 3 'aut ego non alium prius hoc dignarer honore' and the passages there cited. Here, as at xii 3, the idiom has been misunderstood by scribes, with such resulting variants in late manuscripts as EIA ('uterque Medonii pro diuersa lectione'; accepted by Heinsius) and DIC (_Gothanus II 121_; printed by Burman). =21. IRAM.= 'Cause for anger'. This seems to be the only instance of the meaning, _ira_ not being found even as a predicative dative; but compare the use of _laudes_ to mean 'acts deserving praise', as at viii 87 'tuas ... laudes ... recentes'. =23. QVOD TE NVNC CRIMEN SIMILEM= seems to be the correct reading; the line connects with the _an crimen ..._ of 24. QVAE TE CONSIMILEM RES NVNC (_FIL_) looks like a rewriting of the line, perhaps following the loss of _crimen_ by haplography (_cr_iM _s_im_ilE_). There seems no good reason why Ovid would have used the emphatic _consimilem_ instead of the more usual _similem_. =25. SI ... OPEM NVLLAM ... FEREBAS.= 'If you had no intention of assisting me'--the inceptive or conative imperfect (Woodcock 200). Similar phrasing at _Tr_ I viii 9-10 'haec ego uaticinor, quia sum deceptus ab illo / _laturum_ misero quem mihi rebar _opem_' and _EP_ II vii 46 'et nihil inueni quod mihi _ferret opem_'. =25. REBVS ... FACTISQVE.= 'Through financial help or action on my behalf'. Ovid does not use this sense of _res_ elsewhere in his poetry. =26. VERBIS ... TRIBVS.= 'A few words'. For the idiom Williams cites Plautus _Mil_ 1020 '"breuin an longinquo sermoni?" "tribu' uerbis"' and _Trin_ 963 'adgrediundust hic homo mi astu.--heus, Pax, te tribu' uerbis uolo'; from comedy, _OLD tres_ b cites Ter _Ph_ 638. From the classical period compare Sen _Apocol_ 11 3 'ad summam, tria uerba cito dicat, et seruum me ducat', Sen _Ep_ 40 9, and Quint IX iv 84 'haec omnia in tribus uerbis'; Camps sees _tres_ as having the same indefinite meaning at Prop II xiii 25-26 'sat mea sit magno [_Phillimore_: sit magna _uel_ sat magna est _codd_] si tres sint pompa libelli / quos ego Persephonae maxima dona feram'. =27. SED ET= was the standard reading until Ehwald's defence (_KB_ 63) of SVBITO, the reading of (_B1_) and _C_. Ehwald's reasoning was that _sed et_ would indicate that the news of his friend's slandering him was additional information, and that Ovid already knew something of his friend's behaviour. But this is precisely the case: Ovid has just finished saying that his friend has done nothing to help him (9-10), and now he gives the additional information that his friend is even working against him. Ehwald supported the asyndeton that _subito_ creates by quoting _Met_ XV 359-60 'haud equidem credo: sparsae quoque membra uenenis / exercere artes Scythides memorantur easdem', where in fact _quoque_ seems a convincing parallel to _sed et_. =27. INSVLTARE IACENTI.= 'Torment in my misery'. Ovid plays on the literal meanings of _iacere_ and _in-saltare_; for the latter, see _Aen_ XII 338-39 'caesis / hostibus insultans'. Ovid uses _insultare_ in only three other passages. All are from the poems of exile, and all are about the ill-treatment accorded Ovid: _Tr_ II 571 'nec mihi credibile est quemquam _insultasse iacenti_', _Tr_ III xi 1, and _Tr_ V viii 3-4 'curue / casibus insultas quos potes ipse pati?'. =29. A DEMENS.= _A_ indicates a certain amount of sympathy with the person addressed, as can be seen from _Tr_ V x 51-52 'quid loquor, _a demens_? ipsam quoque perdere uitam, / Caesaris offenso numine, dignus eram' and _Ecl_ II 60-61 'quem fugis, _a demens_? habitarunt di quoque siluas / Dardaniusque Paris'. _O_ (_M1FILT_) would indicate rather less sympathy: compare _Met_ III 640-41 'dextera Naxos erat: dextra mihi lintea danti / "quid facis, _o demens_? quis te furor" inquit "Acoete?"'. =29. RECEDAT= (_TM2_) is no doubt a scribal conjecture, but a correct one: 'Why, in case disaster should strike ...'. Most manuscripts have RECEDIT. =31. ORBE= probably means 'wheel'; compare Tib I v 70 'uersatur celeri Fors leuis orbe _rotae_' and _Cons ad Liuiam_ 51-52 (quoted in the next note). However, Professor E. Fantham points out to me that it could also mean 'sphere': she cites Pacuvius 366-67 Ribbeck2 (_Rhet Her_ II 36) 'Fortunam insanam esse et caecam et brutam perhibent philosophi, / _saxoque_ instare in _globoso_ praedicant _uolubilei_'. Smith at Tib I v 70 gives numerous instances of both images. =32. QVEM=, found in Heinsius' _fragmentum Boxhornianum_ (=Leid. Bibl. Publ. 180 G), must be right as against the QVAE of the other manuscripts; if a definition is to be given after the preceding 'haec dea non stabili quam sit leuis orbe fatetur', it should be a definition of the wheel, not the goddess. But the resulting _quem summum dubio_ seems very awkwardly phrased, and further emendation is probably needed. The obvious solution would be to read 'quem summo [_C_ in fact reads _summo_] _dubium_ sub pede semper habet'. This would give _orbis_ a standard epithet, as at _Tr_ V viii 7-8 'nec metuis _dubio_ Fortunae stantis in _orbe_ / numen' and _Cons ad Liuiam_ 51-52 'nempe per hos etiam Fortunae iniuria mores / regnat et _incerta_ est hic quoque nixa _rota_'. In support of the rather more difficult _summo ... pede_ (='toes') Professor R. J. Tarrant cites Sen _Suas_ II 17 'insistens _summis digitis_ ['toes']--sic enim solebat quo grandior fieret', Sen _Tro_ 1090-91 'in cacumine / erecta _summos_ [_uar_ summo] turba librauit _pedes_', and _Met_ IV 562 'aequora destringunt _summis_ Ismenides _alis_'; compare as well _Met_ IX 342-43 'in adludentibus undis / _summa pedum_ taloque tenus uestigia tingit'. A second solution might be to read 'quem _dubio summum_ sub pede semper habet'; the transfer of _dubius_ from _orbis_ to _pes_ seems acceptable enough, and _Met_ IV 134-36 'oraque buxo / pallidiora gerens exhorruit aequoris instar, / quod tremit exigua cum summum stringitur aura' offers a good parallel to _summum_. The image of Fortune standing on her wheel occurs elsewhere in Ovid's poems of exile at _Tr_ V viii 7-8 (quoted above) and _EP_ II iii 55-56 'scilicet indignum, iuuenis carissime, ducis / te fieri comitem stantis in orbe deae'. =33. QVOLIBET EST FOLIO ... INCERTIOR.= For the proverb, see Otto _folium_ 1; and from Ovid compare _Am_ II xvi 45-46 'uerba puellarum, foliis leuiora caducis, / inrita qua uisum est uentus et unda ferunt', _Her_ V 109-10 'tu leuior foliis tum cum sine pondere suci / mobilibus uentis arida facta uolant', and _Fast_ III 481-82 (Ariadne speaking) 'Bacche leuis leuiorque tuis quae tempora cingunt / frondibus'. =33. QVAVIS INCERTIOR AVRA.= Compare _Her_ VI 109-10 'mobilis Aesonide uernaque incertior aura, / cur tua polliciti pondere uerba carent?'. Otto (_uentus_ 1) cites as well Prop II v 11-13 'non ita Carpathiae uariant Aquilonibus undae, / nec dubio nubes uertitur atra Noto, / quam facile irati uerbo mutantur amantes', _Her_ XVIII 185-86 (Leander to Hero) 'cumque minus firmum nil sit quam uentus et unda, / in uentis et aqua spes mea semper erit?', and Calpurnius _Ecl_ III 10 'mobilior uentis o femina!'. The _folium_ and _uentus_ images of the present line are found together at Prop II ix 33-35 'non sic incerto mutantur flamine Syrtes, / nec folia hiberno tam tremefacta Noto, / quam cito feminea non constat foedus in ira'. =34. PAR ILLI= = _par illius leuitati_. Similar compressions at vi 40 'mollior est animo femina nulla tuo' and commonly. =37-38.= Ovid gives four instances of unexpected catastrophe, two from Greek history, two from Roman; the greater importance of the Roman examples is emphasized by their position and by the doubling of the space allotted to each example from two lines to four. There is a similar transition at Prop II vi 19-20 'cur exempla petam Graium? tu criminis auctor / nutritus duro, Romule, lacte lupae'. The Greek examples may have been a traditional pairing: Croesus and Dionysius are mentioned together at Lucian _Gall_ 23 as notable instances of personal catastrophe. =37. OPVLENTIA CROESI.= Croesus as the archetype of wealth also at _Tr_ III vii 41-42 'nempe dat ... Fortuna rapitque, / Irus et est subito qui modo Croesus erat'. The story of Croesus' downfall and the subsequent sparing of his life by Cyrus is taken from Herodotus I 86-88. It is clear from his poetry that Ovid had a good knowledge of at least the first book of Herodotus: (1) _Met_ III 135-37 'sed scilicet ultima semper / expectanda dies homini est, dicique beatus / ante obitum nemo supremaque funera debet' may have been drawn from Solon's advice to Croesus at Herodotus I 32 7: '[Greek: ei de pros toutoisi] [if in addition to having prosperity while alive] [Greek: eti teleutêsei ton bion eu, houtos ekeinos ton su zêteeis, ho] [[Greek: ho] _add Stein_] [Greek: olbios keklêsthai axios esti; prin d' an teleutêsêi, epischein mêde kaleein kô olbion, all' eutychea]'. (2) At _Fast_ II 79-118 Ovid tells the story of Arion found at Herodotus I 23-24. (3) At _Fast_ II 663-66 there occurs the clearest instance of borrowing: Ovid uses the story of the border dispute between Sparta and Argos (Herodotus I 82) in the course of his discussion of the god Terminus: 'si tu signasses olim Thyreatida terram, / corpora non leto missa trecenta forent, / nec foret Othryades congestis lectus [_Barth_: tectus _codd_] in armis. / o quantum patriae sanguinis ille dedit!'. =37. AVDITA EST CVI NON.= Compare _Met_ XV 319-20 '_cui non audita est_ obscenae Salmacis undae / Aethiopesque lacus?'. =38. NEMPE TAMEN VITAM CAPTVS AB HOSTE TVLIT.= 'Even so, it is undeniable that he became a prisoner, and received his life as a gift from his enemy'. _Vitam ferre_ also at _EP_ II i 45 (from a description of Germanicus' triumph of AD 12) 'maxima pars horum _uitam_ ueniamque _tulerunt_'. =39. ILLE ... FORMIDATVS.= Equivalent to _ille_ with a defining _qui_-clause: 'The famous man who had once been feared ...'. Ovid is referring to Dionysius II, the student of Plato, who was expelled from Syracuse in 344 and became a schoolmaster in Corinth. Valerius Maximus (VI ix ext 6) also gives Dionysius as an example of unexpected disaster, and Plutarch (_Timoleon_ 14) cites him as an example of the operations of Fortune. For an account of Dionysius' life at Corinth, see Justinus XXI v. There was a Greek proverb '[Greek: Dionysios en Korinthôi]' (Cic _Att_ IX ix 1; Quintilian VIII vi 52), apparently referring to his continued lust for power: 'Dionysius ... Syracusis expulsus Corinthi pueros docebat: usque eo imperio carere non poterat' (Cic _Tusc_ III 27). Discussions of the proverb at Otto _Dionysius_ and Shackleton Bailey on _Att_ IX ix 1. =39. SYRACOSIA ... IN VRBE.= Restored by Heinsius from the manuscripts' unmetrical SYRACVSIA, as at _Fast_ VI 277. The same confusion between [Greek: Syrakosios] and [Greek: Syrakousios] is found in the manuscripts of Pindar (_Ol_ I 23), the Attic form supplanting the original Doric. The same corruption is found in some ninth-century manuscripts of Virgil at _Ecl_ VI 1 'Prima Syracosio dignata est ludere uersu' and in the Veronese scholia, and in the manuscripts of Claudian _carm min_ LI 6 (Housman 1273). =40. HVMILI ... ARTE.= For the low social position of the schoolmaster in antiquity, see Bonner 146-62, and compare especially Juvenal VII 197-98 'si Fortuna uolet, fies de rhetore consul; / si uolet haec eadem, fiet de consule rhetor' and Pliny _Ep_ IV xi 1 'nunc eo decidit ut exul de senatore, rhetor de oratore fieret'. =41. MAGNO MAIVS.= 'Greater than (Pompey) the Great'. Even in the letters of Cicero, Pompey is occasionally called _Magnus_ without further identification (_Att_ I xvi 12). Other plays on the name at _Fast_ I 603-4 'Magne, tuum nomen rerum est mensura tuarum; / sed qui te uicit nomine maior erat' and Lucan I 135 'stat magni nominis umbra', where Getty cites Velleius II 1 4 'Pompeium magni nominis uirum'. =42. CLIENTIS OPEM.= After the final defeat at Pharsalus, Pompey fled to Egypt and sought the protection of Ptolemy XIII (Caesar _BC_ III 103, Plutarch _Pomp_ 77). Pompey similarly treated as the victim of Fortune at Cic _Tusc_ I 86 and through much of Lucan VII-VIII; compare as well _Anth Lat_ Riese 401 'Quam late uestros duxit Fortuna triumphos, / tam late sparsit funera, Magne, tua'. Compare as well _Anth Lat_ 415 39-40 'spes Magnum profugum toto discurrere in orbe / iusserat et pueri regis adire pedes'; the distich follows a description of the hardships undergone by Marius. =44.= The line is omitted by _B1_ and _C_; other manuscripts offer (with minor variations) INDIGVS EFFECTVS OMNIBVS IPSE MAGIS or ACHILLAS PHARIVS ABSTVLIT ENSE CAPVT, a line apparently devised with the aid of Juvenal X 285-86 'Fortuna ... uicto _caput abstulit_' and Lucan VIII 545-46 'ullusne in cladibus istis / est locus Aegypto _Phariusque_ admittitur _ensis_?', both passages concerned with Pompey's murder by Achillas. Clearly a line of the poem was lost in transmission. Heinsius and Bentley felt that the entire distich should be deleted; but 43 seems acceptable enough, and it is appropriate that the description of Pompey's downfall be balanced with the four-line mention of Marius that follows. It would be strange if Pompey's sensational murder were overlooked, as this was regarded by the poets as the ultimate reversal of his fortunes: compare Manilius IV 50-55, Juvenal X 283-86 (which is joined to a mention of Marius' reversal) and _Anth Lat_ 401-3 Riese. =45. ILLE= goes with Marius two lines on--'the famous Marius'. =45. IVGVRTHINO ... CIMBROQVE TRIVMPHO.= Marius rose to prominence in the Jugurthine war, celebrating his triumph in 104; in 101 his defeat in the Po valley of the Cimbri, a Germanic tribe originally from Jutland, ended a twelve-year military threat to Rome. =47. IN CAENO LATVIT MARIVS.= In 88 Sulla, whose command against Mithridates had been transferred to Marius by a special law, marched on Rome and induced the Senate to name Marius an outlaw; Marius was forced to escape to Africa, at one point on the route hiding in the marshes of Minturnae. This ordeal is mentioned by the poets who deal with Marius, but they consider that he reached the low point of his fortunes when he arrived at Carthage. Compare Manilius IV 47-49, Juvenal X 276-77 'exilium et carcer Minturnarumque paludes / et mendicatus uicta Carthagine panis' and _Anth Lat_ 415 33-38 Riese. =47. LATVIT MARIVS= _M_ IACVIT MARIVS _H_ MARIVS LATVIT _L_ MARIVS IACVIT _BCFIT_. _Iacere_ and _latere_ could each be corrupted to the other with ease: such corruptions occur in certain manuscripts at _Met_ I 338 and _Fast_ II 244 (_iacere_ corrupted to _latere_) and _Fast_ II 467, II 587 & III 265 (_latere_ corrupted to _iacere_). Although it is weakly attested, _latuit_ should be read here in view of the use of _abdere_ at Velleius II xix 2 'paludem Maricae, in quam se fugiens consectantis Sullae equites _abdiderat_' and Lucan II 70 'exul limosa Marius caput _abdidit_ ulua', and of [Greek: kryptein] at Plutarch _Marius_ 37 5: _latere_ is often virtually a passive form of _abdere_. _Marius latuit_ looks like a normalization of word order from the emphatic _latuit Marius_. =47. CANNAQVE PALVSTRI.= _Canna palustris_ is a standard feature of Ovid's marshes; see _AA_ I 554, _RA_ 142, and _Met_ IV 298 & VIII 337. At _RA_ 142 Henderson comments 'Ovid probably means the plant called in this country [Scotland] Reed (_Phragmites communis_, a grass), which the Italians call _canna di palude_; smaller than _harundo_ (_Arundo donax_, the Greek [Greek: kanna] and Italian canna), it nevertheless often reaches a height of 6 or 7 feet'. =48. MVLTA PVDENDA.= The entire sequence of events during Marius' flight to Africa. =50. FACIT= _R. J. Tarrant_. For _fidem facere_ ('induce belief') compare _Met_ VI 565-66 'dat gemitus fictos commentaque funera narrat, / et lacrimae _fecere fidem_' and Caesar _BC_ II 37 1 'nuntiabantur haec eadem Curioni, sed aliquamdiu _fides fieri_ non poterat: tantam habebat suarum rerum fiduciam'. Ehwald (_KB_ 63) defends FERET (_BC_), quoting _Aen_ X 792 'si qua _fidem_ tanto est operi _latura_ uetustas', but the true meaning of this line is 'if antiquity can ever win belief for a deed so grand' (Jackson Knight); the idiom cannot be fitted into the present passage with acceptable meaning. HABET, the reading of most manuscripts, does not account for FERET, but is in itself acceptable enough; compare _Her_ XVI 59-60 'ecce pedum pulsu uisa est mihi terra moueri-- / uera loquar ueri [_Heinsius_: uero _codd_] uix _habitura fidem_' and Cic _Flac_ 21 'sed fuerint incorruptae litterae domi; nunc uero quam _habere_ auctoritatem aut quam _fidem_ possunt?'. =51. SI QVIS MIHI DICERET.= Compare _Tr_ IV viii 43-44 'hoc mihi si Delphi Dodonaque diceret ipsa, / esse uideretur uanus uterque locus'. =52. GETE= is read from the manuscripts by Heinsius; the form is the same as at _Met_ X 608 'Hippomene uicto', _Fast_ IV 593 'uictore Gyge', _EP_ II iv 22 'in Aeacide Nestorideque', and _EP_ I viii 6 'dura pharetrato bella mouente Gete [_uar_ Geta]'. All editors but Heinsius print GETAE, but this is contrary to Ovid's usage: compare (to take only a few instances) _Ibis_ 637 '_Sarmaticas_ inter _Geticasque sagittas_', _EP_ I i 79 'inque locum _Scythico_ uacuum mutabor ab _arcu_', and _EP_ III v 45 'ipse quidem _Getico_ peream uiolatus ab _arcu_'. The only apparent exceptions to the rule I have found are _Tr_ IV i 21 'Sinti [_Ehwald_: inter _codd_ Sintae _Iac. Gronouius_] nec militis ensem', where the compound expression alters matters somewhat, and _Fast_ V 580 '_Parthi_ [_uar_ Parthis] signa retenta _manu_', where _Partha_ should probably be read; compare _Fast_ VI 244 '_Mauras_ pertimuere _manus_ [_codd_: minas _Alton_]' and _EP_ I iii 59-60 'altera Bistonias pars est sensura sarisas, / altera _Sarmatica_ spicula missa _manu_'. _Getes_ is also used as an adjective at xiii 18 'paene poeta Getes'. =53. I BIBE ... ANTICYRA.= A hendiadys for 'Go drink all the mind-purging hellebore that grows in Anticyra'. =53. PVRGANTES ... SVCOS.= For discussions of _elleborus_ see Theophrastus _HP_ IX 10, Pliny _NH_ XXV 47-61, and Aulus Gellius XVII xv. There were two varieties of the plant, black and white (from the colour of their roots): the former was a laxative, the latter induced vomiting and was thought to sharpen the intellect; compare Val Max VIII vii ext 5, Pliny _NH_ XXV 52, Martianus Capella IV 327, and the other passages cited by Brink at Hor _AP_ 300. =54. ANTICYRA.= Three places of this name are known from ancient sources; it is not known which of them Ovid had in mind. One was a city in Locris on the north side of the entrance to the Corinthian Gulf; the second was a city near Mount Oeta (Strabo IX v 10), and the third an island of uncertain location (Pliny _NH_ XXV 52). It is possible that Hor _AP_ 300 'tribus Anticyris caput insanabile' should be taken to mean that all three places were famous for hellebore, but ps-Acron glosses _tribus Anticyris_ as 'tribus ... potionibus [_Keller_: potus _codd_] ... aut multo elleboro', which Brink accepts, citing Hor _Sat_ II iii 82-83 'danda est ellebori multo pars maxima auaris; / nescio an Anticyram ratio illis destinet omnem' and Persius IV 16 'Anticyras ... sorbere meracas' for the metonymy, and Petronius 88 4 'Chrysippus, ut ad inuentionem sufficeret, ter elleboro animum detersit' for the number. The last two places at least seem to have been known for their hellebore; compare Pliny _NH_ XXV 49 'plurimum autem nascitur in Oete monte et optimum uno eius loco circa Pyram' and XXV 52 'Drusum quoque apud nos ... constat hoc medicamento liberatum comitiali morbo ['epilepsy'] in Anticyra insula'. =57. TV QVOQVE FAC TIMEAS.= That is, his friend should start to behave better towards him. For a similar exhortation at the end of a poem of reproach, see _Tr_ I viii 49-50 'effice peccati ne sim memor huius, et illo / officium laudem quo queror ore tuum'; even in the _Ibis_ there is a veiled offer of reconciliation: 'et neque nomen in hoc nec dicam facta libello, / teque breui qui sis dissimulare sinam. / postmodo, _si perges_, in te mihi liber iambus / tincta Lycambeo sanguine tela dabit' (51-54). =58. DVM LOQVERIS.= Compare _Am_ I xi 15 'dum loquor, hora fugit' and Hor _Carm_ I xi 7-8 'dum loquimur, fugerit inuida / aetas'; Nisbet and Hubbard cite _ad loc_ Persius V 153 and Petronius 99 3, noting that the _sententia_ is not found before Horace. IV. To Sextus Pompeius In this second poem addressed to Sextus Pompeius, Ovid celebrates the news that Pompeius is to be _consul ordinarius_ in the following year. As Pompeius was consul in 14, Ovid probably wrote the poem shortly after the election of magistrates in 13. Poems iv and v form a pair, the first being an account of Ovid's reaction on learning of Pompeius' election, the second being a letter to the new consul. Both poems have points of contact with poem ix, a letter of congratulation sent to Graecinus on his becoming suffect consul. The poem begins with general reflections that no sadness is absolute, which prepare for the description of how the news came to Ovid of Pompeius' election (1-20). He pictures to himself the ceremonies that will take place (21-42), and ends with the hope that in the midst of the festivities Pompeius will still be able to remember him (43-50). =1-6.= In these lines Ovid reverses the usual ancient sentiment that no pleasure is unalloyed. Compare Hor _Carm_ II x 17-18 'non, si male nunc, et olim / sic erit'. For the more usual thought, see _Met_ VII 453-54 'nulla est sincera uoluptas, / sollicitique aliquid laetis interuenit' and _Fast_ VI 463 'interdum miscentur tristia laetis'. =1. AVSTRALIBVS VMIDA NIMBIS.= An image used elsewhere by Ovid as a metaphor of his unhappiness: see _Tr_ I iii 13 'hanc animo nubem dolor ipse remouit', _Tr_ V v 22 'pars uitae tristi cetera nube uacet', and _EP_ II i 5-6 'tandem aliquid pulsa curarum nube serenum ['cloudless'] uidi'. =1. VMIDA.= For the dampness of the south wind, compare _Met_ I 65-66 'contraria tellus / nubibus assiduis pluuiaque madescit ab Austro'. =2. NON INTERMISSIS ... AQVIS.= _Non intermissis_ in the same metrical position at _EP_ I iv 16 'non intermissis cursibus ibit equus'; _intermissus_ used of bad weather at _Tr_ II 149-51 'uentis agitantibus aera [_uar_ aequora] non est / aequalis rabies continuusque furor, / sed modo subsidunt _intermissique_ silescunt'. =7. DOMO PATRIAQVE CARENS OCVLISQVE MEORVM.= Similar phrasing at _Tr_ III vii 45 'cum caream patria uobisque domoque', _Tr_ III xi 15-16 'quod coniuge cara, / quod patria careo pignoribusque meis', _Tr_ V v 19 (of his wife) 'illa domo nataque sua patriaque fruatur', _Tr_ I v 83, _Tr_ IV vi 19, _Tr_ IV ix 12, _Tr_ V x 47, _EP_ I iii 47, and _EP_ II ix 79. =7. OCVLISQVE MEORVM.= Compare _Tr_ V iv 27-30 'nec patriam magis ille suam desiderat ... quam uultus _oculosque_ tuos, o dulcior illo / melle quod in ceris Attica ponit apis'. _Oculisque meorum_ seems to mean 'regards des miens' (André) rather than 'the sight of my own' (Wheeler); compare _Aen_ XI 800-1 'oculosque tulere / cuncti ad reginam', _Met_ VII 256 'et monet arcanis oculos remouere profanos', Persius V 33 'permisit sparsisse oculos ['to look where I chose']', and from prose Cic _Fam_ IX ii 2 'ut uitemus oculos hominum'. =9. VVLTVM DIFFVNDERE.= The action opposite to _trahis uultus_ (i 5); compare _Met_ XIV 272 'diffudit uultus' and from prose Sen _Ep_ 106 5 'nisi dubitas an uultum nobis mutent, an frontem astringant, an _faciem diffundant_'. It is probably from this expression that _diffundere_ acquired the extended sense of 'mentally relax' (_OLD diffundo_ 5), for which compare _Met_ IV 766 'diffudere animos', _Met_ III 318 'Iouem ... diffusum nectare', and _AA_ I 218 'diffundetque animos omnibus ista dies'. =9. CAVSAM.= CAVSA (_BCT_) is grammatical enough, but corruption from _qua ... causam_ to _qua ... causa_ is more likely than the inverse. The construction of the sentence is rather complex: Ovid's normal practice would be to employ an objective genitive with _causa_. =10. POSSIM= _BCMHIT_ POSSEM _L_ POSSVM _F_. The clause is in primary tense sequence following the true perfect _inueni_, which represents the present result of a past action. Compare _fecit ... minuant_ in 5-6. =10. NEC MEMINISSE= = _et obliuisci_. _Nec (non) meminisse_ is metrically useful for filling the second hemistich of the pentameter up to the disyllable; so used at vi 50 'arguat ingratum non meminisse sui', _Tr_ IV iv 40 & V xiii 18, and _EP_ II iv 6. =11. SOLVS= _BC_. TRISTIS, the reading of the other six manuscripts, is tempting, as being the less neutral of the two adjectives, and was accepted without question by Heinsius and Burman. If it is accepted, one could argue that Ovid refers back to the word at 21 'dilapsis ... curis'. But _solus_ is shown to be correct by the passage Ovid is here imitating, Virgil _G_ I 388-89 'tum cornix plena pluuiam uocat improba uoce / et _sola_ in sicca secum _spatiatur harena_'. _Solus_ was lost through haplography ('fulua solus': the elongated 's' form common in manuscripts would have facilitated the error) and _tristis_ interpolated to restore the metre. Ehwald believed (_KB_ 63) that the error arose from _tristis_ having been written above _solus_ in the archetype, but there is no reason to accept this, since the one could not stand as a gloss for the other. =11. SPATIARER HARENA.= The phrase is taken from Virgil _G_ I 388-89 (quoted in the previous note); Ovid imitates the passage again at _Met_ II 572-73 'lentis / passibus, ut soleo, summa _spatiarer harena_'. =12. VISA EST A TERGO PENNA DEDISSE SONVM.= 'I thought I heard a wing rustle behind me'. A similar advent of an unseen deity at _Met_ III 96-98 'uox subito audita est; neque erat cognoscere promptum / unde, sed audita est: "quid, Agenore nate, peremptum / serpentem spectas? et tu spectabere serpens"'. Compare as well _Met_ V 294-98 'Musa loquebatur: pennae sonuere per auras, / uoxque salutantum ramis ueniebat ab altis. / suspicit et linguae quaerit tam certa loquentes / unde sonent hominemque putat Ioue nata locutum; / ales erat'. =12. PENNA= _BMFHILT_ PINNA _C_. _Pinna_ and _penna_, perhaps from different roots, were confused even in antiquity. The ancient manuscripts of Virgil offer _pinna_ as the spelling even for the meaning 'wing', but Quintilian clearly took _penna_ as the correct spelling for this sense: 'quare ['therefore'] discat puer ... quae cum quibus cognatio; nec miretur cur ... a pinno quod est acutum [_sc_ fiat] securis utrimque habens aciem _bipennis_, ne illorum sequatur errorem qui, quia a pennis duabus hoc esse nomen existimant, pennas auium dici uolunt'. (I iv 12). =13. NEQVE ERAT= _CMHL_ NEC ERAT _BFIT_. Virgil had a very strong preference for _neque_ before words starting with a vowel, but Ovid did not follow this rule: compare _Met_ I 101 'nec ullis', 132 'nec adhuc', 223 'nec erit', 306 'nec ablato', and 322 'nec amantior'. However, it seems better to accept _neque_ as the true reading in view of the good manuscript support and the parallel at _Met_ III 96-97 'uox subita audita est (neque [_uar_ nec] erat cognoscere promptum / unde, sed audita est)'. =13. NEQVE ERAT CORPVS.= 'But there was no body'. _Neque_ (_nec_) represents _sed ... non_ as well as _et ... non_. It is one of Ovid's favourite devices to describe the aspect of gods when they appear to him, as at _Am_ III i 7-14 (Elegy and Tragedy), _Fast_ I 95-100 (Janus), _Fast_ III 171-72 (Mars), _Fast_ V 194 (Flora), _Fast_ V 637-38 (Tiber), and _EP_ III iii 13-20 (Amor). The only other passage where Ovid says he did not see the god is _Fast_ VI 251-54, but Vesta had no traditional appearance that Ovid could make use of: compare _Fast_ VI 298 'effigiem nullam Vesta ... habet'. The reason that Ovid did not describe Fama was that the picture of Fama as a winged monster which Virgil had made standard (_Aen_ IV 174-88) could not easily be integrated into the poem. The only description of Fama in Ovid is at _Met_ IX 137-39 'Fama loquax praecessit ad aures, / Deianira, tuas, quae ueris addere falsa / gaudet, et e minima sua per mendacia crescit'. At _Met_ XII 39-63 there is a memorable description of Fama's dwelling-place. Fama is also personified (but with no descriptions) at _EP_ II i 19-20 & II ix 3. =16. PER IMMENSAS AERE LAPSA VIAS.= Similar phrasing at _EP_ III iii 77-78 (Amor speaking) 'ut tamen aspicerem consolarerque iacentem, / _lapsa per immensas est mea penna uias_'. =17. QVO NON TIBI CARIOR ALTER.= Compare _Tr_ III vi 3 'nec te mihi carior alter', _Tr_ IV vi 46 'qua nulla mihi carior, uxor', and _EP_ II viii 27 'per patriae nomen, quae te tibi carior ipso est'. =18. CANDIDVS ET FELIX PROXIMVS ANNVS ERIT.= Compare _Fast_ I 63-64 'ecce tibi _faustum_, Germanice, nuntiat _annum_ / inque meo primus carmine Ianus adest'. No doubt both passages echo the phrasing of a New Year wish or prayer. =18. CANDIDVS.= 'Favourable'. Compare _Tr_ V v 13-14 (on his wife's birthday) 'optime natalis! quamuis procul absumus, opto / _candidus_ huc uenias', Prop IV i 67-68 'Roma, faue, tibi surgit opus, date _candida_ ciues / omina, et inceptis dextera cantet auis!', and _Fast_ I 79-80 'uestibus intactis Tarpeias itur in arces, / et populus _festo concolor_ ipse suo est'. =19. DIXIT ET= has a definite epic flavour, being found in Virgil at _Aen_ I 402 & 736, II 376, III 258, IV 659, V 477, VI 677, VIII 366 & 615, IX 14, X 867, XI 561 & 858, XII 266 & 681, and _G_ IV 499; from Ovid compare _Met_ I 466-67 'dixit et eliso percussis aere pennis / impiger umbrosa Parnasi constitit arce', I 762 'dixit et implicuit materno bracchia collo', III 474, IV 162 & 576, V 230 & 419, VIII 101, and VIII 757. A close parallel at _EP_ III iii 93-94 (Amor has been speaking with Ovid) 'dixit et aut ille est tenues dilapsus in auras, / coeperunt sensus aut uigilare mei'. =22. EXCIDIT.= 'I forgot'; the opposite of _subit_ 'I remember'. The idiom is standard Latin (_OLD excido1_ 9b); Ovidian instances at _Her_ XII 71, _Am_ II i 18, _Met_ VIII 449-50 'excidit omnis / luctus et a lacrimis in poenae uersus amorem est', _Met_ XIV 139, _Fast_ V 315, _Tr_ I v 14, _EP_ II iv 24, and _EP_ II x 8 'exciderit tantum ne tibi cura mei'. =23. VBI ... RESERAVERIS ANNVM.= 'When you have unlocked the year'. Compare Ovid's descriptions of Janus at _Fast_ I 99 'tenens baculum dextra _clauemque_ sinistra' and _Fast_ I 253-54 '"nil mihi cum bello: pacem postesque tuebar / et" _clauem_ ostendens "haec" ait "arma gero"'. =23. LONGVM ANNVM.= André translates, 'l'année longue à venir', citing Cic _Phil_ V 1 'Nihil umquam longius his Kalendiis Ianuariis mihi uisum est', to which _OLD longus_ 14a adds (among other passages) Caesar _BG_ I 40 13 'in longiorem diem collaturus' and Sen _Ep_ 63 3 'non differo in _longius_ tempus'; but the meaning 'far off' seems unsuited to the present context. _Longum_ should be taken in its usual sense; it perhaps emphasizes that the whole year is still ahead. =24. SACRO MENSE.= _Sacer_ because of the religious ceremonies marking the New Year. =25-28.= The first action of the new consul was to take auspices at his home and to assume the consular toga: compare Livy XXI 63 10 (217 BC; Flaminius has entered his consulship while absent from Rome) 'magis pro maiestate uidelicet imperii Arimini quam Romae magistratum initurum et in deuersorio hospitali quam apud penates suos praetextam sumpturum' (Mommsen _Staatsrecht_ I3 615-17). =26. NE TITVLIS QVICQVAM DEBEAT ILLE SVIS.= There are two possible ways of understanding this line. One way is to take _titulis_ as referring to Pompeius' earlier magistracies, 'as if the series of offices were a score which Pompey would pay in full when he became consul' (Wheeler). A similar use at _Her_ IX 1 'Gratulor Oechaliam titulis accedere nostris'. _Titulis_ does not have to be taken as a strict reference to the offices Pompeius had already held, but can have the wider sense of 'reputation, honour'. Compare the opening line of _Her_ IX quoted above; Professor R. J. Tarrant cites _Met_ XV 855 'sic magnus cedit _titulis_ Agamemnonis Atreus' and Juvenal VIII 241. The second way to take the passage is, with Némethy, to understand _titulis ... suis_ as being equivalent to _maioribus suis, qui magnos titulos habent_, the _tituli_ being the inscriptions below the _imagines_ of Pompeius' ancestors. A parallel for the sense at _EP_ III i 75-76 'hoc domui _debes_ de qua censeris, ut illam / non magis officiis quam probitate colas'. Professor E. Fantham suggests a refinement: _titulis ... suis_ should be taken in the sense 'achievements of his ancestors'. Compare Prop IV xi 32 'et domus est titulis utraque fulta suis'. =27. PAENE ATRIA.= Heinsius preferred PENETRALIA, the reading of _I_ and _F2_ ('sed ne sic quidem locus mihi uidetur plane in integrum restitutus'), apparently objecting to _paene_. The word seems weak enough, especially in view of Virgil _G_ I 49 'illius immensae _ruperunt_ horrea messes', but Professor R. J. Tarrant points out to me a similarly weak _paene_ at _Tr_ III xi 13-14 'sic ego belligeris a gentibus undique saeptus / terreor, hoste meum paene premente latus'. Burman conjectured LAETA and PLENA; neither seems very convincing. For _atria_ compare _Her_ XVI 185-86 'occurrent denso tibi Troades agmine matres, / nec capient Phrygias _atria_ nostra nurus'. _Penetralia_, although poorly attested, is in itself appropriate enough, since the new consul began his magistracy in front of his _penates_: Festus (Mueller 208; Lindsay 231) defined the _penetralia_ as the 'penatium deorum sacraria'. =28. ET POPVLVM LAEDI DEFICIENTE LOCO.= The jostling of a crowd similarly described at _Am_ III ii 21-22 'tu tamen a dextra, quicumque es, parce puellae; / contactu lateris laeditur ista tui'. =29-34.= The new consul, accompanied by lictors, left his house and went in solemn procession to the Capitoline, where he took his place on the curule chair, and then sacrificed to Iuppiter Optimus Maximus. A meeting of the Senate followed, held in the temple of Jupiter. At ix 17-32 Ovid gives a similar description of the consul's entering on his office. =29. TARPEIAE ... SEDIS.= _Capitolinus_ is metrically awkward; hence the synecdoche from the _Tarpeia rupes_, the part of the Capitoline from which criminals were hurled. Similar tropes at viii 42 'uictima Tarpeios inficit icta focos', ix 29 'at cum Tarpeias esses deductus in arces', and commonly in the poets. =30. FACILES IN TVA VOTA.= 'Receptive to your prayers'; for this frequent sense of _facilis_ compare _Her_ XII 84 'sed mihi tam _faciles_ unde meosque deos?', _Met_ V 559 'optastis _facilesque_ deos habuistis', _Tr_ IV i 53 'sint precor hae [the Muses] saltem _faciles_ mihi', _EP_ II ii 19-20 'esse ... fateor ... _difficilem_ precibus te quoque iure meis', _Her_ XVI 282 'sic habeas _faciles in tua uota deos_', and Grattius 426. =31-32.= The asyndeton in this distich is odd, given the preceding series of connectives. If the text is unsound, however, alteration of _certae_ to _certant_ (Damsté) or _cerno_ (Owen) is not the cure. By using _certae_ Ovid is indicating that there will be a clean blow with the axe, a good omen for the coming year. For the opposite omen, see _Aen_ II 222-24 (describing Laocoon) 'clamores simul horrendos ad sidera tollit: / qualis mugitus, fugit cum saucius aram / taurus et _incertam_ excussit ceruice securim'. =31-32. BOVES NIVEOS ... QVOS ALVIT CAMPIS HERBA FALISCA SVIS.= Compare _Am_ III xiii 13-14 'ducuntur _niueae_ populo plaudente _iuuencae_, / _quas aluit campis herba Falisca suis_' and _Fast_ I 83-84 (a description of the sacrifices on January 1st) '_colla_ rudes operum _praebent_ ferienda iuuenci, / _quos aluit campis herba Falisca suis_'. =33-34. CVMQVE DEOS OMNES, TVM QVOS IMPENSIVS AEQVOS / ESSE TIBI CVPIAS, CVM IOVE CAESAR ERVNT.= _Cupias_ must be supplied with _deos omnes_--'You will wish the favour of all the gods; those gods whose favour you will particularly wish will be Caesar and Jupiter'. The omission of the verb from the _cum_-clause seems very strange, however, and Ehwald (_KB_ 63-64) is possibly correct in supposing a distich to have fallen from the text after 32; in this case, _cumque deos omnes_ is probably far removed from its original form. =33. OMNES, TVM QVOS.= Ehwald wished to read OMNES, TVNC HOS (_P_ reads TVNC HOS ORES), _hos_ referring to the gods of the Capitol who had been named in the distich missing after 32; but this would leave _cum Ioue Caesar erunt_ without a predicate. =33. AEQVOS.= 'Favourable'; compare _Her_ I 23 'sed bene consuluit casto deus _aequus_ amori'; _Tr_ I ii 6 '_aequa_ Venus Teucris, Pallas _iniqua_ fuit', _Tr_ III xiv 29 '_aequus_ erit scriptis', and _Tr_ IV i 25. =35. E MORE VOCATI.= 'Convened, as is traditional'. After the sacrifice on the Capitoline, the new consul addressed the assembled Senate; compare Livy XXVI 26 5 'M. Marcellus cum idibus Martiis consulatum inisset, senatum eo die _moris modo causa_ habuit ['held a session of the Senate simply because it was traditional to do so']' and Livy XXI 63 8 'ne die initi magistratus Iouis optimi maximi templum adiret, ne senatum inuisus ipse et sibi uni inuisum uideret consuleretque'. =36. INTENDENT AVRES.= The expression is not found elsewhere in Ovid, or in Virgil; but compare Manilius II 511 'at nudus Geminis _intendit_ Aquarius _aurem_'. The expression is presumably an extension of _oculos (aciem) intendere_, for which see Cic _Tusc_ IV 38, _Ac_ II 80, and Tac _Ann_ IV 70. =37. FACVNDO TVA VOX ... ORE.= For Pompeius' eloquence, Némethy cites Val Max II vi 8 '_facundissimo_ ... sermone, qui ore eius quasi e beato quodam eloquentiae fonte manabat' and IV vii ext 2 'clarissimi ac _disertissimi_ uiri'. =37. HILARAVERIT.= The verb is rare and elevated in tone. Compare Cic _Brut_ 44 (of Pericles' oratory) 'huius suauitate maxime hilaratae Athenae sunt', Catullus LXIII 18, and _Ecl_ V 69. =38. VTQVE SOLET, TVLERIT PROSPERA VERBA DIES.= Compare _Fast_ I 175-76 (Ovid to Janus) '"at cur _laeta_ tuis dicuntur _uerba_ Kalendis, / et damus alternas accipimusque preces?"'. =40.= Riese's punctuation 'facias cur ita, saepe dabit' seems preferable to the alternate 'facias cur ita saepe, dabit', as placing more emphasis on Augustus and being perhaps an echo of _Tr_ IV ii 12 'munera det meritis, _saepe datura_, deis'. =42. OFFICIVM POPVLI= = _populum officium facientem_; the same metonymy at _Met_ XV 691-93 (of Aesculapius) 'restitit hic agmenque suum _turbaeque sequentis_ / _officium_ placido uisus dimittere uultu / corpus in Ausonia posuit rate'. =44. NEC POTERVNT ISTIS LVMINA NOSTRA FRVI.= Other non-personal subjects at Cic _Am_ 45 (_animus_) and ps-Quint _Decl_ VII 10 'uulneribus illis non fruentur _oculi_'. In all of these passages the transition from an expressed personal subject to a faculty or part of the personality seems fairly natural. =45. QVAMLIBET= is a correction by Heinsius: 'far away as you might be ...'. The QVOD (QVA) LICET of most manuscripts anticipates the following _qua possum_, contrary to Ovid's practice. =45. QVA POSSVM, MENTE.= A commonplace of the poems of exile: compare ix 41-42 'mente tamen, quae sola domo non exulat, usus / praetextam fasces aspiciamque tuos', _Tr_ III iv 56, _Tr_ IV ii 57 'haec ego summotus _qua possum mente uidebo_', _EP_ I viii 34 'cunctaque mens oculis peruidet usa suis', _EP_ II iv 8, _EP_ II x 47, and _EP_ III v 47-48. =47. SVBEAT TIBI.= See at xv 30 _subeant animo_ (p 440). V. To Sextus Pompeius The poem was written shortly after Pompeius' accession to the consulship (compare 4 'tectaque brumali sub niue terra latet' and 24 'deque _parum noto_ consulet officio'). It takes the form of a set of instructions to the poem on what it should do when it reaches Rome. Ovid tells the poem it should look for Pompeius, and includes a short description of some of the consular functions Pompeius might be carrying out (1-26). He then instructs the poem in what it is to say to Pompeius: it should describe to him Ovid's gratitude for past and present services, and promise (using several _adynata_ as illustrations) that this gratitude will be eternal (27-46). A close parallel to this poem is furnished by _Tr_ III vii, in which Ovid tells the poem where it is to seek his stepdaughter Perilla and what it is to say to her. Similar personifications are found in _Tr_ I i, in which Ovid gives instructions to his book on what it should do when it reaches Rome and the prudence it should show, in _Tr_ III i, where the book describes its arrival in Rome, in _Tr_ V iv, where the letter tells of Ovid's misery and his loyalty to his friend, and in Ovid's exhortation to his _elegi_ at _Fast_ II 3-6. The device is not unique to Ovid, being found at Catullus XXXV, Hor _Ep_ I xx, and Statius _Sil_ IV iv. =1. LEVES ELEGI.= The same phrase at Am II i 21 'blanditias _elegosque leues_, mea tela, resumpsi'. =1. DOCTAS AD CONSVLIS AVRES.= 'To the ears of a consul who appreciates poetry'. Compare Hor _Ep_ I xiii 17-18 'carmina quae possint oculos _aurisque_ morari / Caesaris' and Prop II xiii 11-12. =2. HONORATO ... VIRO.= Dative of agent with _legenda_. =2. HONORATO= refers specifically to Pompeius' consulship. _Honor_ is often used with the restricted sense of 'magistracy'. =3. LONGA VIA EST.= Compare _Tr_ I i 127-28 (the end of Ovid's instructions to his book) 'longa uia est, propera! nobis habitabitur orbis / ultimus, a terra terra remota mea'. =3. LONGA VIA EST, NEC VOS PEDIBVS PROCEDITIS AEQVIS.= The _uia longa_ is seen as a possible cause of the metre's lameness at _Tr_ III i 11-12. =3. NEC ... PEDIBVS ... AEQVIS.= Ovid often mentions the alternating pattern of elegiac verse: compare xvi 11 _numeris ... imparibus ... uel aequis_ and the passages there cited, _Am_ III i 8 (of Elegy) 'et, puto, pes illi _longior alter_ erat', and _EP_ III iv 85-86 'ferre etiam molles elegi tam uasta triumphi / pondera _disparibus_ non potuere _rotis_'. =5. HAEMON= _Laurentianus 38 39 (saec xv), Ven. Marcianus XII 106 (saec xv), editio princeps Bononiensis_ HAEMVM _BCMFHILT_. I follow Heinsius and Burman in printing _Haemon_, in consideration of the preceding _Thracen_: it seems neater to have both place-names in their Greek forms. _Haemum_ is similarly the transmitted reading at _Met_ VI 87 (of the tapestry created by Minerva) 'Threiciam Rhodopen habet angulus unus et _Haemon_' and _Met_ X 76-77 (of Orpheus) 'in altam / se recipit Rhodopen pulsumque Aquilonibus _Haemon_', the preferable _Haemon_ being found only in certain late manuscripts. =6. TRANSIERITIS.= In early Latin this would necessarily have been a perfect subjunctive, the future perfect indicative being _transieritis_ with the second 'i' short; but after Ennius and Plautus the forms (like _-erIs_ and _-eris)_) are used indifferently, according to metrical necessity. See Platnauer 56 and Kühner-Stegmann I 115-16. =7. LVCE MINVS DECIMA DOMINAM VENIETIS IN VRBEM.= '[Starting from Brundisium] you will arrive in Rome before the tenth day'. The same idiom at _Fast_ V 379 'nocte minus quarta promet sua sidera Chiron'. =8. VT FESTINATVM NON FACIATIS ITER.= The trip would probably be not much shorter than ten days. André cites Livy XXXVI 21 and Plutarch _Cato maior_ 14 3 for Cato's five-day journey from Hydruntum (Livy; Hydruntum is about seventy-five kilometres southeast of Brundisium) or Brundisium (Plutarch) in 191 to announce the victory over Antiochus III at Thermopylae; both authors mention the journey for its speed. The more leisurely journey from Rome to Brundisium described in Hor _Sat_ I v seems to have taken about fifteen days; see Palmer on I v 103. =9.= Either =PETETVR= (_FT_) or PETATVR (_BCMHIL_) is possible enough. _Petetur_ seems the better reading in view of _uenietis_ (7) and _erit_ (16), the corruption perhaps having been induced by _faciatis_ in the preceding line. But the jussive _petatur_ could be continuing from _ite_ in the first line; compare Statius _Sil_ IV iv 4-5 'atque ubi Romuleas uelox penetraueris arces, / continuo dextras flaui _pete_ Thybridis oras'. =10. NON EST AVGVSTO IVNCTIOR VLLA FORO.= Compare xv 16 'quam domus [_sc_ tua] Augusto continuata foro'. =11. SI QVIS VT IN POPULO.= 'If someone in the crowd'. This seems to be the sense of _ut in populo_; Wheeler's translation 'as may happen in the crowd' will work here and at _Tr_ I i 17-18 'si quis _ut in populo_ nostri non immemor illi [=_illic_], / si quis qui quid agam forte requirat, erit', but not at _Tr_ II 157-58 'per patriam, quae te tuta et secura parente est, / cuius _ut in populo_ pars ego nuper eram' or at Hor _Sat_ I vi 78-80 (Horace describes his schooldays) 'uestem seruosque sequentis / _in magno ut populo_ si qui uidisset, auita / ex re praeberi sumptus mihi crederet illos'. A similar idiom appears at _Tr_ II 231-32 'denique _ut in tanto_ quantum non extitit umquam / _corpore_ pars nulla est quae labet imperii' =11. QVI SITIS ET VNDE.= Similar phrasing at _Ilias Lat_ 554-55 'nomen genusque roganti, / _qui sit et unde'_. =12. NOMINA ... QVAELIBET ... FERAT.= _Ferat_ = 'receive as answer'. Compare Livy V 32 8 '[M. Furius Camillus] cum accitis domum tribulibus clientibusque ... percontatus animos eorum _responsum tulisset_ se conlaturos quanti damnatus esset, absoluere eum non posse, in exilium abiit' and XXI 19 11. =12. DECEPTA ... AVRE.= Compare _Met_ VII 821-23 'uocibus ambiguis _deceptam_ praebuit _aurem_ / nescio quis nomenque aurae tam saepe uocatum / esse putat nymphae'. =14. VERA, MINVS= _Hilberg_ VERBA MINVS _codd_. For the phrase _uera fateri_ Hilberg (35-36) cited as parallels _Met_ VII 728 & IX 53, _Tr_ I ix 16, _EP_ III i 79 'si uis _uera fateri_', _EP_ III ix 19 'quid enim dubitem tibi _uera fateri_?', to which add _EP_ II iii 7. For the contrast of _uera_ and _ficta_ Hilberg cited _EP_ III iv 105-6 'oppida turritis cingantur eburnea muris, / _fictaque_ res _uero_ [_codd_: uerae _Riese_] more putetur agi'; see as well _Tr_ I ix 15-16 'haec precor ut semper possint tibi _falsa_ uideri; / sunt tamen euentu _uera fatenda_ meo'. For the corruption of _uera_ to _uerba_ he cited _Fast_ I 332, _Tr_ III vi 36, III xi 33 & IV iii 58, and Prop III xxiv 12 'naufragus Aegaea uera [_Passerat_: uerba _codd_] fatebar [_uar_ fatebor] aqua'; for the position of _uera_ he cited _EP_ III i 46 & IV xiii 26. The corruption was no doubt assisted by the isolated position of _uera_ at the start of the pentameter. =15-16. COPIA NEC VOBIS NVLLO PROHIBENTE VIDENDI / CONSULIS ... ERIT.= 'Even if no one stops you, you will not be able to see the consul [because he will be busy]'. Heinsius preferred to read VLLO (_P_), but this does not yield sense: it would have to mean 'you will be able to see the consul if no one prevents you' or 'you will be unable to see the consul if anyone prevents you'; neither of these meanings would cohere with what follows. =15. COPIA.= 'Opportunity'; compare _Met_ XI 278 '_copia_ ... facta est adeundi tecta tyranni', _EP_ III i 135-37 'cum domus Augusti ... laeta ... plenaque pacis erit, / tum tibi di faciant adeundi _copia_ fiat', and _Aen_ I 520 'coram data _copia_ fandi', XI 248 (=I 520) & XI 378. =16. CONTIGERITIS.= See on 6 _transierItis_. =17. DICENDO IVRA.= The plural is poetic, the standard phrase being _ius dicere_: _OLD ius2_ 4b cites Livy III 52 6 alone for the plural. =17-26.= Ovid lists in order of ascending importance some of the activities Pompeius as consul might be engaged in, starting with the hearing of lawsuits and ending with visits to the imperial family. For a shorter instance of the device of listing the recipient's possible activities, see _Tr_ III vii 3-4 (Ovid tells his letter to seek Perilla) 'aut illam inuenies dulci cum matre sedentem, / aut inter libros Pieridasque suas'. =18. CONSPICVVM ... SIGNIS EBVR.= _Signis_ = 'bas-relief'; the sense is confined to verse (_OLD signum_ 12b). Compare ix 27 'signa ... in sella ... formata curuli', _Met_ V 80-82 'altis / extantem signis ... cratera', _Met_ XII 235-36 'signis extantibus asper / antiquus crater', _Met_ XIII 700, Lucr V 1427-28 'ueste ... purpurea atque auro signisque ingentibus apta', _Aen_ V 267, V 536 & IX 263, Prop IV v 24, Statius _Theb_ I 540, and Silius II 432. =18. CVM PREMET ALTVS EBUR.= 'When he sits tall on the curule chair'. The same situation similarly described at _Fast_ I 81-82 'iamque noui praeeunt fasces, noua purpura fulget, / et noua conspicuum pondera sentit ebur'; compare as well _Med Fac_ 13 'matrona _premens altum_ rubicunda sedile' and _Met_ V 317 'factaque de uiuo _pressere_ sedilia saxo'. =19. REDITVS ... COMPONET.= 'Will be arranging the [state's] income'. For _reditus_ compare _Am_ I x 41 'turpe tori _reditu_ census augere paternos' and _EP_ II iii 17-18 'at _reditus_ iam quisque suos amat, et sibi quid sit / utile sollicitis supputat ['calculates'] articulis'. For _componet_ compare Cic _II Verr_ IV 36 '_compone_ hoc quod postulo de argento' and Tac _Ann_ VI 16 5. =19. POSITAM ... AD HASTAM.= A spear placed in the ground was a symbol of magisterial authority, and as such was always present at the letting of tax contracts. For the language compare Cic _Leg Agr_ II 53 'ponite ante oculos uobis Rullum ... _hasta posita_ ... auctionantem'. For _hasta_ with the specific meaning of 'contract-letting', see Livy XXIV 18 11 'conuenere ad eos frequentes qui _hastae huius generis_ adsueuerant'. The practice is recalled in the modern Italian term for 'auction', _uendita all'asta_. =20. MINVI MAGNAE.= A word play on _minus_ and _magis_ at least; but Professor E. Fantham points out to me that Ovid probably had in mind the phrase _maiestatem populi Romani minuere_ (Cic _Inu_ II 53 & _Phil_ I 21); Pompeius will not allow the interests of the state to be damaged. =21. IN IVLIA TEMPLA= = _in curiam Iuliam_. Caesar had started the construction of a new senate-house in 44; it was opened by Augustus in 29. The building, as restored by Diocletian, survives substantially intact: see Nash I 301. =22. TANTO DIGNIS CONSVLE REBVS.= Note the separation of the epithets from the nouns, and the high level of diction produced by the hyperbaton. =23. AVT FERET ... SOLITAM ... SALVTEM= = _aut, ut solet, salutabit_. =23. NATOQVE.= Tiberius, son of Ti. Claudius Nero, had been adopted by Augustus in AD 4. =24. DEQVE PARVM NOTO CONSVLET OFFICIO.= 'Will be asking advice about his unfamiliar office'. It still being winter, Pompeius would not have been very long in office, and so would not yet have been very familiar with his duties. Burman objected to this notion ('nec Ovidium tam adulandi imperitum fuisse puto, ut ignorantiam aut seruitutem tam imprudenter obiiceret Pompeio') and conjectured DEQVE PATRVM TOTO CONSVLET OFFICIO, that is, 'consulet Caesares, _quale uelint esse officium_ totius senatus'. But the conjecture is unattractive, and the problem not as great as Burman thought: both Ovid and Pompeius would wish to emphasize the importance of the Caesars. =25. AB HIS VACVVM.= A prose usage, paralleled in Ovid by _EP_ I i 79 alone 'inque locum Scythico _uacuum_ mutabor _ab arcu_'. Elsewhere Ovid has nine instances of _uacuus_ with the simple ablative and two instances of _uacuus_ with the genitive, while Virgil never has _uacuus_ with a complement. ET HIS VACVVM, given by _B_ and _C_, is perhaps an attempt to restore normal poetic idiom. =26. A MAGNIS ... DEIS.= 'After the great gods'--Augustus and Tiberius. Dio says that it was remarked after Augustus' death that both of the consuls for the year were related to the emperor (LVI 29 5); it is strange that Ovid nowhere mentions Pompeius' link with the imperial family. For the sense of _ab_, compare for example _Ecl_ V 48-49 'nec calamis solum aequiperas, sed uoce magistrum: / fortunate puer, tu nunc eris alter _ab illo_' and Statius _Theb_ IV 842. =27. CVM TAMEN ... REQVIEVERIT.= After it has arrived in Rome, the poem should not vex Pompeius by approaching him when he is busy. At _Tr_ I i 93-96 Ovid in the same way advises his book when it should approach Augustus, and at _EP_ III i 135-40 gives similar directions to his wife. Compare as well _Met_ IX 572-73 (a messenger carries Byblis' declaration of love to her brother) 'apta minister / tempora nactus adit traditque fatentia [_H. A. Koch_: latentia _codd_] uerba' and _Met_ IX 610-12 (Byblis' explanation of the failure of her suit) 'forsitan et missi sit quaedam culpa ministri: / non adiit apte, nec legit idonea, credo, / tempora, nec petiit _horam animumque uacantem_'. =27. A TVRBA RERVM.= 'De ces multiples affaires' (André). Heinsius conjectured CVRA, citing ix 71 (addressed to Graecinus as consul) 'cum tamen _a rerum cura_ propiore uacabit'. The conjecture is elegant enough, but the manuscript reading seems sufficiently supported by _Her_ II 75-76 (Phyllis to Demophoon) 'de tanta _rerum turba_ factisque parentis / sedit in ingenio Cressa relicta tuo' and _EP_ III i 144 'per _rerum turbam_ tu quoque oportet eas'; compare as well Columella XI 2 25. =28. MANSVETAS ... MANVS.= The same phrase in the same position at Prop III xvi 9-10 'peccaram semel, et totum sum pulsus in annum: / in me _mansuetas_ non habet illa _manus_'. _Mansuetus_ is foreign to poetic vocabulary, not being found in Virgil or Horace, and only three times in Propertius (I ix 12, I xvii 28, III xvi 10): in Ovid it occurs elsewhere only at _Tr_ III vi 23 'numinis ut laesi fiat mansuetior ira' and _Ibis_ 26. =28. PORRIGET ILLE MANVS.= _Manus_ = _manum_; for the latter, compare _Her_ XVIII 15-16 'protinus haec scribens "felix i littera" dixi, / "iam tibi formosam _porriget illa manum_"'. Alternatively, the phrase could be taken to indicate Pompeius' gesture of welcoming to a suppliant: at _Met_ III 458 Narcissus, saying how he wished to embrace his reflection, says 'cumque ego _porrexi tibi bracchia_, porrigis ultro'. =31-32. VIVIT ADHVC VITAMQVE TIBI DEBERE FATETVR, / QVAM PRIVS A MITI CAESARE MVNVS HABET.= See on i 2 _debitor ... uitae_, and compare _Tr_ V ix 11-14 'Caesaris est primum munus, quod ducimus auras; / gratia post magnos est tibi habenda deos. / ille dedit uitam; tu quam dedit ille tueris, / et facis accepto munere posse frui': the similarity of phrasing makes it all but certain that the poem was addressed to Pompeius. =33. MEMORI ... ORE.= The phrase belongs to high poetic diction: compare _Met_ VI 508 'absentes pro se _memori_ rogat _ore_ salutent', _Met_ X 204 (Apollo to the dead Hyacinthus) 'semper eris mecum _memorique_ haerebis in _ore_', and _AA_ III 700 'auditos _memori_ detulit _ore_ sonos'. =35. SANGVINE BISTONIVM QVOD NON TEPEFECERIT ENSEM.= Another instance of high poetic diction: compare _Her_ I 19 'sanguine Tlepolemus Lyciam _tepefecerat_ hastam', _Aen_ IX 333-34 'atro _tepefacta_ cruore / terra', _Aen_ IX 418-19 'hasta ... traiecto ... haesit _tepefacta_ cerebro', and Hor _Sat_ II iii 136. =37-38. ADDITA PRAETEREA VITAE QVOQVE MVLTA TVENDAE / MVNERA.= The dative expresses purpose. For the sense of _tueri_ 'sustain', compare _Tr_ V ix 13 'uitam ... quam dedit ille _tueris_', Cic _Deiot_ 22 'atque antea quidem maiores copias alere poterat; nunc exiguas uix _tueri_ potest', Livy V 4 5, XXIII 38 12 & XXXIX 9 5, and Pliny _NH_ XXXIII 134 'M. Crassus negabat locupletem esse nisi qui reditu annuo legionem _tueri_ posset'. =38. NE PROPRIAS ATTENVARET OPES.= This may be a reference to the financial burden of living in exile, but more probably refers to the actual financial loss Ovid suffered in exile: 'ditata est spoliis perfida turba meis' (_EP_ II vii 62). It is clear from _Tr_ I vi 7-8 that Ovid had feared such losses from the beginning of his exile. _Attenuare_ is a very strong verb: compare _Met_ VIII 843-45 (of Erysichthon) 'iamque fame patrias altique uoragine uentris / _attenuarat_ ['had exhausted'--Miller] opes, sed inattenuata manebat / tum quoque dira fames'. =39. PRO QVIBVS VT MERITIS REFERATVR GRATIA.= Similar language to Pompeius at i 21 'et leuis haec _meritis referatur gratia_ tantis'. =40. MANCIPII ... TVI= (_CB2_) 'belonging to your property' seems a much more elegant construction than the other manuscripts' MANCIPIVM ... TVVM 'your slave', and was conjectured by Heinsius; in support of _mancipium ... tuum_ Burman cited viii 65-66 'si quid adhuc igitur uiui, Germanice, nostro / restat in ingenio, _seruiet_ omne tibi'. =41-44.= Ovid uses the common device of listing _adynata_; the second version of the device at _Tr_ I viii 1-10, where Ovid says that now his friend has betrayed him he expects to see the _adynata_ occur. Comprehensive listings of _adynata_ in ancient literature given by Smith on Tib I iv 65-66, Shackleton Bailey on Prop I xv 29, Nisbet and Hubbard on Hor _Carm_ I ii 9, xxix 10 & xxxiii 7, and by Gow on Theocritus I 132-36. =42. VELIVOLAS= occurs once more at xvi 21 'ueliuolique maris uates', and nowhere else in Ovid's poetry. It is found at Lucretius V 1442 and _Aen_ I 224 'mare ueliuolum', and was from old Latin poetry: Macrobius (_Sat_ VI v 10) cites instances from Livius Andronicus (Morel 58) and Ennius (_Ann_ 380 Vahlen3; _Andromache_ 74 Ribbeck3). =43. SVPINO.= 'Backwards'; almost the reverse of _praeceps_. The same sense at _Med Fac_ 40 'nec redit in fontes unda _supina_ suos'. =45. DIXERITIS.= See on 6 _transieritis_. =45. SVA DONA.= Compare _Her_ XII 203 (Medea to Jason) 'dos mea tu sospes' and Sen _Med_ 142 'muneri parcat meo [=_uitae suae_]' & 228-30. =46. SIC FVERIT VESTRAE CAVSA PERACTA VIAE.= 'So you will have carried out the reason for your journey'. The same sense of _causa_ at _Met_ VI 449-50 'coeperat aduentus causam, mandata referre / coniugis' and of _peragere_ (always with _mandata_ as object) at _Met_ VII 502, XI 629 & XIV 460, _Fast_ III 687, and _Tr_ I i 35-36 'ut _peragas mandata_, liber, culpabere forsan / ingeniique minor laude ferere mei'. Professor E. Fantham points out to me that Ovid may here be playing on a second sense of _causam peragere_, 'end a speech [in court]', for which see _Met_ XV 36-37 'spretarumque agitur legum reus ... _peracta_ est / causa prior ['the case for the prosecution'--Miller], crimenque patet' and _Her_ XXI 152. VI. To Brutus Of the Brutus to whom this poem is addressed nothing is known beyond what Ovid here tells us. He was an advocate, by Ovid's testimony an eminent one (29-38), and had been among the few who stood by Ovid at the time of his exile (23-26). The collection of _Ex Ponto_ I-III was apparently dedicated to him, since the first poem of the first book and the last poem of the third book are addressed to him, but the two poems fail to give any further information on him or on his relationship to Ovid. Ovid starts the poem with the reflection that he has now spent five years at Tomis (1-6). Fortune has tricked him: Fabius Maximus died before he could appeal to Augustus, Augustus before he could pardon Ovid (7-16). He hopes that the poem he has written on the apotheosis of Augustus will win him pardon; Brutus' fine qualities guarantee that he shares Ovid's wishes (17-22). The poem ends with a eulogy of Brutus' character and an assurance of Ovid's eternal gratitude to those friends who stood by him (23-50). =1. QVAM LEGIS.= See at ii 1 _quod legis_ (p 162). =3-4. SED TV QVOD NOLLES, VOLVIT MISERABILE FATVM; / EI MIHI, PLVS ILLVD QVAM TVA VOTA VALET.= For the play on _nolle_/_uelle_ and the thought of 4, compare _Met_ IX 757-58 'quodque ego, _uult_ genitor, _uult_ ipsa socerque futurus, / at _non uult_ natura, potentior omnibus istis'. =5. QVINQVENNIS.= Ovid often mentions the time he has spent in exile: see _Tr_ IV vi 19-20 (AD 10) 'ut patria careo, _bis_ frugibus area trita est, / dissiluit nudo pressa _bis_ uua pede', _Tr_ IV vii 1-2 '_Bis_ me sol adiit gelidae post frigora brumae, / _bisque_ suum tacto Pisce peregit iter', _Tr_ V x 1-2 (AD 11-12) 'Vt sumus in Ponto, _ter_ frigore constitit Hister, / facta est Euxini dura _ter_ unda maris', _EP_ I ii 25-26 (AD 12-13) 'hic me pugnantem cum frigore cumque sagittis / cumque meo fato _quarta_ fatigat hiemps', _EP_ I viii 27-28 'ut careo uobis, Stygias detrusus in oras, / _quattuor_ autumnos Pleias orta facit', _EP_ IV x 1 (AD 14) 'Haec mihi Cimmerio _bis tertia_ ducitur aestas', and _EP_ IV xiii 39-40 'sed me iam, Care, niuali / _sexta_ relegatum bruma sub axe uidet'. Ovid's first full year of exile was AD 9; since Augustus died on 19 August 14, this poem can be securely dated to the final few months of that year. =5. OLYMPIAS= in Latin can mean a period of four or of five years; Ovid may have used _quinquennis_ to remove the ambiguity. _Olympias_ elsewhere in classical poetry apparently only at Manilius III 596, where it also denotes a five-year period. =5-6. OLYMPIAS ACTA / IAM= _Housman_ OLYMPIAS ACTA EST. / IAM _edd_. The subject of _transit_ must be _Olympias_, since otherwise the pentameter is without a subject. Wheeler offers 'the time is now passing to a second lustrum', which does not account for the genitive _lustri ... alterius_ (a second _tempus_, in the accusative, would have to be understood), while André gives 'et déjà j'entre dans un second lustre', which does not explain the person of _transit_. The editors' reading could be retained, and _Olympias_ understood as the subject of the pentameter; but it seems simpler to follow Housman in omitting _est_ (with _L_ and _T_) and joining the two lines in a single sentence. _Transit_ is in strict terms illogical, since an Olympiad once completed (_acta_) cannot pass into a second period of time, but the idiom seems natural enough in view of Ovid's use of _transire_ with seasons at _Met_ XV 206 '_transit in aestatem_ post uer robustior annus'; compare as well _Fast_ V 185 (to Flora) 'incipis Aprili, _transis in tempora Maii_'. =7. PERSTAT ENIM FORTVNA TENAX.= In Ovid's case, Fortune does not show her typical inconstancy. =8. OPPONIT NOSTRIS INSIDIOSA PEDEM.= Otto _pes_ 7 cites this passage and Petronius 57 10 'et habebam in domo qui mihi _pedem opponerent_ hac illac'. =9-10. CERTVS ERAS ... LOQVI.= 'You had made up your mind to speak'. The same idiom at _Her_ IV 151-52, _Her_ VII 9 'certus es, Aenea, cum foedere soluere naues ...?', _Met_ IX 43, X 394 & XI 440; the impersonal construction at _Met_ V 533, IX 53 'certum est mihi uera fateri' & X 38-39. =9. FABIAE LAVS, MAXIME, GENTIS.= Similar phrasing at _EP_ III iii 2 'o sidus Fabiae, Maxime, gentis, ades'. This passage seems to be the earliest instance of _laus_ 'object of praise; reason for praise' used of a person: _TLL_ VII.2 1064 73 ff. cites from classical Latin only _Eleg Maec_ 17-18 'Pallade cum docta Phoebus donauerat artes; / tu decus et _laudes_ huius et huius eras', Valerius Flaccus II 243-44 'decus et patriae _laus_ una ruentis, / Hypsipyle', Silius XIII 824, and Martial I xlix 2-3 'nostraeque _laus_ Hispaniae ... Liciniane'. LVX (_F2_), printed by Burman, is acceptable enough (compare Cic _Cat_ IV 11 'hanc urbem, _lucem_ orbis terrarum'), but is clearly a guess based on _F1_'s DVX. For a full discussion of the career of Paullus Fabius Maximus, _consul ordinarius_ in 11 BC, see Syme _HO_ 135-55. He is the recipient of _EP_ I ii, a request to plead for Ovid with Augustus, and _EP_ III iii, an account of Ovid's vision of Amor which ends with a plea for Fabius' assistance. He is prominently mentioned at Hor _Carm_ IV i 9-12 as a suitable prey for Venus, and it appears from Juvenal VII 94-95 that he was a famous patron of literature: Ovid mentions his _scripta_ at _EP_ I ii 135. We learn from the same poem that Ovid's wife was a member of Fabius' family: 'ille ego de uestra cui data nupta domo est' (136). =10. SVPPLICE VOCE LOQVI.= Similar phrasing at _Met_ VI 33 '_supplice uoce_ roga: ueniam dabit illa roganti'. The adjectival use of _supplex_ is not confined to verse; _OLD supplex_ 2 cites instances from Caesar and Suetonius. =11. OCCIDIS ANTE PRECES.= 'You died before making your request'. Since Fabius is named in an inscription (_CIL_ VI 2023a, line 17; cited by Froesch 209) as having participated in the election of Drusus to the Arval Brotherhood on 15 May AD 14, he must have died very shortly before Augustus. =11-12. CAVSAMQVE EGO, MAXIME, MORTIS ... ME REOR ESSE TVAE.= The death of Fabius, so soon before that of Augustus, seems to have raised popular suspicions. Tacitus (_Ann_ I 5 1-2) mentions a rumour that Fabius had secretly accompanied Augustus to Planasia to visit Agrippa Postumus and that his wife had warned Livia of this; Augustus heard of this, and at Fabius' funeral she was heard blaming herself for his death. If Fabius' death occurred under strange circumstances, Ovid's accusation against himself of having been its cause may have special point. For a full discussion of the circumstances of Fabius' death, see Syme _HO_ 149-51. =12. NEC FVERAM TANTI.= 'But I was not worth this much'. _Fueram_ has the sense of the imperfect, as at _AA_ I 103-4 'tunc neque marmoreo _pendebant_ uela theatro, / nec _fuerant_ liquido pulpita rubra croco'; other instances at _Her_ V 69, _AA_ II 137, _AA_ III 429 & 618, and _Tr_ III xi 25. A full discussion at Platnauer 112-14: he cites thirteen instances from Propertius, who seems to have been fondest of the idiom, and only one certain instance from Tibullus, II v 79 'haec fuerant olim'. FVERO (_BC_) gives the sense 'but I will be discovered not to have been worth this much'; the tense seems difficult to fit to the context. FVERIM (_British Library Burney 220, saec xii-xiii_) 'but I hope I was not worth so much' is quite possibly correct, and would account for the corruption to _fuero_. =12. NEC ... TANTI.= Similar phrasing at _Met_ X 613 (Atalanta ponders Hippomenes' willingness to risk death to gain her hand) '_non_ sum me iudice _tanti_'. =13. MANDARE.= 'Consign'; a legal term for charging others with carrying out business on one's behalf, which carried certain obligations with it. See Gaius III 155-62, Just _Inst_ III 26, and the discussion at Buckland 514-21. =15. DETECTAE ... CVLPAE= _scripsi_ DECEPTAE ... CVLPAE _codd_. _Me decipit error_ is a phrase used by Ovid to mean 'I am making a mistake'; see _EP_ III ix 9-12 'auctor opus laudat ... iudicium tamen hic non _decipit error_ ['I do not make this error of judgment'], / nec quicquid genui protinus illud amo'. Ovid uses the expression very often for the "mistake" which led to his exile: see _Tr_ I iii 37-38 (Ovid to his friends on the night of his exile) 'caelestique uiro quis me _deceperit error_ / dicite pro culpa ne scelus esse putet', _Tr_ IV i 23 'scit quoque [_sc_ Musa] cum perii quis me _deceperit error_', and _EP_ II ii 61 'quasi me nullus _deceperit error_'. He uses _decipere_ once when speaking of the other cause of his exile: 'o puer [_sc_ Amor], exilii _decepto_ causa magistro' (_EP_ III iii 23). Wheeler took _deceptae_ to refer to Ovid: 'Augustus had begun to pardon the fault I committed in error'. This kind of extreme hypallage, with the true modified noun not expressed, does not however seem to be Ovid's practice, although found in the Silver poets: Statius _Theb_ IX 425 'deceptaque fulmina' means 'the thunderbolts thrown by Jupiter at the request of Semele, who had been _deceived_ by Juno'. Professor J. N. Grant suggests DECEPTI to me; but the genitive of the first person is rare in Ovid, and the perfect participle without expressed noun seems difficult. Owen saw the difficulty with _deceptae_, and in his second edition referred to Livy XXII 4 4 'id tantum hostium quod ex aduerso erat conspexit; ab tergo ac super caput _deceptae_ insidiae'. But _deceptae_ (which has been variously emended) there means _occultae_, as explained by Housman (521-22), who cited Prop II xxiv 35-36 'Phrygio fallax Maeandria campo / errat et ipsa suas _decipit_ unda uias' and Sen _HF_ 155 for the same sense; and _occultae_ is clearly not the meaning here required, since Ovid's misdemeanour was all too visible. Being unable to explain _deceptae_, I have conjectured _detectae_. Ovid seems to have committed his _error_ in two stages. First he committed the original misdemeanour; then he kept silent about it when it might have been better for him to speak. Compare _Tr_ III vi 11-13 'cuique ego narrabam secreti quicquid habebam, / excepto quod me perdidit, unus eras. / id quoque si scisses, saluo fruerere sodali'. Later this misdemeanour was discovered: for the arrival of the news of this discovery when Ovid was visiting Elba with Cotta Maximus, see _EP_ II iii 83-90. It is to this discovery that _detectae_ refers: 'Augustus had begun to forgive the misdemeanour that had been revealed'. For this use of _detegere_ compare _Met_ II 544-47 'ales / sensit adulterium Phoebeius [_coruus_, the raven], utque latentem / _detegeret culpam_, non exorabilis index, / ad dominum tendebat iter' and Livy XXII 28 8 'necubi ... motus alicuius ... aut fulgor armorum fraudem ... detegeret'. Professor R. J. Tarrant points out to me the parallel problem at _Met_ IX 711 'indecepta pia mendacia fraude latebant', where context requires _indecepta_ to have the meaning 'undetected'. _Indecepta_ might be taken to support _deceptae_ in the present passage, but I am more inclined to read _indetecta_ for _indecepta_: of the various conjectures made, Zingerle's _inde incepta_ is most commonly accepted. At _Her_ IX 101-2 'tolle procul, _decepte_, faces, Hymenaee, maritas / et fuge turbato tecta nefanda pede!', _detecte_ should similarly be read. _Detecte_ better explains why Hymenaeus should flee; also, Hymenaeus has not been deceived, for it appears from 61-62 'spes bona det uires; fratris [_Palmer_: fratri _codd_] nam nupta futura es; / illius de quo mater, et uxor eris' that Macareus had fully intended to marry Canace. =16. SPEM NOSTRAM TERRAS DESERVITQVE SIMVL.= The _-que_ should of course be taken with _terras_. This is a typical instance of Ovid's love of _syllepsis_, of giving a single verb two objects (or more), each of which uses a different meaning of the verb. Compare, from many instances, ix 90 'nec cum fortuna mens quoque uersa mea est', _Her_ VII 9 'certus es, Aenea, cum foedere soluere naues', _Met_ II 601-2 'et pariter uultusque deo plectrumque colorque / excidit', _Met_ VIII 177, _Fast_ III 225, _Fast_ III 857 'hic [the messenger of Ino] ... corruptus cum semine', _Fast_ V 652 'montibus his ponunt spemque laremque suum', and _EP_ II vii 84 'meque simul serua iudiciumque tuum'. =16. DESERVITQVE.= Ovid does not use _deserere_ with things as object until his poetry of exile: compare _Tr_ I ix 65 'nec amici _desere_ causam'. Instances in the later _Heroides_ at XV 155 'Sappho _desertos_ cantat amores' and XVI 260 'orantis medias _deseruere_ preces'; in both cases the objects are virtually equivalent to persons. =17. TAMEN.= 'In spite of my dejection'. =17-18. DE CAELITE ... RECENTI ... CARMEN.= The poem does not survive. At xiii 25-32 Ovid describes a similar poem on the apotheosis of Augustus, written in Getic. =17. RECENTI.= 'New, freshly created'. Used in similar contexts at _Met_ IV 434-35 'umbraeque _recentes_ ... simulacraque functa sepulcris', VIII 488 'fraterni manes animaeque _recentes_', X 48-49 'Eurydicenque uocant: umbras erat illa _recentes_ / inter', and especially XV 844-46 'Venus ... Caesaris eripuit membris nec in aera solui / passa _recentem_ animam caelestibus intulit astris'. =18. VESTRA= = 'of you [plural] at Rome'. =18. CARMEN IN ORA DEDI.= 'I sent a poem for you to recite from and speak of'. _Dare_ meaning 'send' is usually restricted to use with _litteras_ (_OLD do_ 10; compare Cic _Att_ II i 12 & IX viiB 1, Livy XXVII 16 13). For _in ora_, compare Catullus XL 5 'an ut peruenias _in ora_ uulgi [_sc_ hoc facis]?', Hor _Ep_ I iii 9 ' ... Titius, Romana breui uenturus _in ora_', Prop III ix 32 (to Maecenas) 'et uenies tu quoque _in ora_ uirum', _Tr_ V vii 29-30 'non tamen ingratum est quodcumque obliuia nostri / impedit et profugi nomen _in ora_ refert', and Livy II 36 3. The only instance I have found of the expression being used of a thing rather than a person other than this passage is also from Ovid: 'illud opus ... nunc incorrectum populi peruenit _in ora_, / in populi quicquam si tamen ore mei est' (_Tr_ III xiv 21-24). Neither passage would have seemed strange to the Romans, given the close identification between poet and work: compare Ennius' famous 'uolito uiuo' per ora uirum' and _Met_ XV 878 'ore legar populi'. =19. QVAE PIETAS.= 'This demonstration of loyalty'. =20. SACRAE ... DOMVS.= Augustus' house called 'magni ... Iouis ... domum' at _Tr_ III i 38; compare as well _EP_ III i 135 'domus Augusti, Capitoli more colenda'. =20. MITIOR IRA.= Compare _EP_ III iii 83 'pone metus igitur: _mitescet_ Caesaris _ira_'. =21. LIQVIDO POSSVM IVRARE.= 'I can swear unambiguously'. The only other instance of this sense in verse apparently III iii 49-50 'scis tamen et _liquido_ iuratus dicere possis / non me legitimos sollicitasse toros'. From prose compare Cic _II Verr_ IV 124 'confirmare hoc _liquido_, iudices, possum, ualuas magnificentiores ... nullas umquam ullo in templo fuisse', _II Verr_ III 136, _Fam_ XI 27 7 'alia sunt quae _liquido_ negare soleam', and Sen _Ben_ VII 9 5. =22. NON DVBIA ... NOTA.= The phrase logically belongs with the preceding line: on the firm evidence of Brutus' past behaviour (described in 23-42), Ovid can confidently state that Brutus prays for his restoration. _Non dubia_ by litotes for _certa_ (for which see _Her_ XX 207 'te ... nimium miror, _nota certa_ furoris'); _nota_ 'tangible sign, evidence' similarly used at _Met_ I 761 (_generis_). FIDE (_LTM2ulF2ul_) is an obvious gloss for _nota_. =23. VERVM ... AMOREM.= 'Sincere love' (Wheeler); compare _Met_ V 61 '_ueri_ non dissimulator _amoris'_ and _Tr_ IV iv 71 'et comes exemplum _ueri_ Phoceus _amoris_'. =25. TVAS ... LACRIMAS NOSTRASQVE.= The tears of Ovid's friends at his departure described at _Tr_ III iv 39-40, _EP_ I ix 17-18, and _EP_ II xi 9-10 (to Rufus) 'grande uoco lacrimas meritum quibus ora rigabas, / cum mea concreto sicca dolore forent'. =26. PASSVROS POENAM CREDERET ESSE DVOS.= Compare _Tr_ V iv 37-38 (Ovid's letter speaking) 'quamuis attonitus, sensit tamen omnia, _nec te / se minus aduersis indoluisse suis_'. =27. LENEM TE MISERIS GENVIT NATURA.= Compare Cic _Tusc_ II 11 'te _natura_ excelsum quendam uidelicet et altum et humana despicientem _genuit_' and Ennius _Ann_ 112 Vahlen3 (of Romulus) 'qualem te patriae custodem di _genuerunt_'. =29. MARTE FORENSI.= Similar metaphor for the lawcourts at _Fast_ IV 188 'et fora _Marte suo_ litigiosa uacent', _Tr_ III xii 17-18 'ludis / cedunt uerbosi garrula _bella_ fori' and _Tr_ IV x 17-18 'frater ... fortia uerbosi natus ad _arma_ fori'. According to Ovid real wounds were suffered in the forum at Tomis: 'adde quod iniustum rigido ius dicitur ense, / dantur et in medio uulnera saepe foro' (_Tr_ V x 43-44). =30. POSSE TVO PERAGI VIX PVTET ORE REOS.= Similar language at _Tr_ I i 23-24 'protinus admonitus repetet mea crimina lector, / _et peragar populi publicus ore reus_'. _Peragere_ refers to the prosecution of a defendant carried to its end, but does not imply success for the prosecutor: see Pliny _Ep_ III ix 30 and Ulpian _Dig_ XLVIII v 2 1 'non alias ad mulierem possit peruenire, nisi reum peregerit [_sc_ adulterii]; peregisse autem non alias quis uidetur, _nisi et condemnauerit_'. =31. QVAMVIS PVGNARE VIDENTVR= _BMFH_. Given the dependent _pugnare_, it seems hardly possible to read the VIDETVR given by the other manuscripts. The same problem arises at _Met_ VIII 463-64 '_pugnant_ materque sororque, / et diuersa trahunt unum duo nomina pectus', where the manuscripts divide between _pugnant_ and _pugnat_; for an unambiguous parallel, see _Her_ XIX 173 'nunc, male res iunctae, calor et reuerentia _pugnant_'. Heinsius further suggested deleting _est_ from the preceding _scilicet eiusdem est_ 'cum tribus libris', but the change in number does not seem unduly harsh. =32. SVPPLICIBVS FACILEM.= See on iv 30 _faciles in tua uota_, and compare _Am_ II iii 5-6 (to his girl's eunuch) 'mollis in obsequium _facilisque rogantibus_ esses, / si tuus in quauis praetepuisset amor' and _Her_ XVI 197-98 'da modo te _facilem_, nec dedignare maritum ... Phrygem'. Ovid is here indirectly referring to his own situation: compare _EP_ III iii 107-8 'at tua _supplicibus_ domus est adsueta _iuuandis_, / _in quorum numero me precor esse uelis_'. =33. LEGIS VINDICTA.= 'The exacting of punishment on behalf of the law'. The law has been broken, and therefore demands retribution; Brutus acts on its behalf. For the sense of the genitive compare Val Max I 1 ext 3: (Dionysius of Syracuse committed many acts of sacrilege, but punishment was visited on him after his death in the form of his son's ignominious career) 'lento enim gradu ad _uindictam sui_ diuina procedit ira tarditatemque supplicii grauitate pensat'. =33. LEGIS ... SEVERAE.= _Seuerae_ here serves as a standard epithet and has no such special force as at _EP_ III iii 57-58 'uetiti ... _lege seuera_ / credor adulterii composuisse notas'. =34. VERBA VELVT TAETRVM SINGVLA VIRVS HABENT.= The same image at _EP_ III iii 105-6 'ergo alii noceant miseris optentque timeri, / _tinctaque mordaci spicula felle gerant_'. =34. TAETRVM= _R. J. Tarrant_ TINCTV _Ehwald_ TINCTVM _codd_. _Tinctum_ is impossible: if the word were used, it would have to go with _uerba_. Compare _Ibis_ 53-54 'liber iambus / _tincta_ Lycambeo sanguine _tela_ dabit', _Ibis_ 491 '[tamque cadas domitus ...] quam qui _dona_ tulit Nesseo _tincta_ ueneno', _EP_ III i 26 _'tinctaque_ mortifera tabe _sagitta_ madet', and _EP_ III iii 106 _'tinctaque_ mordaci _spicula_ felle gerant'. Ehwald's _tinctu_ is linguistically and palaeographically somewhat better than Merkel's _tinguat_: for similar corruptions compare _Fast_ III 612 'flet tamen _admonitu_ motus, Elissa, tui', where many manuscripts read _admonitus_, and _Tr_ I iv 9 'pinea texta sonant pulsu [_Rothmaler_: pulsi _codd_], stridore rudentes'. Even so, 'Each of your words carries poison, as though it had been dipped in it' seems awkward. For Professor Tarrant's _taetrum_ compare Lucretius I 936 'absinthia taetra', _Dirae_ 23 'taetra uenena', and _Hal_ 131 'nigrum ... uirus'. =34. VIRVS HABENT.= Compare _Tr_ IV i 84 'aut telo _uirus habente_ perit' & III x 64 'nam uolucri ferro tinctile _uirus inest_'. =35-36. HOSTIBVS EVENIAT QUAM SIS VIOLENTVS IN ARMIS / SENTIRE.= _Hostibus eueniat_ is a common phrase in Ovid: compare _Am_ II x 16-17 '_hostibus eueniat_ uita seuera meis! / _hostibus eueniat_ uiduo dormire cubili', _Am_ III xi 16, _AA_ III 247, _Fast_ III 493-94 'at, puto, praeposita est fuscae mihi Candida paelex! / _eueniat nostris hostibus_ ille dolor [_recc quidam_: color _codd plerique_]!', and _Her_ XVI 219-20 (Paris to Helen) '_hostibus eueniant_ conuiuia talia nostris, / experior posito qualia saepe mero!'. =37. QVAE TIBI TAM TENVI CVRA LIMANTVR.= 'Which are sharpened by you with such painstaking care'. For this meaning of _limare_ compare Pliny _NH_ VIII 71 'cornu ad saxa _limato_' and Cic _Brut_ 236 '[M. Piso ...] habuit a natura genus quoddam _acuminis_, quod etiam arte _limauerat_'. =37-38. VT OMNES / ISTIVS INGENVI PECTORIS ESSE NEGENT.= 'So that all would deny that they are the product of your kindly spirit'; for this sense of _ingenuus_ compare Catullus LXVIII 37-38 'quod cum ita sit, nolim statuas nos mente maligna / id facere aut _animo_ non satis _ingenuo_'. _Ingenui pectoris_ is my correction for the manuscripts' INGENIVM CORPORIS, which could only mean 'so that all would deny that the talent of your body exists'; Ovid can hardly be identifying the _tela_ of 36 with Brutus' _ingenium_. Wheeler translates 'On these [the missiles of your tongue] you use the file with such extreme care that none would recognize in them your real nature', and André 'que personne ne croirait qu'un tel esprit habite ton corps'; neither translation fits the Latin. Shackleton Bailey's INGENIVM NOMINIS still leaves unsolved the problem of _ingenium_. The corruption of _ingenui_ to _ingenium_ (or rather, _ingeniU_) is simple enough; and the interchange of _pectus_ and _corpus_ is a common error. =42. NOTITIAM ... INFITIATA.= _Infitiari_ used similarly at _EP_ I vii 27 'nec tuus est genitor nos _infitiatus_ amicos'. =43. IMMEMOR ... IMMEMOR.= Professor R. J. Tarrant points out the similar epanalepsis at Hor _Ep_ I xi 9 '_oblitusque_ meorum, _obliuiscendus_ et illis'. =44. SOLLICITI= _BCM2ul_ SOLLICITE _M1FHILT_. The adjective with adverbial meaning would be especially liable to corruption. The same construction at _Am_ II iv 25 'dulce canit flectitque _facillima_ uocem'. =44. LEVASTIS= _Barberinus lat. 26, saec xiii_ LEVATIS _BCMFHILT_. If 44 were taken in isolation, _leuatis_, which most editors print, would be acceptable enough; compare _Tr_ IV i 49 ' iure deas igitur ueneror mala nostra _leuantes_' and _EP_ III vi 13-14 'nec scelus admittas si consoleris amicum, / mollibus et uerbis aspera fata _leues_'. But it is clear from 42 'est infitiata' and 49 'doluistis' that Ovid is speaking of the time of his banishment, and so _leuastis_ must be read. Compare _Tr_ I v 75 'me deus oppressit, nullo _mala nostra leuante_', _EP_ II vii 61-62 'recta fides comitum poterat _mala nostra leuare_: / ditata est spoliis perfida turba meis', and _EP_ III ii 25-26 'pars estis pauci melior, qui rebus in artis / ferre mihi nullam turpe putastis [_uar_ putatis] opem'. =45-50.= Compare the listing of _adynata_ at the end of v (41-44), which again illustrates Ovid's eternal gratitude (to Sextus Pompeius). Here the personal detail (_hic nimium nobis conterminus Hister_) makes the _adynaton_ reflect Ovid's own circumstances. =46. DE MARE.= The same form of the ablative at _Tr_ V ii 20 'pleno de mare'. Compare Ovid's frequent use of the metrically convenient ablative in _-e_ of third-declension adjectives. =47-48.= Thyestes' feast cited as a proverbial example at _Met_ XV 62 (Pythagoras is urging a vegetarian diet) 'neue Thyesteis cumulemus uiscera mensis', _Tr_ II 391-92 'si non Aeropen [_Politianus_: Meropen _uel_ Europen _codd_] frater sceleratus amasset, / auersos Solis non legeremus equos', Lucan I 534-44, and Martial III xlv 1-2 'Fugerit an Phoebus mensas cenamque Thyestae / ignoro: fugimus nos, Ligurine, tuam'. =47. VTQVE ... SI= = _et, quasi_. All of the instances of the idiom cited by Lewis & Short _ut_ II A 2e and _OLD ut_ 8d are from prose, except for Ter _Eun_ 117 and Lucilius 330 Marx. In none of these passages is _ut_ separated from _si_: the hyperbaton elevates the phrase and makes more natural its use in verse. =49. QVI ME DOLVISTIS ADEMPTVM.= 'Who mourned my exile' is the meaning imposed by context, but the phrase would usually mean 'who mourned my death': compare _EP_ I ix 41 'iure igitur lacrimas Celso libamus _adempto_', and the similar use of _raptus_ for the exiled Ovid at xi 5 and xvi 1. For Ovid's considering his exile as his death, see xvi 1-4, _Tr_ III iii 53 'cum patriam amisi, tunc me periisse putato', and _EP_ I ix 56 'et nos extinctis adnumerare potest'. VII. To Vestalis Vestalis, a younger son of Cottius, monarch of a small kingdom in the Alps (see at 29 [p 253]), was _primipilaris_ of the legion of the area (perhaps the _V Macedonica_). He had just been named administrator of the region around Tomis (see at 1); as an important local official, he was a natural choice as recipient of one of Ovid's letters. The poem starts with a description of the harsh climate of Tomis, to which Vestalis along with Ovid can now testify, and of the savagery of the inhabitants (1-12). This serves as a bridge to a compliment to Vestalis on being named _primipilaris_ (13-18), and to the main body of the poem, a long and rather conventional description of how Vestalis led the final attack in the recovery of Aegissos (19-52). In the concluding distich Ovid declares that he has rendered immortal the deeds of Vestalis. =1. ORAS= (_CI_) seems more suited to the nature of Vestalis' command than VNDAS, the reading of the other manuscripts. After _Euxinas_, corruption from _oras_ to _undas_ would be very easy, the inverse less so. Ovid does not elsewhere use _Euxinae orae_, the usual substantives with _Euxinus_ being _aquae_, _mare_, _fretum_, and, closest in meaning, _litus_, for which see iii 51 'litus ad Euxinum ... ibis', _Tr_ V ii 63-64 'iussus ad Euxini deformia litora ueni / aequoris', and _Tr_ V iv 1. =2. POSITIS ... SVB AXE= in effect acts as a single adjective meaning 'northern'; _axe_ plays a subordinate role and so does not require an epithet. The phrasing may be based on Accius 566-67 Ribbeck2 '[ora ...] _sub axe posita_ ad Stellas septem, unde horrifer / Aquilonis stridor gelidas molitur niues'. _Lycaonio ... sub axe_ at _Tr_ III ii 2. =3. ASPICIS EN PRAESENS.= Compare ix 81-86, where Ovid invites Graecinus to ask his brother Flaccus, recently stationed in the Pontus, about conditions of life in the area. =3. IACEAMVS.= 'Lie suffering': similarly used at _EP_ I iii 49 'orbis in extremi _iaceo_ desertus harenis', I vii 5, II ix 4 & III i 85 'ut minus infesta _iaceam_ regione labora'. =4. FALSA ... QVERI.= Perhaps a common phrase: Professor R. J. Tarrant cites Sallust _Iug_ 1 '_Falso queritur_ de natura sua genus humanum'. =5-6. ACCEDET ... FIDES.= 'People will believe'. Compare Cic _Diu_ I 5 'Cratippusque ... isdem rebus _fidem tribuit_, reliqua diuinationis genera reiecit' and Tac _Germ_ 3 4 'ex ingenio quisque _demat uel addat fidem_' 'each can believe or disbelieve this according to his disposition'. =5-6. NON IRRITA ... FIDES= = _rata fides_, a phrase meaning 'trustworthiness', _rata_ having no special force. Compare _Met_ III 341 'prima _fide_ [genitive] ... _ratae_ temptamina', _Tr_ I v 49-50 'multa credibili tulimus _ratamque_, / quamuis acciderint, non habitura _fidem_', and _Tr_ III x 35-36 'cum sint praemia falsi / nulla, _ratam_ debet testis habere _fidem_'. Note the hyperbaton in all these passages. =6. ALPINIS IVVENIS REGIBVS ORTE.= See at 29 _progenies alti fortissima Donni_ (p 253). For the language, compare Hor _Carm_ I i 1 'Maecenas atauis edite regibus'. =7. IPSE VIDES CERTE GLACIE CONCRESCERE PONTVM.= At ix 85-86 Ovid tells Graecinus to ask his brother Flaccus 'mentiar, an coeat duratus frigore Pontus, / et teneat glacies iugera multa freti'. Similar language at _Tr_ III x 37-38 'uidimus ingentem glacie consistere pontum, / lubricaque [_codd_: lubrica cum _fort scribendum_] immotas testa premebat aquas'. =8. IPSE VIDES RIGIDO STANTIA VINA GELV.= The same picture more explicitly given at _Tr_ III x 23-24 'nudaque consistunt, formam seruantia testae, / uina, nec hausta meri, sed data frusta bibunt'. =9-10. IPSE VIDES ONERATA FEROX VT DVCAT IAZYX / PER MEDIAS HISTRI PLAVSTRA BVBVLCVS AQVAS.= Similar descriptions at _Tr_ III x 33-34 'perque nouos pontes, subterlabentibus undis, / _ducunt Sarmatici barbara plaustra boues_' and _Tr_ III xii 29-30 'nec mare concrescit glacie, nec ut ante per Histrum / stridula Sauromates _plaustra bubulcus_ agit'. =9. IAZYX.= The _Iazyges Sarmatae_ are mentioned by Pliny (_NH_ IV 80) and by Strabo (VII 3 17), who describes them as one of several tribes living between the Borysthenes (Dnepr) and the Danube. They are also listed by Pompey, under the name of 'Iazyges Metanastae', the Wandering Iazyges (_Geog_ III 7); the 'Iazyges' he describes as living along the shore of the Maeotis (III 5 19). Tacitus mentions the nation at _Ann_ XII 29 4 (Vannius, king of the Suebi, is under attack) 'ipsi manus propria pedites, eques e Sarmaticis Iazygibus erat' and at _Hist_ III 5 (the _principes Sarmatarum Iazygum_ are enlisted to ensure the defence of Moesia in the absence of the regular troops; their offer to raise infantry as well as supplying their usual force of cavalry is rejected because of the fear of future treachery). The name of the tribe was difficult metrically, so here Ovid calls them _Iazyges_, while at _Tr_ III xii 30 (cited in the previous note) he calls them _Sauromatae_. At _EP_ I ii 77 he solves the difficulty through hendiadys: 'quid _Sauromatae_ faciant, quid _Iazyges_ acres'. =11. ASPICIS.= Ovid here uses verbs of seeing in an interesting way. At 7 and 9 he has _uides_; then _aspicis_ suggests continuity but at the same time movement toward a new subject, and with a military detail introduced so as to introduce Vestalis' experience of war; then in 13-14 the emphasis is changed by the contrary-to-fact past optative _utinam ... spectata fuisset_. =11. ASPICIS ET MITTI SVB ADVNCO TOXICA FERRO.= 'You behold how poison is hurled on the barbed steel' (Wheeler). The _telum_ of 12 should be taken to be a spear, since _mittere_ never seems to be used of arrows. At _Ibis_ 135 the _hasta_ is mentioned as the special weapon of the Iazyges. =11. ADVNCO.= The spear had hooks. Compare _Met_ VI 252-53 'quod [_sc_ ferrum] simul eductum est, pars et pulmonis _in hamis_ / eruta cumque anima cruor est effusus in auras', where Bömer cites among other passages Curtius IX 5 23 'corpore ... nudato animaduertunt _hamos inesse telo_ nec aliter id sine pernicie corporis extrahi posse quam ut secando uulnus augerent' and Prop II xii 9 'et merito _hamatis_ manus est armata sagittis'. =13-14. ATQVE VTINAM PARS HAEC TANTUM SPECTATA FVISSET, / NON ETIAM PROPRIO COGNITA MARTE TIBI.= A similar opposition at _Met_ III 247-48 (of Actaeon) _'uelletque uidere, / non etiam sentire_ canum fera facta suorum'. =15. TENDITVR= _Owen_ TENDITIS _codd_. The number of _tenditis_ is inappropriate to the context. Owen's _tenditur_, independently conjectured two years later by Ehwald (_KB_ 84), seems a somewhat more elegant solution to the problem than Merkel's TENDISTI. It puts the weight of the line on _ad primum ... pilum_ rather than on Vestalis himself; the pentameter, with its emphasis on the _honor_, suggests that this is right. =15. PRIMVM PILVM.= Compare _Am_ III viii 27-28 'proque bono uersu _primum_ deducite _pilum_! / nox [_A. Y. Campbell_: hoc _uel_ hic _codd_] tibi, si belles [_Madvig_: uelles _codd_], possit, Homere, dari'. The _primipilaris_ was the commander of the first century of the first cohort of the Roman legion, and hence first in rank among the legion's centurions. =17. PLENIS= is the reading of all but two of the manuscripts collated. For this sense of _plenus_ ('abundant'), compare _Am_ I viii 56 '_plena_ uenit canis de grege praeda lupis', _Nux_ 91-92 'illa [the tree that is not near a road] suo quaecumque tulit dare dona colono / et _plenos_ fructus adnumerare potest', Hor _Sat_ I i 57, and Cic _Sex Rosc_ 6 'alienam pecuniam tam _plenam_ atque praeclaram'. Ehwald read PLENVS (_FacI_), joining _ingens_ with _uirtus_ in the following line, arguing that the honour would not seem a great one to a member of a royal family. But Ovid devoted four lines to describing Vestalis' new rank: he must have believed that Vestalis would consider it a very great honour indeed. As well, if _ingens_ is connected with _titulus_, _uirtus ... maior_ gains point. =17. PLENIS ... FRVCTIBVS.= For the wealth of the _primipilaris_, see _Am_ III viii 9-10 'ecce recens diues parto per uulnera censu / praefertur nobis sanguine pastus eques'. In that poem the newly-rich _primipilaris_, Ovid's rival in love, is given a character very different from that of Vestalis. =17. INGENS= is used at ix 65 of another office, the consulship. =18. IPSA TAMEN VIRTVS ORDINE MAIOR ERIT.= A similar sentiment at _EP_ II ix 11-14 (to king Cotys) 'regia, crede mihi, res est succurrere lapsis ... fortunam decet hoc istam ['this befits your position'], _quae maxima cum sit, / esse potest animo uix tamen aequa tuo_'. =19. NON NEGAT HOC HISTER.= For the device of calling to witness the scenes of military exploits compare Catullus LXIV 357 'testis erit magnis uirtutibus unda Scamandri' and the passages there cited by Fordyce. For _non negat_ Professor A. Dalzell cites Catullus IV 6-7 'negat ... negare'. =20. PVNICEAM GETICO SANGVINE FECIT AQVAM.= Similar language at ix 79-80 (of Flaccus) 'hic raptam Troesmin celeri uirtute recepit, / _infecitque fero sanguine Danuuium_'. =21. AEGISSOS.= The city, the modern Tulcea, is situated about 110 kilometres directly north of Tomis (Constanta) on the southernmost branch of the Danube, 60 kilometres from the mouth of the river. At _EP_ I viii 11-20 Ovid describes the recapture of the city from the Getes; evidently the city had been lost once again. _Aegissos_ is the spelling certified by three of the five sources cited by Mommsen (_CIL_ III page 1009), namely Hierocles _Synecdemus_ 637 14, _Notitia dignitatum_ 99, and Procopius _Aed_ IV 7 20. The _Itinerarium Antoninianum_ (226 2) offers _Aegiso_ (ablative); Ehwald (_KB_ 41), citing Mommsen, took this as sufficient justification for retaining the single _s_ of the _Ex Ponto_ manuscripts, although the now lost Strasbourg manuscript had _egissus_ at I viii 13 (and an indication of an alternative ending in _-os_). The _Ravenna Cosmography_ (4 5), Mommsen's final source, reads _Aegypsum_. =27. TE SVBEVNTE RECEPTA.= 'Recaptured on your attack'. Intransitive _subire_ in this sense belongs to military vocabulary: compare Caesar _BG_ VII 85 'alii tela coniciunt, alii testudine facta _subeunt_' and Curtius IV 2 23. For instances from military prose of _subire_ with a direct object see Caesar _BG_ II 27 '_subire_ iniquissimum locum', Hirtius _BG_ VIII 15, _Bell Alex_ 76 2 '_subierant_ iniquum locum', and _Bell Hisp_ 24 2. =22. INGENIO ... LOCI.= 'The nature (i.e. difficulty) of its terrain'. The same standard phrase at Tac _Ann_ VI 41 'locorumque ingenio', _Hist_ I 51 'diu infructuosam et asperam militiam tolerauerant _ingenio loci_ caelique ['climate']', and from Ovid _Tr_ V x 17-18 'tumulus defenditur ipse / moenibus exiguis ingenioque loci' and _EP_ II i 52 '[oppida ...] nec satis _ingenio_ tuta fuisse _loci_'. =22. NIL OPIS.= The expression is rather prosaic: compare Cic _Fam_ IV i 1 '_aliquid opis_ rei publicae tulissemus'. =23. DVBIVM= _BMFHIT_ DVBIVM EST _CL_. The same variant in many manuscripts at _EP_ III i 17-18 (Ovid is addressing Tomis) 'nec tibi sunt fontes laticis nisi paene marini, / qui potus _dubium_ sistat alatne sitim'. =24. NVBIBVS AEQVA.= 'As high as the clouds'. For this use of _aequus_ compare _Aen_ IX 674 'abietibus iuuenes patriis in [_Heyne_: et _codd_; _cf Il XII 132_ '[Greek: hestasan hôs hote te dryes ouresin hypsikarênoi]'] montibus aequos', Statius _Ach_ I 173 'aequus uertice matri', Sen _Ep_ 94 61 'aequum arcibus aggerem ... et muros in miram altitudinem eductos', and _Aen_ IV 89 '_aequataque_ machina caelo'. =25. SITHONIO= = _Thracio_. =25. INTERCEPERAT.= _Intercipere_ 'capture' common in Livy (IX 43 3, XXI 1 5, XXVI 51 12, XXXVI 31 10); compare Ammianus XX 7 17 & XX 10 3 'locis ... recuperatis quae olim barbari intercepta retinebant ut propria'. =26. EREPTAS VICTOR HABEBAT OPES.= Similar phrasing at _Fast_ III 49-51 'hoc ubi cognouit contemptor Amulius aequi / (nam _raptas_ fratri _uictor habebat opes_), / amne iubet mergi geminos'. =27. FLVMINEA ... VNDA.= _Flumineus_ does not occur elsewhere in the _Tristia_ or _Ex Ponto_; _fluminea ... aqua_ at _Fast_ II 46 & 596. =27. VITELLIVS.= This Vitellius is presumably one of the four sons of Publius Vitellius, grandfather of the emperor. Suetonius wrote of the sons, Aulus, Quintus, Publius, and Lucius, that they were 'quattuor filios amplissimae dignitatis cognomines ac tantum praenominibus distinctos' (_Vit_ 2 2). Heinsius suggested Aulus (_cos_ AD 32) was the one here meant, 'nisi ad L. Vitellium patrem [_sc_ principis] referre mauis'. 'On the general and reasonable assumption', wrote Syme (_HO_ 90), 'this is P. Vitellius'. But Suetonius calls P. Vitellius 'Germanici comes', and he is heard of in 15 assisting Germanicus in a campaign (Tac _Ann_ I 70 1): it is perhaps more likely that Publius would have been with Germanicus at the time of the capture of Aegissos, and that another of the brothers is meant. Certainty is in any case not attainable. =29. PROGENIES ALTI FORTISSIMA DONNI.= For the phrasing, compare _EP_ II ix 1-2 'Regia _progenies_, cui nobilitatis origo / nomen in Eumolpi peruenit usque ['goes back to'], Coty'. The Donnus here referred to is Vestalis' grandfather (_CIL_ V 7817), or possibly a more distant ancestor. Vestalis' father, Cottius, became a client of Augustus; at XV 10 7 Ammianus mentions the worship still accorded Cottius 'quod iusto moderamine rexerat suos, et ascitus in societatem rei Romanae quietem genti praestitit sempiternam'. At _Nero_ 18 Suetonius mentions as one of the few additions to the empire under Nero the 'regnum ... Alpium defuncto Cottio'. This Cottius would probably have been Vestalis' older brother; André is therefore right to infer that Vestalis 'n'était pas l'héritier du trône, ce qu'Ovide n'aurait pas manqué de signaler'. =30. IMPETVS.= _Impetus_ + infinitive usually indicates a mad impulse: the only other exception in Ovid is _Met_ V 287-88 (one of the Muses speaking) '_impetus ire fuit_; claudit sua tecta Pyreneus / uimque parat, quam nos sumptis effugimus alis'. =31. CONSPICVVS LONGE FVLGENTIBVS ARMIS.= Modelled on _Aen_ XI 769 '_insignis longe_ Phrygiis _fulgebat_ in _armis_'. =32. FORTIA NE POSSINT FACTA LATERE CAVES.= Vestalis would in any case have fought bravely; so that his deeds would not pass unnoticed, he led the attack. =33. INGENTIQVE GRADV.= When Ovid elsewhere use _ingens gradus_ (_passus_) he gives the phrase a humorous tone: see _Am_ III i 11 'uenit et _ingenti_ uiolenta Tragoedia _passu_', _AA_ III 303-4 'illa uelut coniunx Vmbri rubicunda mariti / ambulat _ingentes_ uarica fertque _gradus'_, and _Met_ XIII 776-77 (of Polyphemus) 'gradiens _ingenti_ litora _passu_ / degrauat'. The straightforwardness of this passage is of a piece with the rest of the poem. For an example of the normal epic use of this detail, see _Aen_ X 572 'longe gradientem'. =33. FERRVM LOCVMQVE= reflects 23 'dubium _positu_ melius defensa _manune_'. =34. SAXAQVE ... GRANDINE PLVRA.= The same phrase in the same metrical position at _Ibis_ 467-68 'aut te deuoueat certis Abdera diebus, / _saxaque_ deuotum _grandine plura_ petant'. =35. MISSA SVPER IACVLORVM TVRBA.= 'The crowding missiles hurled from above' (Wheeler). =38. FERE.= Heinsius' FERO would involve the repetition of _fero_ in 44; and _fero uulnere_ would be rather feeble when applied to a shield. Professor R. J. Tarrant points out to me that Ovid's description of Vestalis' exploit may have served as a distant model for Lucan's account of how a centurion named Scaeua rallied Caesar's forces and led an attack against Pompey's encampment (VI 140-262). Scaeua was made _primipilaris_ in reward for his bravery (Caesar _BC_ III 53 5). =40. SED MINOR EST ACRI LAVDIS AMORE DOLOR.= Similar language of a similar exploit at _Met_ XI 525-28 'ut miles, numero praestantior omni, / cum saepe adsiluit defensae moenibus urbis, / spe potitur tandem _laudisque accensus amore_ / inter mille uiros murum tamen occupat unus'. Ovid's description of Vestalis' exploit is little more than a string of conventional phrases. =40. ACRI.= 'Sharp'. Compare ii 36 'immensum gloria _calcar_ habet'. =41-42. TALIS APVD TROIAM DANAIS PRO NAVIBVS AIAX / DICITVR HECTOREAS SVSTINVISSE FACES.= Compare _Met_ XIII 7-8 (Ajax speaking of Ulysses) 'at non Hectoreis dubitauit cedere flammis, / quas ego sustinui, quas hac a classe fugaui' and _Met_ XIII 384-85 (the death of Ajax) 'Hectora qui solus, qui ferrum ignesque Iouemque / sustinuit totiens, unam non sustinet iram'. All three passages are drawn from _Il_ XV 674-746, the description of how Ajax repulsed Hector's attempt to set the Greek ships afire, and in particular from 730-31 '[Greek: enth ar' ho g' hestêkei dedokêmenos, encheï d' aiei / Trôas amyne neôn, hos tis pheroi akamaton pyr]'. =41. PRO NAVIBVS.= 'In front of the ships'; a reminiscence of _Il_ XV 746 (the final line of the book) '[Greek: dôdeka de proparoithe neôn autoschedon outa]'. =43. DEXTERA DEXTRAE.= Ovid used syncope in _dextera_ where metrically convenient. Elsewhere when he employs the two forms he is usually describing the joining of hands in pledge or friendship. See _Her_ II 31 'commissaque _dextera dextrae_', _Her_ XII 90 '_dextrae dextera_ iuncta meae', and _Met_ VI 447-48 '_dextera dextrae_ / iungitur'. For a different use, see _Met_ III 640-41 '_dextera_ [_uar_ dextra] Naxos erat: _dextra_ mihi lintea danti / "quid facis, o demens? quis te furor," inquit "Acoete?"'. =45-46. DICERE DIFFICILE EST QVID MARS TVVS EGERIT ILLIC, / QVOTQVE NECI DEDERIS QVOSQVE QVIBVSQVE MODIS.= As Professor E. Fantham points out to me, this _praeteritio_ takes the place of a full _aristeia_ detailing Vestalis' exploits. =46. QVOSQVE QVIBVSQVE MODIS.= Compare _quotque quibusque modis_ in an erotic context at _Am_ II viii 28, and _Tr_ III xii 33-34 'sedulus occurram nautae, dictaque salute, / quid ueniat quaeram _quisue quibusue locis_'. =47. ENSE TVO FACTOS CALCABAS VICTOR ACERVOS.= Compare _Met_ V 88 (of Perseus) 'extructos morientum _calcat aceruos_'. =50. MVLTAQVE FERT MILES VVLNERA, MVLTA FACIT.= A similar conjunction of verbs at _Fast_ II 233-34 'non moriuntur inulti, / _uulneraque_ alterna _dantque feruntque_ manu'. =52. IBAT.= IBIT (_BP_) is printed by all modern editors except André, and is possibly correct: compare _Am_ II iv 31-32 'ut taceam de me, qui causa tangor ab omni, / illic Hippolytum pone, Priapus _erit_' for the future tense used of a mythological character, and _EP_ II xi 21-22 'acer et ad palmae per se cursurus honores, / si tamen horteris, fortius _ibit_ [_uar_ ibat] equus' for the corruption of future to imperfect. =53. TEMPVS IN OMNE.= Similar promises of immortality at _Tr_ I vi 36 (to his wife) 'carminibus uiues _tempus in omne_ meis', _EP_ II vi 33-34 (to Graecinus) 'crede mihi, nostrum si non mortale futurum est / carmen, in ore frequens posteritatis eris', and _EP_ III i 93 (to his wife) 'nota tua est probitas testataque _tempus in omne_'. Vestalis is known to us only through this poem. VIII. To Suillius This poem, nominally addressed to Suillius, husband of Ovid's stepdaughter, is in fact directed to Germanicus, of whose staff Suillius was a member (see at 23 [pp 264-65]). Ovid begins the poem by expressing his pleasure at receiving, at last, a letter from Suillius, saying he hopes that Suillius does not feel ashamed of being related to him by marriage (1-20). He then asks him to address Germanicus on his behalf (21-26). In 27-30 he says how grateful he will be if Germanicus assists him; at 31 he begins to address Germanicus directly in a tripartite defence of poetry. The first part (31-42) builds on 34 'Naso suis opibus, _carmine_, gratus erit': Ovid is now poor, but can still offer Germanicus his poetry. The second section (43-66) builds on 43-44 'nec tamen officio uatum per _carmina_ facto / principibus res est aptior ulla uiris', and explains how verse brings immortality to great men and their deeds. The third section (67-78) offers culminating evidence for the value of poetry: Germanicus is himself a poet. Ovid moves from this to a final plea that Germanicus help his fellow-poet: once removed from Tomis, he will praise him in verse (79-88). In the final distich of the poem, he asks Suillius to assist his prayer. The structure of the poem is similar to that of _Tr_ V ii. In that poem Ovid addresses his wife for the first thirty-eight lines, telling her of his misery and asking her to approach Augustus on his behalf. In the six lines that follow, he asks himself what he will do if she fails him; he answers that he will make his own direct approach to Augustus. The final thirty-four lines are his prayer to Augustus, in which he describes the hardships he endures at Tomis and begs for a mitigation of his punishment. It is remarkable that in both poems direct addresses to members of the imperial family should be disguised in this way: it seems probable that _Tr_ II, Ovid's long defence of his conduct, had been received by Augustus with hostility, and that he was thenceforth more circumspect. =1-2. SERA QVIDEM ... GRATA TAMEN.= _Tamen_ goes with _grata_, balancing _quidem_. For instances of the separate _serus tamen_ idiom ('it is late in happening, but it does in fact happen') see Nisbet and Hubbard at Hor _Carm_ I xv 19. =1. SERA QVIDEM.= It seems that in spite of his being a close relative of Ovid, Suillius, like Sextus Pompeius (see the introduction to i), had been reluctant to be openly associated with him. =1. STVDIIS EXCVLTE.= 'Refined'. _Studiis_ adds little to the force of _exculte_: the same idiom at Quintilian XII ii 1 'mores ante omnia oratori _studiis_ erunt _excolendi_' and Cic _Tusc_ I 4 'ergo in Graecia musici floruerunt, discebantque id omnes, nec qui nesciebat satis _excultus doctrina_ putabatur'. =1. SVILLI.= P. Suillius Rufus (_PW_ IV A,l 719-22; _PIR1_ S 700) is otherwise chiefly known to us from three passages of Tacitus: Suillius is presented as 'strong, savage, and unbridled' (Syme _Tacitus_ 332). At _Ann_ IV 31, Tacitus describes how, in 24, Tiberius insisted that Suillius, convicted of accepting a bribe, be relegated to an island rather than merely be exiled from Italy; what seemed cruelty at the time later seemed wisdom in view of his later behaviour as a favourite of Claudius. At _Ann_ XI 1-7 Tacitus describes how Suillius' excesses resulted in a proposal in the Senate to revive the _lex Cincia_ of 204 BC, by which advocates had been forbidden remuneration: the proposal was modified by Claudius at the instance of Suillius and others affected so as to establish a maximum fee of ten thousand sesterces. At _Ann_ XIII 42-43 (AD 58) Tacitus tells how Suillius, 'imperitante Claudio terribilis ac uenalis', was charged with extortion as proconsul of Asia and with laying malicious charges under Claudius. Banished to the Balearic islands, he led a luxurious existence, remaining unrepentant. =3-4. PIA SI POSSIT SVPEROS LENIRE ROGANDO / GRATIA.= Compare 21 'si quid agi sperabis posse _precando_'. =5-6. ANIMI SVM FACTVS AMICI / DEBITOR.= 'Your friendly purpose has placed me in your debt' (Wheeler). The genitive similarly used for the cause of indebtedness at i 2 _'debitor_ est _uitae_ qui tibi, Sexte, suae' and _Tr_ I v 10 'perpetuusque _animae debitor huius_ ero'. =6. MERITVM VELLE IVVARE VOCO.= 'I call the desire to help a favour already given'. Otto _uelle_ 2 cites _EP_ III iv 79 'ut desint uires, _tamen est laudanda uoluntas_', Prop II x 5-6 'quod si deficient uires, audacia certe / laus erit: in magnis _et uoluisse sat est_', _Pan Mess_ 3-7, _Laus Pisonis_ 214; the same proverb at Sen _Ben_ V 2 2 'uoluntas ipsa rectum petens laudanda est'. =7. IMPETVS ISTE TVVS LONGVM MODO DVRET IN AEVVM.= Similar phrasing at _EP_ II vi 35-36 (Graecinus has been rendering Ovid assistance) 'fac modo permaneas lasso, Graecine, fidelis, / _duret et in longas impetus iste moras_'. =9. IVS ALIQVOD.= 'A certain claim on each other'. The same phrase for a similar situation at _EP_ I vii 60 (to Messalinus, elder brother of Cotta Maximus) '_ius aliquod_ tecum fratris amicus habet'. =9. ADFINIA.= The _adfinis_ was a relative by marriage, commonly, as here, a son-in-law; a relative by common descent was a _cognatus_. =9. ADFINIA VINCVLA.= _Vinculum_ used of family relationships at _Met_ IX 550 (Byblis wishes to marry her brother) 'expetit ... _uinclo_ tecum propiore ligari' and Cic _Planc_ 27 'cum illo maximis _uinclis_ et propinquitatis et _adfinitatis_ coniunctus'. =10. INLABEFACTA.= The word elsewhere in Latin only at xii 29-30 'haec ... concordia ... uenit ad albentes _inlabefacta_ comas'. Ovid is fond of using negative participles of this type. =11-12. NAM TIBI QVAE CONIVNX, EADEM MIHI FILIA PAENE EST, / ET QVAE TE GENERVM, ME VOCAT ILLA VIRVM.= The same type of circumlocution at _Her_ III 45-48 (Briseis to Achilles) "diruta Marte tuo Lyrnesia moenia uidi; ... uidi ... tres cecidisse _quibus_ [_Bentley_: tribus _codd_] _quae mihi, mater erat_'. =11. EADEM MIHI FILIA PAENE EST.= This is presumably Perilla, the recipient of _Tr_ III vii, whom Ovid there speaks of in terms appropriate to a stepfather. =13-14. EI MIHI, SI LECTIS VVLTVM TV VERSIBVS ISTIS / DVCIS, ET ADFINEM TE PVDET ESSE MEVM.= A similar lament at _EP_ II ii 5-6 '_ei mihi, si lecto uultus_ tibi nomine non est / qui fuit, et dubitas cetera perlegere!'; both passages are followed by defences of Ovid's character. For _uultum ... ducis_ see at i 5 _trahis uultus_ (p 149). =15. NIHIL= _BCMFHLT_ NIL _I_. Copyists were more prone to alter _nil_ to _nihil_ than the inverse; but in 1919 Housman demonstrated that _nihil_ was Ovid's invariable form for the latter half of the first foot by pointing out that in all of the twenty-odd passages where the manuscripts offer _nihil_ or _nil_ at that position the following word invariably begins with a vowel (_Collected Papers_ 1000-1003). There would be no reason for such an avoidance of consonants if Ovid had allowed _nil_ in this position; he must therefore have used _nihil_ alone. =16. FORTVNAM, QVAE MIHI CAECA FVIT.= The image of Fortune being blind to a single individual seems very strange. Professor R. J. Tarrant suggests that _caeca_ could mean 'unforeseeing', and by _fortunam_ Ovid could be referring to his own previous circumstances; alternatively, _caeca_ might be a corruption induced by the familiar image of the blind goddess, replacing an original SAEVA (Riese) or LAEVA, for which compare Silius III 93-94 'si promissum uertat _Fortuna_ fauorem, / _laeuaque sit coeptis_'. =17-18. SEV GENVS EXCVTIAS, EQVITES AB ORIGINE PRIMA / VSQVE PER INNVMEROS INVENIEMVR AVOS.= A similar claim at _Tr_ IV x 7-8 'usque a proauis uetus ordinis heres, / non modo fortunae munere factus eques'. The status of _eques_ was not hereditary except in the case of a senator's son. The Paeligni did not receive the citizenship until after the Social War; to be born to equestrian status, and to assume that he could have had a senatorial career (_Tr_ IV x 35), Ovid must have belonged to one of the dominant families of the region. =17. EXCVTIAS.= 'Examine'. Ovid plays on the primary meaning of the word, 'shake out', at _Am_ I viii 45-46 'has quoque quae frontis rugas in uertice portant [_Burman_: quas ... portas _codd_] / _excute_; de rugis crimina multa cadent'. The transferred meaning had lost any sense of metaphor by Ovid's time, however; see especially _Tr_ II 224 '_excutiasque_ oculis otia nostra ['the product of my leisure hours'--Wheeler] tuis'. =19-20. SIVE VELIS QVI SINT MORES INQVIRERE NOSTRI, / ERROREM MISERO DETRAHE, LABE CARENT.= A similar claim of no fault beyond his _error_ at _EP_ II ii 15-16 'est mea culpa grauis, sed quae me perdere solum / ausa sit, et _nullum maius adorta nefas_'. =20. ERROREM ... DETRAHE.= At _Met_ II 38-39 the same phrase with a different meaning: (Phaethon to his father) 'pignora da, genitor, per quae tu uera propago / credar, et hunc animis _errorem_ ['doubt'] _detrahe_ nostris*. =20. LABE CARENT.= The same sense of _labes_ at _Tr_ I ix 43 'uitae _labe carentis_' and Prop IV xi 41-42 'neque ulla _labe_ mea nostros erubuisse focos'; compare as well the phrase _sine labe_ at _Tr_ II 110 (_domus_), _Tr_ IV viii 33 (_decem lustris ... peractis_), _EP_ I ii 143 (_praeteriti anni_), _EP_ II vii 49 (_uita prior_), _Her_ XVII 14 (_tenor uitae_), and _Her_ XVII 69 (_fama_). =22. QVOS COLIS ... DEOS.= A similar definition of the imperial family at _EP_ II ii 123 '_quos colis ad superos_ haec fer mandata sacerdos'. =23. DI TIBI SVNT CAESAR IVVENIS.= _BCFM2ul_ read SINT; but the indicative seems to be required by the preceding 'quos _colis_ ... deos' and the following '_tua numina_ placa' and 'hac certe nulla est notior _ara_ tibi'. =23. CAESAR IVVENIS.= Germanicus; he would have acquired the cognomen _Caesar_ on his adoption by Tiberius in AD 4. _Iuuenis_ probably refers to Germanicus' title of _princeps iuuentutis_, which _EP_ II v 41-42 indicates he must have held: 'te _iuuenum princeps_, cui dat Germania nomen, / participem studii Caesar habere solet'. Germanicus' holding of the title is not elsewhere attested. At _Ann_ IV 31 5, Tacitus identifies Suillius as 'quaestorem quondam Germanici'; at _Ann_ XIII 42 4, he represents Suillius as saying of himself and Seneca 'se quaestorem Germanici, illum domus eius adulterum fuisse'. His service under Germanicus was clearly a principal fact of his life. =25-26. ANTISTITIS ... PRECES.= Here _antistes_ is virtually equivalent to _cultor_, as at _Tr_ III xiv 1 '_Cultor et antistes_ doctorum sancte uirorum'; compare as well _Met_ XIII 632-33 'Anius, quo ... _antistite_ Phoebus / rite _colebatur_'. =27-28. QVAMLIBET EXIGVA SI NOS EA IVVERIT AVRA, / OBRVTA DE MEDIIS CVMBA RESVRGET AQVIS.= Ovid here mixes two nautical metaphors: if a ship is overwhelmed by high seas, a favouring breeze will not be of great assistance. =28. OBRVTA DE MEDIIS CVMBA RESVRGET AQVIS.= Similar wording at [Sen] _Oct_ 345-48 '[cumba ...] _obruta_ ... ruit in pelagus rursumque salo / pressa _resurgit_'. =29. TVNC EGO TVRA FERAM RAPIDIS SOLLEMNIA FLAMMIS.= Perhaps a verbal reminiscence of _Aen_ IX 625-26 'Iuppiter omnipotens, audacibus adnue coeptis. / ipse tibi ad tua templa _feram sollemnia_ dona'. =29. TVRA ... SOLLEMNIA.= The phrase does not occur elsewhere in Ovid; but compare the passage from _Aen_ IX quoted above, as well as the conjunction of words at _Tr_ III xiii 16 'micaque _sollemni turis_ in igne sonet'. =29. RAPIDIS= is here used as a standard epithet; its full force ('destructive') at _Met_ II 122-23 'tum pater ora sui sacro medicamine nati / contigit et _rapidae_ fecit patientia _flammae_', _Met_ XII 274-75 'correpti _rapida_, ueluti seges arida, _flamma_ / arserunt crines', and _EP_ III iii 60 (to Amor) 'sic numquam _rapido_ lampades _igne_ uacent'. =31-32. NEC TIBI DE PARIO STATVAM, GERMANICE, TEMPLVM / MARMORE.= Professor R. J. Tarrant points out to me the reference to Virgil _G_ III 13-16 'et uiridi in campo _templum de marmore_ ponam ... in medio mihi Caesar erit templumque tenebit'; _Parii lapides_ are mentioned at III 34. Here Ovid makes the temple literal, and conducts his _recusatio_ in the terms used by love-poets. =32. CARPSIT OPES ... MEAS.= 'Has destroyed my wealth'. This is not strictly true, since Ovid at v 38 says that Pompeius give him gifts (Ovid's letter speaking) 'ne proprias attenuaret opes'. The same use of _carpere_ at ix 121-22 'fortuna est impar animo, talique libenter / exiguas _carpo_ munere pauper opes' and _Am_ I viii 91 'et soror et mater, nutrix quoque _carpat_ amantem'. =34. NASO SVIS OPIBVS, CARMINE, GRATVS ERIT.= Compare _Am_ II xvii 27 'sunt mihi pro magno felicia carmina censu' and _Am_ I iii entire. =37. QVAM POTVIT ... MAXIMA.= For the idiom compare Cic _Fam_ XIII vi 5 '_quam maximas_ ... gratias agat' and _ND_ II 129 'gallinae ['hens'] ... cubilia sibi nidosque construunt eosque _quam possunt mollissime_ substernunt'. =37. GRATVS ABVNDE EST.= Apparently the only instance in classical poetry of _abunde_ modifying an adjective. The prose authors cited by the lexica are Sallust, Livy, Valerius Maximus, Curtius, the elder Pliny, and Quintilian. _Abunde_ elsewhere in Ovid only at _Met_ XV 759 'humano generi, superi, fauistis abunde!' and _Tr_ I vii 31 'laudatus abunde'. =38. FINEM PIETAS CONTIGIT ILLA SVVM.= 'That act of piety has reached its objective', that is, has made the giver _gratus_. =39-42.= For the sentiment compare _EP_ III iv 81-82 'haec [_sc_ laudanda uoluntas] facit ut ueniat pauper quoque gratus ad aras, / et placeat caeso non minus agna boue'. =41-42. GRAMINE PASTA FALISCO / VICTIMA TARPEIOS INFICIT ICTA FOCOS.= Compare iv 29-32 'templaque Tarpeiae primum tibi sedis adiri ... colla boues niueos certae praebere securi, / quos aluit campis _herba Falisca_ suis'. =42. INFICIT.= 'Stain'. _Inficere_ in the context of a sacrifice also at _Met_ XV 134-35 '[uictima ...] percussa ... sanguine cultros / inficit' and Hor _Carm_ III xiii 6. =44. PRINCIPIBVS ... VIRIS.= A fixed colloquial idiom: _OLD princeps1_ 5 cites Plautus _Amphitruo_ 204 'delegit _uiros_ primorum _principes_' and Hor _Ep_ I xvii 35 '_principibus_ placuisse _uiris_ non ultima laus est'. There was a parallel expression _principes feminae_: see Pliny _NH_ VIII 119 and Tac _Ann_ XIII 42 (Suillius compares himself to Seneca) 'an grauius aestimandum sponte litigatoris praemium honestae operae adsequi quam corrumpere cubicula principum feminarum?'. =45. CARMINA VESTRARVM PERAGVNT PRAECONIA LAVDVM.= _Praeconia_ in a similar context at _Tr_ II 65 'inuenies uestri _praeconia_ nominis illic [in the _Metamorphoses_]'; used with _peragere_ at _Tr_ V i 9 'ut cecidi, subiti _perago praeconia_ casus'. =45. LAVDVM.= 'Deeds meriting praise'; compare 87 'tuas ... laudes ... recentes'. The meaning is found even in prose: see Caesar _BC_ II 39 4 'haec tamen ab ipsis inflatius commemorabantur, ut de suis homines _laudibus_ libenter praedicant' and the other passages cited at _OLD_ _laus1_ 3b. =46. ACTORVM.= AVCTORVM (_BCHL_) is possible enough; but _actorum_ accords better with the preceding _laudum_. =46. CADVCA.= 'Impermanent'. The sense is frequent in Cicero: see _Rep_ VI 17 'nihil est nisi mortale et _caducum_ praeter animos' and _Phil_ IV 13. Elsewhere in Ovid the usual sense of the word is 'ineffectual': see _Fast_ I 181-82 'nec lingua _caducas_ / concipit ulla preces, dictaque pondus habent' and _Ibis_ 88 'et sit pars uoti nulla caduca mei'. Similar uses at _Her_ XV 208 & XVI 169. =47. CARMINE FIT VIVAX VIRTVS, EXPERSQVE SEPULCRI / NOTITIAM SERAE POSTERITATIS HABET.= For the immortality given by verse, compare from Ovid _Tr_ V xiv 5 (to his wife) 'dumque legar, mecum pariter tua fama legetur' and _EP_ III ii 35-36 (to those friends who assisted him) 'uos etiam seri laudabunt saepe nepotes, / claraque erit scriptis gloria uestra meis'. The topic is closely related to that of the poet's own immortality, for which, in Ovid, see xvi 2-3 'non solet ingeniis summa nocere dies, / famaque post cineres maior uenit' and _Met_ XV 871-79. For other poets' treatment of the immortality given by verse, see Prop III ii 17-26, Hor _Carm_ IV ix, Pindar _Nem_ VII 11-16, Gow on Theocritus XVI 30, and Murgatroyd on Tib I iv 63-66. =47. VIVAX VIRTVS.= Compare Hor _AP_ 68-69 'mortalia facta peribunt, / nedum sermonum stet honos et gratia _uiuax_'. =47. EXPERSQVE SEPVLCRI.= The diction of this line is very elevated: Professor R. J. Tarrant compares _Met_ IX 252-53 (Jupiter speaking of Hercules) 'aeternum est a me quod traxit, et _expers_ / atque immune _necis_' and _Cons Liu_ 59-60 'Caesaris adde domum, quae certe _funeris expers_ / debuit humanis altior esse malis'. The following line's _notitiam ... habet_ is in comparison an anticlimax. =49. TABIDA CONSVMIT FERRVM LAPIDEMQVE VETVSTAS.= Iron and flint were proverbial for hardness: compare x 3-4 'ecquos tu silices, ecquod, carissime, ferrum / duritiae confers, Albinouane, meae?', _Her_ X 109-10, _AA_ I 473-76, _Met_ XIV 712-13, _Fast_ V 131-32, _Tr_ IV vi 13-14, and _EP_ II vii 39-40; other passages are cited by Smith at Tib I iv 18 'longa dies molli saxa peredit aqua'. At I 313-16, Lucretius, discussing the invisible wearing away of substances, says 'stilicidi casus _lapidem_ cauat, uncus aratri / _ferreus_ occulte decrescit uomer in aruis, / strataque iam uolgi pedibus detrita uiarum / saxea conspicimus'. =51. SCRIPTA FERVNT ANNOS.= The phrase completes the sentence begun in the previous distich, as is shown by the parallel passages _Am_ I x 61-62 'scindentur uestes, gemmae frangentur et aurum; / _carmina quam tribuent, fama perennis erit_' and _Am_ I xv 31-32 'ergo cum silices, cum dens patientis aratri / depereant aeuo, _carmina morte carent_'. =51. FERVNT.= 'Withstand'; the same sense at _Tr_ V ix 8 'scripta _uetustatem_ si modo nostra _ferunt_', Cic _Am_ 67 'ea uina quae _uetustatem ferunt_', Silius IV 399-400 'si modo _ferre diem_ ... carmina nostra ualent', and Quintilian II 4 9 'sic et _annos ferent_ et uetustate proficient'. =51-53. AGAMEMNONA ... THEBAS.= The two great cycles of Greek heroic mythology. The same conjunction at _Am_ III xii 15-16 'cum _Thebae_, cum _Troia_ foret, cum Caesaris acta, / ingenium mouit sola Corinna meum' and _Tr_ II 317-20 'cur non Argolicis potius quae concidit armis / uexata est iterum carmine _Troia_ meo? / cur tacui _Thebas_ et uulnera mutua fratrum / et septem portas sub duce quamque suo'; compare as well Prop II i 21 '[canerem ...] nec ueteres _Thebas_ nec _Pergama_, nomen Homeri'. Lucretius, arguing that the world was created at a definite moment, wrote 'cur supera ['before'] bellum _Thebanum_ et funera _Troiae_ / non alias alii quoque res cecinere poetae?' (V 326-27). =52. QVISQVIS CONTRA VEL SIMVL ARMA TVLIT.= The leaders of the Greeks and Trojans. The line's structure parallels 54 'quicquid post haec, quicquid et ante fuit'. Both are conspicuous by their lack of adornment. =55. DI QVOQVE CARMINIBVS, SI FAS EST DICERE, FIVNT.= This is possibly a reference to Herodotus II 53, where Herodotus says that Homer and Hesiod established the Greek pantheon; for Ovid's borrowings from Herodotus, see at iii 37 _opulentia Croesi_ (p 189). The same idea previously in Xenophanes (fr. 11 Diels). The line looks ahead to 63-64 'et modo, Caesar, auum, quem uirtus addidit astris, / sacrarunt aliqua carmina parte tuum'. =55. SI FAS EST DICERE.= Ovid here apologizes for the shocking statement he is making. Up to this point poetry has helped give lasting fame to what was already a fact, but here poetry is actually making something happen (or appear to happen). At _Am_ III xii 21-40 Ovid similarly describes how poets created the myths. =57-64.= Ovid follows the same sequence in the _Metamorphoses_, describing the separation of Chaos at I 5-31, the attack of the Giants at I 151-55, Bacchus' conquest of India at IV 20-21 & 605-6, and Hercules' capture of Oechalia at IX 136; he foretells Augustus' apotheosis at XV 868-70. Professor R. J. Tarrant points out that these lines may well be referring specifically to the earlier poem. =57-58. SIC CHAOS EX ILLA NATVRAE MOLE PRIORIS / DIGESTVM PARTES SCIMVS HABERE SVAS.= 'Thus we know Chaos now has its divisions after having been arranged in order from the famous mass that was its previous nature'. Ovid describes the separation of the elements at _Met_ I 25-31 and _Fast_ I 103-10; see also _Ecl_ VI 31-36. I take _illa_ ('famous') to refer to the familiarity through the poets and philosophers of the notion of the separation of Chaos into the four elements. Alternatively, Professor A. Dalzell points out to me that _illa_ could have a pejorative sense. =58. DIGESTVM.= 'Separated'. At _Met_ I 7 Ovid calls Chaos 'rudis _indigestaque_ moles'. =59. ADFECTANTES CAELESTIA REGNA GIGANTAS.= At _Am_ III xii 27 Ovid, speaking of false legends created by the poets, says 'fecimus Enceladon iaculantem mille lacertis'. In his youth, Ovid had attempted but later abandoned a poem on the battle of the Giants against Jupiter 'designed to glorify Augustus under the guise of Jupiter' (Owen _Tristia II_ p. 77): the language he uses at _Tr_ II 333-40 seems too explicit to be a mere instance of the love-poet's defence of his subject-matter: 'at si me iubeas domitos Iouis igne Gigantas [_Heinsius_: Gigantes _codd_] / dicere, conantem debilitabit onus. / diuitis ingenii est immania Caesaris acta / condere, materia ne superetur opus. / _et tamen ausus eram_; sed detrectare uidebar, / quodque nefas, damno uiribus esse tuis.[20] / ad leue rursus opus, iuuenalia carmina, ueni, / et falso moui pectus amore meum'. He refers to the same poem again at _Am_ II i 11-18 'ausus eram, memini, _caelestia_ dicere bella / centimanumque Gyen--et satis oris erat-- / cum male se Tellus ulta est, ingestaque Olympo / ardua deuexum Pelion Ossa tulit. / in manibus nimbos et cum Ioue fulmen habebam, / quod bene pro caelo mitteret ille suo-- / clausit amica fores! ego cum Ioue fulmen omisi; / excidit ingenio Iuppiter ipse meo'. [Footnote 20: Compare Suet _Aug_ 89 3 'componi tamen aliquid de se nisi et serio et a praestantissimis offendebatur, admonebatque praetores ne paterentur nomen suum commissionibus obsolefieri ['be cheapened in prize declamations'--Rolfe]'.] The actual descriptions of the Giants' rebellion in Ovid's surviving poems are brief (_Met_ I 151-62 & 182-86, _Fast_ V 35-42), but references to the rebellion are frequent (_Met_ X 150-51, _Fast_ I 307-8, _Fast_ IV 593-94, _Fast_ V 555, _Tr_ II 71, _Tr_ IV vii 17, _EP_ II ii 9-12). The accounts at _Met_ V 319-31 of the flight of some of the gods to Egypt and at _Fast_ II 459-74 of Venus' flight to the Euphrates are no doubt derived from Ovid's earlier researches. =59. ADFECTANTES.= 'Unlawfully seeking to obtain'; compare _Met_ I 151-52 'neue foret terris securior arduus aether, / _adfectasse_ ferunt _regnum caeleste Gigantas_' and _Fast_ III 439 'ausos _caelum adfectare Gigantas_'. This sense is found in prose: compare Livy I 50 4 'cui enim non apparere _adfectare_ eum imperium in Latinos?'. At Livy I 46 2 the word is used without the conative sense: 'neque ea res Tarquinio spem _adfectandi_ regni minuit'. =59. GIGANTAS= _Heinsius_. The manuscripts have GIGANTES, which Lenz, Wheeler, and André print. In classical Latin poetry, Greek nouns of the third declension with plural nominatives in _[Greek:-es]_ and plural accusatives in _[Greek:-as]_ retained these endings. Housman 836-39 gives many instances where metre demonstrates an accusative in _[Greek:-as]_. In Ovid when such an ending occurs, some manuscripts commonly offer the normalized _-es_; at _Tr_ II 333, as here, all manuscripts offer _Gigantes_, again corrected by Heinsius. Such apparent violations of the rule as _Fast_ I 717 'horreat AeneadAs et primus et ultimus orbis', _Fast_ III 105-6 'quis tunc aut HyadAs aut Pliadas Atlanteas / senserat' and Virgil _G_ I 137-38 'nauita tum stellis numeros et nomina fecit, / PleiadAs, HyadAs, claramque Lycaonis Arcton' are of course no real exceptions, the lengthening of short closed vowels at the ictus being permitted (Platnauer 59-62). =60. AD STYGA NIMBIFERI VINDICIS IGNE DATOS.= 'Hurled to the underworld by the lightning-bolt of cloud-gathering Jupiter'. This was Jupiter's first use of the weapon: see _Fast_ III 439-40 'fulmina post ausos caelum adfectare Gigantas / sumpta Ioui: _primo tempore inermis erat_'. =60. NIMBIFERI VINDICIS IGNE= is my correction of the manuscripts' NIMBIFERO and NVBIFERO. The unmodified _uindicis_ and modified _igne_ of the manuscript readings might be defended by _EP_ II ix 77 'quicquid id est [whatever Ovid has committed], habuit moderatam uindicis iram', but _uindicis_ is there defined by the following 'qui nisi natalem nil mihi dempsit humum', and _moderatam_ is a more suitable epithet for _iram_ than is _nimbifero_ for _igne_ in the present passage., At _Tr_ II 143-44 'uidi ego pampineis oneratam uitibus ulmum, / quae fuerat _saeuo fulmine_ tacta Iouis', the manuscripts divide between _saeuo_ and _saeui_, which has a good claim to be considered the true reading; in any case, _Iouis_ is less in need of a defining adjective than _uindicis_ in the present passage. Finally, the genitive here is strongly supported by _Ibis_ 475-76 'ut Macedo rapidis icta est cum coniuge flammis, / sic precor _aetherii uindicis_ igne cadas'. The corruption may have been induced by a wish to introduce interlocking word order: for a similar instance see at ii 9 _Baccho uina Falerna_ (p 164). But in fact substantive and epithet are constantly found linked at the caesura of the pentameter: the strong break in the metre at that point no doubt made the construction more readily acceptable there than in other positions. I have printed _nimbiferi_ in preference to _nubiferi_ because Jupiter is linked with _nimbi_ at two other passages. The first of these is _Am_ II i 15-16 'in manibus _nimbos et cum Ioue fulmen_ habebam, / quod bene pro caelo mitteret ille suo', and the second _Met_ III 299-301, where Ovid describes Jupiter's preparations to descend on Semele: 'aethera conscendit uultuque sequentia traxit / nubila, quis _nimbos_ immixtaque fulgura uentis / addidit et tonitrus et ineuitabile fulmen'. =61-62. SIC VICTOR LAVDEM SVPERATIS LIBER AB INDIS ... TRAXIT.= Bacchus' conquest of India is also mentioned by Ovid at _Fast_ III 465-66 'interea Liber depexos crinibus Indos / uicit et Eoo diues ab orbe redit', _Fast_ III 719-20, and _Tr_ V iii 23-24. =61-62. VICTOR= should be taken both with _Liber_ and _Alcides_. =61-62. LIBER ... ALCIDES.= The same pairing (both times in the context of Augustan panegyric) at _Aen_ VI 801-5 'nec uero _Alcides_ tantum telluris obiuit, / fixerit aeripedem ceruam licet, aut Erymanthi / pacarit nemora et Lernam tremefecerit arcu; / nec qui pampineis uictor iuga flectit habenis / _Liber_, agens celso Nysae de uertice tigris' and Hor _Carm_ III iii 9-15. Ovid may have made similar mention of Bacchus and Hercules in his panegyric of Augustus. =61-62. SIC ... LAVDEM ... ALCIDES CAPTA TRAXIT AB OECHALIA.= Hercules attacked and captured Oechalia in order to carry off Iole, the king's daughter. This was his last exploit, for it led to Deianira's sending him the poisoned robe which caused his death. The capture of Oechalia is also mentioned at _Her_ IX _passim_ (the poem perhaps not by Ovid) and _Met_ IX 136-40. =62. OECHALIA.= For the quadrisyllable ending to the pentameter, see at ii 10 _Alcinoo_ (p 164). =63. AVVM.= Augustus. In AD 4 Augustus adopted Tiberius (son of Livia's first husband, Ti. Claudius Nero), and Tiberius adopted Germanicus, son of his brother Drusus. =63. QVEM VIRTVS ADDIDIT ASTRIS.= Compare _Aen_ VIII 301 (of Hercules) 'salue, uera Iouis proles, decus _addite diuis_'. Augustus died on 19 August AD 14; on 17 September the Senate decreed _caelestes religiones_ for him (Tac _Ann_ I 10 8; _Fasti Amiternini, Antiates, & Oppiani_, at Ehrenberg-Jones 52). Augustus' apotheosis is also mentioned at ix 127-32 and xiii 23-26. =64. ALIQVA ... PARTE.= The same phrase in the same metrical position at _Fast_ I 133-34 (Janus speaking) 'uis mea narrata est. causam nunc disce figurae: / iam tamen hanc _aliqua_ tu quoque _parte_ uides'. =64. CARMINA.= Ovid is referring to his own poems (in Latin and Getic) on Augustus' apotheosis, also mentioned at vi 17-18 'de caelite ... recenti ... carmen', ix 131-32 'carmina ... de te ... caelite ... nouo', and xiii 25-26. =65-66. SI QVID ADHVC IGITVR VIVI, GERMANICE, NOSTRO / RESTAT IN INGENIO, SERVIET OMNE TIBI.= Compare Prop IV i 59-60 'sed tamen exiguo _quodcumque_ e pectore _riui_ / fluxerit, hoc patriae _seruiet omne meae_', which Ovid is clearly imitating. Hertzberg _ad loc_ conjectured RIVI for our passage, which may well be right; but _uiui_ seems to agree better with _restat_. =67. VATIS ... VATES.= For an extreme instance of Ovid's favourite figure of _polyptoton_ (Quintilian IX 3 36-37), see the account at _Met_ IX 43-45 of Achelous' wrestling-match with Hercules: 'inque gradu stetimus, certi non cedere, eratque / cum _pede pes_ iunctus, totoque ego pectore pronus / et _digitos digitis_ et _frontem fronte_ premebam'. Other instances of polyptoton with _uates_ at _Fast_ I 25 (to Germanicus) 'si licet et fas est, _uates_ rege _uatis_ habenas' and _EP_ II ix 65 (to Cotys, king of Thrace, apparently a writer of poetry) 'ad _uatem uates_ orantia bracchia tendo', =67. VATES.= Approximately nine hundred lines survive of a version of Aratus generally attributed to Germanicus, who might have been composing the poem at the time Ovid was writing: Augustus' apotheosis is mentioned at 558-60. It is possible however that Tiberius was the poem's author: he is known to have written a _Conquestio de morte L. Caesaris_ and to have composed Greek verse (Suet _Tib_ 70). For a full discussion see the introduction to Gain's edition of the _Aratus_. =69-70. QVOD NISI TE NOMEN TANTVM AD MAIORA VOCASSET, / GLORIA PIERIDVM SVMMA FVTVRVS ERAS.= Compare _Met_ V 269-70 (the Muses to Minerva) 'o nisi te uirtus opera ad maiora tulisset, / in partem uentura chori Tritonia nostri'. There is a striking parallel to this passage in Quintilian's address to Domitian in his catalogue of poets: 'hos nominamus quia Germanicum Augustum ab institutis studiis deflexit cura terrarum, parumque dis uisum est esse eum maximum poetarum' (X i 91-92). =70. GLORIA PIERIDVM SVMMA.= _Gloria_ similarly used at _EP_ II xi 28 'maxima Fundani _gloria_, Rufe, soli', _Aen_ VI 767 'proximus ille Procas, Troianae _gloria_ gentis', and Val Max IV iii 3 'Drusum ... Germanicum, eximiam Claudiae familiae _gloriam_'. The term was used in particular of fine cattle: see _AA_ I 290 'candidus, armenti gloria, taurus', _Pan Mess_ (_Corp Tib_ III vii) 208 'tardi pecoris ... _gloria_ taurus' and _Aetna_ 597 '_gloria_ uiua Myronis' (on Myron's _Cow_ see at i 34 _ut similis uerae uacca Myronis opus_ [p 158]). =71. SI DARE= _R. J. Tarrant._ The manuscripts' SED DARE is a possible reading; but Professor Tarrant's slight change removes the awkwardness of _nec tamen_ following immediately upon _sed_. =71. MAVIS= _IF2ul_ MAIVS _BF1_. Either of the two variants could be read from _CMHLT_. The preferable reading is _mauis_, since it links more closely to _potes_ in the pentameter, and would be especially liable to corruption after _maiora_ two lines previous. I have found no good parallel for singular _maius_ 'a more important thing': for the plural _OLD maior_ 5 cites from verse _Fast_ IV 3 'certe maiora canebas' and its model, _Ecl_ IV 1 'paulo maiora canamus'. =72. NEC TAMEN EX TOTO DESERERE ILLA POTES.= Graecinus was another of Ovid's addressees who, while a soldier, kept up his other pursuits: 'artibus ingenuis [=_lIberAlibus_], quarum tibi maxima cura est, / pectora mollescunt asperitasque fugit. / nec quisquam meliore fide complectitur illas, / qua sinit officium militiaeque labor' (_EP_ I vi 7-10). =72. EX TOTO.= 'Altogether'. Compare _EP_ I vi 27-28 'spes igitur menti poenae, Graecine, leuandae / non est _ex toto_ nulla relicta meae'. The idiom was probably subliterary: the only instances from the time of Ovid cited by _OLD totum_ 2 are Celsus III 3 71b 'neque _ex toto_ in remissionem desistit' and Columella V 6 17 'antequam _ex toto_ arbor praeualescat'. =73. NVMERIS ... VERBA COERCES.= 'You arrange words in metrical patterns'. Similar wording at Cic _Or_ 64 'mollis est enim oratio philosophorum ... nec _uincta numeris_ ['not in rhythmic prose'], sed soluta liberius'. Professor E. Fantham points out to me that Ovid may also be playing on _numerus_ 'military contingent' (_OLD numerus_ 9): 'you draft words in squads'. =75-76. NEC AD CITHARAM NEC AD ARCVM SEGNIS APOLLO, / SED VENIT AD SACRAS NERVVS VTERQVE MANVS.= Apollo is similarly described at _Met_ X 107-8 (of Cyparissus) 'nunc arbor, puer ante deo dilectus ab illo / _qui citharam neruis et neruis temperat arcum_'. =76. VENIT= = _conuenit_. In Latin verse a simple verb can carry the sense of any of its compounds, even when this sense is quite different from the usual meaning of the simple verb. Compare Catullus LXIV 21 'tum Thetidi pater ipse _iugandum_ Pelea _sensit_', "where it is plain that iugandum is for coniugandum, and this leads the reader to the conclusion that sensit is for consensit, where the omission decidedly affects the sense" (Bell 330). The line should not be taken as an instance of the expression _uenire ad manum_ (_OLD uenio_ 7c), since the idiom's sense 'be convenient' does not fit the context here: for the sense compare Livy XXXVIII 21 6 'quod [_sc_ saxum] cuique temere trepidanti _ad manum uenisset_' and Quintilian II xi 6 'abrupta quaedam, ut forte _ad manum uenere_, iaculantur'. _Venire in manus_ offers a somewhat more satisfactory meaning, almost equivalent to 'have, hold' (compare Cic _Q Fr_ II xv [xiv] i 'quicumque calamus _in manus meas uenerit_' and Persius III 11 '_inque manus_ chartae nodosaque _uenit_ harundo'), but seems to be a separate idiom. =79. QVAE QVONIAM NEC NOS.= 'Since she continues to give poetic inspiration to myself as well as to you'. _Quae quoniam_ seems very prosaic, but Ovid uses the phrase again at _Tr_ I ix 53-54 '_quae_ [_sc_ coniectura] _quoniam_ uera est ... gratulor ingenium non latuisse tuum'. =79-80. VNDA ... VNGVLA GORGONEI QUAM CAVA FECIT EQVI.= Hippocrene, the spring of the Muses, said to have been created by the hoof-beat of Pegasus. Similarly described at _Met_ V 264 'factas pedis ictibus undas', _Fast_ V 7-8 'fontes Aganippidos Hippocrenes, / grata Medusaei signa ... equi' and Persius prol 1 'fonte ... caballino'. =80. VNGVLA ... CAVA.= Professor J. N. Grant points out to me the possible borrowing from Ennius _Ann_ 439 Vahlen3 'it eques et plausu _caua_ concutit _ungula_ terram'. =80. GORGONEI ... EQVI.= The same phrase in the same metrical position at _Fast_ III 450 'suspice [_sc_ caelum]: _Gorgonei_ colla uidebis _equi_'. For the birth of Pegasus from the blood of the Gorgon Medusa, see _Met_ IV 784-86, =81. COMMVNIA SACRA TVERI.= _Sacra_ similarly used of poetry at _Tr_ IV i 87, _Tr_ IV x 19 'at mihi iam puero caelestia _sacra_ placebant', _EP_ II x 17 'sunt tamen inter se _communia sacra_ poetis', and _EP_ III iv 67 'sunt mihi uobiscum _communia sacra_, poetae'. For _tueri_ 'observe, maintain' compare Cic _Tusc_ I 2 'mores et instituta uitae resque domesticas ac familiaris nos profecto et melius _tuemur_ et lautius'. =82. ISDEM STVDIIS IMPOSVUISSE MANVM.= Similar phrasing at _Tr_ IV i 27-28 'non equidem uellem ... _Pieridum sacris imposuisse manum_'. =82. IMPOSVISSE= has the sense of the present infinitive, as is shown by _tueri_ in the previous line; compare as well ii 27-28 'uix sumptae Musa tabellae / _imponit_ pigras, paene coacta, _manus_'. For the idiom, see Platnauer 109-12. It is particularly frequent in the latter half of the pentameter, immediately before the disyllable: compare, from many instances, _AA_ III 431-32 '_ire_ solutis / crinibus et fletus non _tenuisse_ decet' and _Tr_ IV viii 5-12 'nunc erat ut posito deberem fine laborum / _uiuere_, me nullo sollicitante metu, / quaeque meae semper placuerunt otia menti / _carpere_ et in studiis molliter _esse_ meis, / et paruam _celebrare_ domum ueteresque Penates ... inque sinu dominae carisque sodalibus inque / securus patria _consenuisse_ mea'. The idiom, although more common in elegiac verse, is also found in epic: compare _Aen_ X 14 'tum _certare_ odiis, tum res _rapuisse_ licebit'. =83. LITORA PELLITIS NIMIVM SVBIECTA CORALLIS.= Compare ii 37 'hic mea cui recitem nisi flauis scripta Corallis'. Strabo mentions the Coralli as inhabiting the region near Haemus (VII 5 12); they are rather obscurely described at Val Fl VI 89-94 'densique leuant uexilla Coralli, / barbaricae quis signa rotae, ferrataque dorso / forma suum ['of pigs'], truncaeque Iouis simulacra columnae; / proelia nec rauco curant incendere cornu, / indigenas sed rite duces et prisca suorum / facta canunt ueterumque, uiris hortamina, laudes'. Nothing else is known of the tribe. =83. PELLITIS.= Elsewhere in Ovid only at x 2 'pellitos ... Getas'. =83. NIMIVM SVBIECTA.= Compare vi 45 'nimium nobis conterminus Hister'. =85. VLLO= _M_ ILLO _BCFHILT_. _Illo_ is not a possible reading, since of course most parts of the empire would have been less isolated than Tomis. Ovid does not specify a preferred place of exile at either _Tr_ IV iv 49 'nunc precor hinc alio iubeat discedere' or _EP_ III i 29-30 'non igitur mirum ... altera si nobis usque rogatur humus', nor in any of the passages listed in the next two notes. =86. QVI MINVS ... DISTET.= For this constant prayer of the exiled Ovid, see _Tr_ II 575-78 (the concluding lines) 'non ut in Ausoniam redeam, nisi forsitan olim, / cum longo poenae tempore uictus eris; / tutius exilium pauloque quietius oro, / ut par delicto sit mea poena suo', _Ibis_ 28, _EP_ III i 4 & 85, _EP_ III iii 64, _EP_ III vii 30, _EP_ III ix 38, and _EP_ III ix 1-4 'Quod sit in his eadem sententia, Brute, libellis, / carmina nescio quem carpere nostra refers, / _nil nisi me terra fruar ut propiore rogare_, / et quam sim denso cinctus ab hoste loqui'. =86. DISTET= _FHILM2c_. Lenz and André print DISTAT (_BCT_); however, the defining subjunctive seems to be required, and is supported by _EP_ II viii 36 'daque procul Scythico _qui sit_ ab hoste locum'. =87. LAVDES.= See at 45 _laudum_ (p 268). =88. MAGNAQVE QVAM MINIMA FACTA REFERRE MORA.= At _EP_ III iv 53-60 Ovid speaks of how a poem of his on a recent triumph has been late in being written, and will be late in reaching Rome: 'cetera certatim de magno scripta triumpho / iam pridem populi suspicor ore legi. / illa bibit sitiens lector, mea pocula plenus; / illa recens pota est, nostra tepebit aqua. / non ego cessaui, nec fecit inertia serum: / ultima me uasti distinet [_scripsi_: sustinet _codd_] ora freti. / dum uenit huc rumor properataque carmina fiunt / factaque eunt ad uos, annus abisse potest'. =90. SOCERO PAENE ... TVO.= See at 11 _eadem mihi filia paene est_ (p 262). IX. To Graecinus C. Pomponius Graecinus (_PIR1_ P 540), suffect consul in 16, was the recipient of _EP_ I vi, an appeal for his assistance, and of _EP_ II vi, a request that he be more lenient towards Ovid's faults and continue to assist him. He must have been an old friend of Ovid, for _Am_ II x is addressed to him ('Tu mihi, tu certe, memini, Graecine, negabas / uno posse aliquem tempore amare duas'), and he was clearly a literary patron (_EP_ I vi 7-8 'artibus ingenuis, _quarum tibi maxima cura est_, / pectora mollescunt asperitasque fugit'). The poem begins with Ovid's wish that his letter might arrive on the day Graecinus becomes consul (1-4). He imagines himself present when Graecinus enters his magistracy; since he will not be there, he will at least in his mind imagine Graecinus carrying out his consular functions (5-56). He then speaks of Graecinus' brother Flaccus, who will succeed him as _consul ordinarius_ for 17: the two brothers will take pleasure in each other's office (57-65). He describes the brothers' devotion to Tiberius, and asks for their assistance in obtaining his removal from Tomis (65-74). The mention of his exile serves as a bridge to the topic of his life in Tomis. Flaccus can attest to the hardships Ovid endures, since he was recently stationed in the area (75-86). Once Graecinus has learned of these hardships from Flaccus, he should ask what Ovid's reputation in Tomis is. He will learn that Ovid is well liked, and has even received public honours (87-104). His loyalty to the imperial family is well known: Flaccus may have heard of this, Tiberius will eventually learn of it, but Augustus has certainly observed it from heaven; Ovid's poems are perhaps inducing Augustus to yield to his prayers (105-34). The poem is the longest in the book, and combines several almost unrelated sections dealing with a number of subjects. The first section of the poem, the celebration of Graecinus' nomination to the consulship, is very heavily indebted to IV iv, Ovid's first poem on Sextus Pompeius' election to the consulship. The section detailing Flaccus' presence near Tomis owes something to IV vii, the letter to Vestalis. The description of Ovid's reputation in Tomis is new, and shows a softening of his attitude towards his fellow-townsmen, but the description of his piety to the imperial family owes much to III ii, a letter of thanks to Cotta for the gift of images of the members of the family. The poem's discursiveness and large number of derived elements suggest a hasty composition. =1. GRAECINE.= Graecinus became a _frater Arualis_ in 21 (_CIL_ VI 2023); the C. Pomponius Graecinus of _CIL_ XI 5809 (Iguvium) seems not to have survived to enter the Senate (Syme _HO_ 74-75). Graecinus is not mentioned in literary sources apart from Ovid, but his brother Flaccus was rather more famous: see at 75 (p 308). =3. DI FACIANT= looks like a colloquial expression. Other instances at iv 47-48 '_di faciant_ aliquo subeat tibi tempore nostrum / nomen', _Tr_ V xiii 17, and Prop II ix 24. =3. AVRORAM= here is virtually equivalent to _diem_; it is not found elsewhere in the poetry of exile, but compare _Fast_ I 461 & II 267-68 'tertia post idus nudos aurora Lupercos / aspicit'. =3. OCCVRRAT.= 'Arrive', as commonly: compare Cic _Phil_ I 9, Livy XXXVII 50 7 '_ad comitiorum tempus occurrere_ non posse', and Pliny _Ep_ VI xxxiv 3 'uellem Africanae [_sc_ pantherae] quas coemeras plurimas _ad praefinitum diem occurrissent_'. =4. BIS SENOS= = _duodecim_, metrically difficult because of its initial three consecutive short vowels. Roman poets avoid using the usual names for numbers above _nouem_, with the obvious exceptions of _centum_ and _mille_; sometimes, as here, metrical exigencies left them with no alternative. For _bis seni_ (_sex_) Tarrant at Sen _Ag_ 812 _bis seno ... labore_ cites Ennius _Ann_ 323 Vahlen2, _Ecl_ I 43, _Aen_ I 393, Prop II xx 7, _Met_ VIII 243, _Fast_ I 28, Sen _Tro_ 386 & _Oed_ 251, and from Greek Callimachus _Aetia_ I fr. 23 19 Pfeiffer. =6. TVRBAE.= Compare iv 27 'cernere iam uideor rumpi paene atria _turba_'. =7. IN DOMINI SVBEAT PARTES.= _Partes_ = 'function'; see at ii 27 _uix uenit ad partes ... Musa_ (p 170). For _subeat_ 'undertake' compare Quintilian X i 71 'declamatoribus ... necesse est secundum condicionem controuersiarum plures _subire personas_' and the passages cited at _OLD subeo_ 7b. =8. FESTO= _Burman_ IVSSO _BCMFHIL_ IVSTO _T, sicut coni Merkel_. _Iusso_ has been explained since Merula as meaning that Ovid hopes the letter will arrive on the day it is told to; but the word seems rather strange, and lacks the point it has in the passages cited by Ehwald (_KB_ 64), _AA_ II 223-24 'iussus adesse foro, _iussa_ maturius _hora_ / fac semper uenias, nec nisi serus abi' and Prop IV vi 63-64 (of Cleopatra) 'illa petit Nilum cumba male nixa fugaci, / hoc unum, _iusso_ non moritura _die_' (she would commit suicide at a time of her own choosing), or at _Aen_ X 444 (cited by Owen in 1894) 'socii cesserunt _aequore iusso_', where _iusso_ stands by hypallage for _iussi_. The meaning of _iusto_ is inappropriate for the present passage, as will be seen from Suet _Tib_ 4 2 'retentis ultra _iustum tempus_ ['the time allowed'] insignibus'. Burman's conjecture _festo_ was not placed in the text even by its author, but it seems a reasonable solution to the difficulty. For it Burman cited 56 'hic quoque te _festum_ consule _tempus_ agam'; see as well _Fast_ I 79-80 'uestibus intactis Tarpeias itur in arces, / et populus _festo_ concolor ipse suo est'. The corruption of so straightforward an epithet may seem unlikely, but compare Prop IV xi 65-66 'uidimus et fratrem sellam geminasse curulem; / consule quo, _festo_ [_Koppiers_: facto _codd_] _tempore_, rapta soror'. =9. ATQVI= _unus e duobus Hafniensibus Heinsii_. The ATQVE of _BCMFHILT_ is possibly right. For the adversative sense here required, _OLD_ _atque_ 9 cites Plautus _Aul_ 287-88 '_atque ego_ istuc, Anthrax, aliouorsum dixeram, / non istuc quod tu insimulas', _Mer_ 742, and Ter _Heaut_ 189 (apparently a misprint for 187 'atque etiam nunc tempus est') from comedy, but from the classical period only Cic _Att_ VI i 2 'ac putaram paulo secus' and _Fam_ XIV iv 5 '_atque ego_, qui te confirmo, ipse me non possum', and instances of _ac tamen_ at _Fam_ VII xxiii 1, Caesar _BC_ III 87 4, and Tac _Ann_ III 72. In view of the doubtful status of adversative _atque_ at the time of Ovid and the ease of corruption of _atqui_ to _atque_ I have followed Heinsius in reading _atqui_. Heinsius similarly restored _atqui_ from his _codex Richelianus_ for the other manuscripts' _atque_ at _Tr_ II 121-24 'corruit haec ... sub uno ... crimine lapsa domus. / _atqui_ ea sic lapsa est ut surgere, si modo laesi / ematuruerit Caesaris ira, queat'; and _atque_ is found for the correct _atqui_ in some manuscripts at Hor _Sat_ I ix 52-53 '"magnum narras, uix credibile!" "atqui / sic habet"' and _EP_ I ii 33-34 '_atqui_ / si noles sanus, curres hydropicus', and in most manuscripts at _Ep_ I vii 1-5 'Quinque dies tibi pollicitus me rure futurum / Sextilem totum mendax desideror. _atqui_, / si me uiuere uis sanum recteque ualentem, / quam mihi das aegro, dabis aegrotare timenti, / Maecenas, ueniam'. =10. SINCERO.= 'Unbroken'. =12. SALVTANDI MVNERE ... TVI.= Professor R. J. Tarrant points out to me the notably prosaic use of the defining gerundive. =13. GRATATVS= has the force of a present participle, as is shown by _cum dulcibus ... uerbis_; André mistranslates 'après t'avoir félicité, je t'embrasserai avec des mots tendres'. The perfect participle of deponent verbs takes past or present meaning indifferently, according to context. =16. VT CAPERET FASTVS VIX DOMVS VLLA MEOS= seems strange, as does Némethy's explanation 'poeta elatus superbia tectum uertice tangere sibi uidetur'. Perhaps the distich means something like 'on that day I would be filled with a pride which no ancestry, no matter how illustrious, could justify'. =16. FASTVS.= 'Haughtiness'--Wheeler. The same sense at _AA_ II 241-42 'exue _fastus_, / curam mansuri quisquis amoris habes' and _Aen_ III 326-27 (Andromache speaking) 'stirpis Achilleae _fastus_ iuuenemque superbum ... tulimus'. Ovid generally uses _fastus_ of the arrogance of women to their suitors (_Am_ II xvii 9, _Met_ XIV 762, _Fast_ I 419); the word is not found elsewhere in the poetry of exile. =17. DVMQVE LATVS SANCTI CINGIT TIBI TVRBA SENATVS.= Compare iv 41 'inde domum repetes toto comitante senatu'; Ovid is here obviously referring to the earlier procession _from_ the new consul's house. =20. LATERIS ... LOCVM= is a strange phrase, but is made easier by _latus ... cingit_ in 17. Compare also such passages as _Met_ II 448-49 'nec ... iuncta deae lateri nec toto est agmine prima' and _Aen_ X 160-61 'Pallas ... sinistro / adfixus lateri'. It is possible that _latus_ here means 'companion', as at Martial VI lxviii 4 'Eutychos ille, tuum, Castrice, dulce latus'. =20. HABVISSE= is equivalent to _habere_, as is shown by _esse_ in the preceding line. For the idiom, see at viii 82 _imposuisse_ (p 282) and xi 2 _habuisse_ (p 361). =21. TVRBA QVAMVIS ELIDERER.= _Elidere_ similarly used of a crowd's jostling at Sen _Clem_ I 6 1; an extended description at Juvenal III 243-48. =23. PROSPICEREM.= Owen in his second edition, Wheeler, and Lenz follow Ehwald (_KB_ 64) in printing _B_'s ASPICEREM. Ehwald argued that _prospicerem_, 'survey from a distance', was inappropriate in view of the preceding _turba quamuis eliderer_. But the verb should be taken not with the pentameter that precedes, but with the one that follows, 'densaque quam longum turba teneret iter': _prospicerem_ seems very appropriate. Riese conjectured RESPICEREM 'look back at', but emendation seems unnecessary. Compounds of _specere_ (the simple verb is used by Plautus and Ennius) are peculiarly liable to confusion: _prospicere_ is similarly corrupted to _aspicere_ in some manuscripts at _Met_ III 603-4 'ipse quid aura mihi tumulo promittat ab alto / _prospicio_' and _Met_ XI 715-16 'notata locis reminiscitur acta fretumque / _prospicit_', and other instances of variation of prefix will be found at _Met_ II 405, VI 343, XI 150, XIV 179, XV 577, 660 & 842, _Fast_ I 139 & 461, V 393 & 561, and _Her_ XIX 21. =25-26.= Heinsius and Bentley questioned the authenticity of these lines, but the distich does not seem lame enough to warrant excision, and _tegeret_ (see below) is paralleled elsewhere. =25. QVOQVE MAGIS NORIS.= 'Listen: this will make you understand better'. Ovid is very fond of _quoque magis_ and the corresponding _quoque minus_, particularly at line-beginnings. He generally uses the formula to denote the emotion which information he then gives should induce. Compare _Met_ I 757-58 '"quo"que "magis doleas, genetrix" ait, "ille ego liber, / ille ferox tacui"', _Met_ III 448-50 (Narcissus to his reflection) 'quoque magis doleam, nec nos mare separat ingens ... exigua prohibemur aqua', _Met_ XIV 695-97 'quoque magis timeas ... referam tota notissima Cypro / facta', _Tr_ I vii 37-38, and _EP_ I viii 9-10 'quoque magis nostros uenia dignere libellos, / haec in procinctu carmina facta leges'; similar instances of _quoque minus_ at _Met_ II 44, VIII 579, 620 & 866, and _EP_ III ii 52. The present passage shows the same idiom, but with the difference that a subordinate clause (_quam me uulgaria tangant_) depends on the verb (_noris_) introduced by the _quoque magis_ clause. The same formula is used with a different sense, the _quoque_ being an ablative of degree of difference, at _Am_ III ii 28 and _Met_ IV 64 'quoque magis tegitur, tectus magis aestuat ignis'. _EP_ II v 15-16 'quoque magis moueare malis, doctissime, nostris, / credibile est fieri condicione loci' reads oddly; something has probably been lost from the text after the hexameter. =25. VVLGARIA.= 'Commonplace, ordinary'. Compare Hor _Sat_ II ii 38 and Cic _De or_ II 347 'neque enim paruae [_sc_ res] neque usitatae neque uulgares admiratione aut omnino laude dignae uideri solent'. =25. TANGANT.= 'Impress'; compare _Her_ V 81 'non ego miror opes, nec me tua regia tangit', _Her_ VI 113, _Her_ VII 11, _Met_ IV 639, _Met_ X 614-15 'nec forma _tangor_ (poteram tamen hac quoque tangi), / sed quod adhuc puer est: non me mouet ipse, sed aetas', and _Fast_ V 489, as well as _Her_ XVI 83. For _tangere_ with a neuter plural subject see _Aen_ I 462 'mentem mortalia _tangunt_'. =26. TEGERET.= There are twenty trisyllabic pentameter endings in Tibullus, thirty in Propertius, but only five in Ovid, all in the _Ex Ponto_: I i 66 _faciet_, I vi 26 _scelus est_, I viii 40 _liceat_, III vi 46 _uideor_, and this passage (Platnauer 15-16). Quadrisyllabic endings are similarly frequent in the poetry of exile: see at ii 10 _Alcinoo_ (p 164). =27. SIGNA ... IN SELLA ... FORMATA CVRVLI.= For _signum_ 'bas-relief' see at v 18 _conspicuum signis ... ebur_ (the phrase also of the curule chair). =28. NVMIDAE SCVLPTILE DENTIS OPVS.= Professor R. J. Tarrant points out to me the clear imitation of Prop II xxxi 12 'ualuae, Llbyci nobile dentis opus'. =28. NVMIDAE ... DENTIS= _edd_ NVMIDI ... DENTIS _codd_. The masculine first declension substantive _Numida_ is occasionally used as an adjective: compare _AA_ II 183 'Numidasque leones' (some manuscripts read _Numidosque_) and Juvenal IV 99-100 'ursos ... Numidas'. André prints _Numidi_, citing a nominative _Numidus_ at _CIL_ VIII 17328, the variant at _AA_ II 183, and Apicius VI 8 4 'pullum Numidum' (where there is a variant _Numidicum_, which André printed in his 1974 edition of Apicius). But given the support for the first-declension form offered by the Juvenal passage and the better manuscripts of the _Ars Amatoria_, the danger in adducing a doubtful passage of Apicius and a single inscription to determine poetic usage, and the ease of corruption to the second declension, it seems better to assume that Ovid here used the first declension form. _Numidae ... dentis_ is high poetic diction: compare _Met_ XI 167-68 'instructam ... fidem gemmis et _dentibus Indis_', Catullus LXIV 47-48 'puluinar ... _Indo_ ... _dente_ politum', Prop II xxxi 12 (quoted above), and Statius _Sil_ III iii 94-95 'Indi / dentis honos'. =28. SCVLPTILE.= The word does not seem to occur again in Latin until Prudentius _Steph_ X 266. =29. TARPEIAS ... IN ARCES.= See at iv 29 _Tarpeiae ... sedis_ (p 208). =30. DVM= expresses purpose; if it were temporal, the verb would be _cadit_ instead of _caderet_: compare 17-18 '_dumque_ latus sancti _cingit_ tibi turba senatus, / consulis ante pedes ire iuberer eques'. =31. SECRETO= represents Ovid's response to the bidding _fauete linguis_. The word is frequent in comedy, but is very rare in verse, being virtually confined to satire (Hor _Sat_ I ix 67, Juvenal I 95). =31-32. MAGNVS ... DEVS= = Iuppiter Optimus _Maximus_. Compare _AA_ II 540 'eris _magni_ uictor in arce _Iouis_'. =33. TVRAQVE MENTE MAGIS PLENA QVAM LANCE DEDISSEM.= The same notion of sincerity of feeling being more important than size of gifts at viii 35-40. =34. TER QVATER ... LAETVS.= 'Infinitely happy'; compare Prop III xii 15 '_ter quater_ in casta felix, o Postume, Galla!', _Aen_ I 94 'o _terque quaterque_ beati', _AA_ II 447-48, and _Tr_ III xii 25-26 'o _quater_ et _quotiens non est numerare beatum_ / non interdicta cui licet urbe frui!'. The phrase is common in Ovid, but he generally uses it to mean 'several times': compare _Am_ III i 31-32 'mouit ... _terque quaterque_ caput', _Met_ II 49, _Met_ IV 734 '_ter quater_ exegit repetita per ilia ferrum', _Met_ VI 133, _Met_ IX 217, _Met_ XII 288, _Fast_ I 576, and _Fast_ I 657 '_ter quater_ euolui signantes tempora fastos'. =35. HIC.= 'Hier auf dem Kapitol'--Ehwald (_KB_ 65). The idiom is somewhat strange, but seems well enough supported by _Met_ XIV 372-73 '"per o, tua lumina" dixit / "quae mea ceperunt, perque _hanc_, pulcherrime, formam"' and _Her_ XVI 137, passages cited by R, J. Tarrant at Sen _Ag_ 971 'dummodo _hac_ ['your'] moriar manu'. Compare as well Prop I xi 17-18 'non quia perspecta non es mihi cognita fama, / sed quod in _hac_ omnis _parte_ ['at Baiae'] timetur [_codd_: ueretur _Lachmann_] amor' and Fedeli _ad loc_. =36. MITIA ... SI ... FATA DARENT.= 'If the Fates had been kind, and given'. =36. VRBIS= _editio Aldina 1502_ VERBIS _codd_. _Ius urbis_ = _ius urbis habitandae_; compare _Met_ XIII 471-72 'genetrici corpus inemptum / reddite, neue auro redimat ius triste sepulcri [=_sepeliendi_]'. =37-38. MENTE ... OCVLIS.= Similarly contrasted at _Met_ XV 62-64 'isque, licet caeli regione remotos, / _mente_ deos adiit et, quae natura negarat [_'Medic. rectius' (Heinsius)_: negabat _codd_] / uisibus humanis, _oculis_ ea _pectoris_ hausit'. =38. NON ITA CAELITIBVS VISVM EST.= 'The gods decided otherwise'. Compare xi 7 'non ita dis placuit', _Met_ VII 699, _Tr_ IV viii 15-16 (Ovid had hoped for a peaceful and happy old age) 'non ita dis uisum est, qui me terraque marique / actum Sarmaticis exposuere locis'. These passages are probably all echoes of _Aen_ II 426 'dis aliter uisum'. =40. IVVET= _BpcCMFHILT_ FORET _Bac 'unde uerum eliciendum'--Riese_. But the correction is by the original hand (Owen suggested that the error was induced by _foret_ at the end of the preceding distich), and _iuuet_ is unobjectionable: Ovid is explaining his admission in the previous line that the gods were perhaps just in his case--claiming he was innocent, that is, that the gods had been unjust, would be of no assistance to him. =41. MENTE TAMEN, QVAE SOLA DOMO NON EXVLAT, VSVS.= See at iv 45 _qua possum, mente_ (p 211). =41. QVAE SOLA DOMO NON EXVLAT.= Similar wording at _Tr_ III iv 45-46 'Nasonisque tui _quod adhuc non exulat unum_ / nomen ama'. =41. DOMO NON EXVLAT.= _Domo_ is my conjecture for the transmitted LOCO, which is strange and difficult to construe. FOCO is also possible; but the singular would be unusual. For _domo_ compare Ter _Eun_ 610 'domo exulo nunc'. =42. PRAETEXTAM FASCES ASPICIAMQVE.= The _-que_ logically belongs with _fasces_, joining it with _praetextam_: such dislocations are common in the pentameter because of its strict metrical requirements. According to the manuscripts the preceding line ends with VTAR; I have printed Heinsius' VSVS, since there would otherwise be an asyndeton between _utar_ and _aspiciam_. There are similar errors at 57 and xi 15 (_cedet_ for _cedens_; _peruenit_ for _perueniens_): here we may have a deliberate alteration by a scribe who did not understand the force of the delayed enclitic and sought a verb to couple _aspiciam_ with. =44. DECRETIS= _Korn_ SECRETIS _codd_ SECRETO _Wheeler_. Korn's conjecture makes the pentameter an amplification of the hexameter, a common pattern in Ovid; its corruption to _secretis_ would be easy. Ehwald (_KB_ 39-40) retained _secretis_, citing Tac _Ann_ III 37 '_secreta_ ['solitary designs'--Grant] patris mitigari' and Pliny _Pan_ 53 6 (we should rejoice in our present good fortune under Trajan, and weep at the tribulations endured under previous emperors) 'hoc _secreta_ nostra ['our private thoughts'], hoc sermones, hoc ipsae gratiarum actiones agant'. But in a list of the consul's public functions such a deviation of subject seems inappropriate. Wheeler's _secreto_ is a little forced: 'my mind ... shall fancy itself present unseen at your actions'. Ehwald objected that Korn did not explain what his conjecture meant; but _decernere_ was used of the consuls' judicial decisions (Cic _Att_ XVI xvi a 4(6) 'consulum decretum'). =45. LONGI ... LVSTRI.= The epithet seems to have no special force: compare iv 23 'longum ... annum'. =45. REDITVS HASTAE SVPPONERE.= See at v 19 _reditus ... componet_ (p 219). =46. CERNET= _PM2c, Gothanus membr. II 121 (saec xiii)_ CREDET _BCFHILT_. _Cernet_ seems preferable to _credet_ as continuing the image of _uidebit_ in 43. =46. EXACTA CVNCTA LOCARE FIDE.= Graecinus will be careful and incorruptible in assigning taxation contracts. For _fide_ compare v 20 'et minui magnae non sinet urbis opes'; for _exacta_ compare Suet _Tib_ 18 'cum animaduerteret Varianam cladem temeritate et neglegentia ducis accidisse ... curam ... solita [_scripsi; confer Liu XXVII 47 1 'multitudo ... maior solita_' solito _codd_] _exactiorem_ praestitit'. =48. PVBLICA QVAERENTEM QVID PETAT VTILITAS.= The consul acted as chairman of the Senate, proposing the order of the day, and asking the senators in order of seniority for their _sententiae_ on the appropriate action for the question under discussion. =48. PVBLICA ... VTILITAS.= 'The people's interest'. For _utilitas_ compare _Met_ XIII 191 'utilitas populi', Cic _Part Or_ 89 'persaepe euenit ut _utilitas_ cum honestate certet', Cic _Sul_ 25 '_populi utilitati_ magis consulere quam uoluntati', and Livy VI 40 5 & VIII 34 2 'posthabita filii caritas _publicae utilitati_'. =49. PRO CAESARIBVS= = _pro Caesarum factis_. Compare _Res Gestae_ 4 'ob res a me aut per legatos meos auspicis [=_auspiciis_] meis terra marique prospere gestas quinquagiens et quinquiens _decreuit senatus_ supplicandum esse dis immortalibus. dies autem per quos _ex senatus consulto_ supplicatum est fuere DCCCLXXXX'. =49. CAESARIBVS.= Tiberius, Germanicus, and Drusus. Similarly used at _EP_ II vi 18 (to Graecinus) 'omnia _Caesaribus_ [Augustus and Tiberius] sic tua facta probes'. =49. DECERNERE GRATES.= 'Propose (in the Senate) the decreeing of thanks'. The sense of _decernere_ is common in prose: see Cic _Prou Cons_ 1, _Att_ VII i 7, and the other passages at _OLD decerno_ 6. =49. GRATES= appears occasionally in prose (Tarrant at Sen _Ag_ 380 _reddunt grates_ cites Livy XXIII 11 12, Curtius IX 6 17, and Vell Pat II 25 4), but in hexameter and elegiac verse is the necessary representative for _grAtiAs_. =51. CVM IAM FVERIS POTIORA PRECATVS.= For _potior_ 'more important' compare Caesar _BC_ I 8 (a reported remark of Pompey) 'semper se rei publicae commoda priuatis necessitudinibus habuisse _potiora_', Livy VIII 29 2, and the many passages at _OLD potior2_ 4. The usage belongs to prose: Ovid elsewhere and Virgil always use _potior_ to mean either 'more powerful' or 'preferable'. =53-54. SVRGAT ... DETQVE.= The apodosis of an implied condition: 'If you prayed for me, the fire would rise'. =53. SVRGAT AD HANC VOCEM PLENA PIVS IGNIS AB ARA.= The same favourable omen at _Met_ X 278-79 (Pygmalion has finished his prayer to Venus) 'amici numinis omen, / flamma ter accensa est apicemque per aera duxit'. =53. PLENA ... AB ARA.= Another indication of Graecinus' devotion to the Caesars. =53. PIVS.= 'Holy'; compare _pia tura_ at _Am_ III iii 33, _Met_ XI 577, and _Tr_ II 59, _pia sacra_ at _Tr_ V v 2, and _pio ... igne_ at _Tr_ V v 12. =54. LVCIDVS.= Proleptic: 'The flame-tips would become bright and furnish a good omen for your prayer'. =55. NE CVNCTA QVERAMVR.= 'So that not everything I say will be a complaint'. =57. LAETITAE EST= _LT_. Most manuscripts have LAETITIA EST. Similarly at _Met_ VIII 430 'illi _laetitiae est_ cum munere muneris auctor' most codices read _laetitia est_. Heinsius thought LAETITIAE possibly correct here, as might be the case also in the _Metamorphoses_: _laetitiae_ could easily have been misread as _laetitia E_ [=_est_], with _laetitiae est_ as a later correction. =58. FRATER.= L. Pomponius Flaccus (_PIR1_ P 538), _consul ordinarius_ for 17. As the greater honour would indicate (Graecinus was _consul suffectus_), Flaccus was more prominent than his brother and, unlike Graecinus, is several times mentioned in literary sources outside Ovid. At II 129 Velleius Paterculus speaks of Flaccus' ability and modesty, and Suetonius (_Tib_ 42 1) names him as a drinking-companion of the emperor, made propraetor of Syria by Tiberius. Tacitus says that Flaccus proposed the _supplicationum dies_ following the discovery in 16 of Libo's plot against Tiberius (_Ann_ II 32 3); at _Ann_ II 41 2 he names Flaccus as consul at the time of Germanicus' great triumph in 17, and at VI 27 3 mentions Flaccus' death in 34 while propraetor of Syria. For Flaccus' special mission to Thrace shortly after the time this poem was written, see at 75 (p 308). _EP_ I x is addressed to Flaccus, but gives little information except that Flaccus had, like Graecinus, given help to Ovid (37-40). Ovid's relations with Flaccus were clearly not as intimate as those with his brother. =59-60.= The distich may be an interpolation, or at least deeply corrupted in its present form. Professor E. Fantham points out to me that the construction of _die_ with both _summo ... Decembri_ and _Iani_ is awkward, and that _dies Iani_ does not seem to be used elsewhere in Latin literature. The tense of _suspicit_ is strange as well: a future would normally be expected here. =61. QVAEQVE EST IN VOBIS PIETAS.= 'Your family-feeling is so great that ...' The same idiom at _Met_ V 373 'quae iam patientia nostra est', _EP_ I vii 59, _EP_ II ii 21-22 'quaeque tua est pietas in totum nomen Iuli, / te laedi cum quis laeditur inde [=_ex illis_] putas', and Hor _Sat_ I ix 54-55 'quae tua uirtus, / expugnabis'. The sense is frequent in prose (_OLD qui1_ A 12). The expression is used as a simple relative with the implication of size only from context at _Tr_ III v 29 'quaeque tibi linguae est facundia, confer in illud' and _Tr_ III vi 7-8 'quique est in caris animi [_codd_: animo _fort legendum; uide ad 91_] tibi candor amicis-- / cognitus est illi quem colis ipse uiro'. =61-62. ALTERNA ... GAVDIA.= Flaccus will first rejoice to see Graecinus become consul; then Graecinus will have the pleasure of seeing Flaccus consul. =64. BINVS= seems sufficiently confirmed, as Ehwald points out (_KB_ 51-52) by _bis ... bis_ in the preceding line; BIMVS, conjectured by Heinsius and found in certain late manuscripts, seems ingenious but unnecessary. Ehwald compares _Ecl_ III 30 '_bis_ uenit ad mulctram, _binos_ alit ubere fetus'. =64-65. HONOR ... INGENS.= At vii 17 Ovid calls the rank of _primipilaris_ 'titulus ... ingens'. =65-66. MARTIA ... ROMA.= The same phrase at _Tr_ III vii 52 and _EP_ I viii 24; compare as well _Aen_ I 276-77 'Romulus ... Mauortia condet / moenia'. Mars, father of Romulus and Remus, was peculiarly the god of Rome: compare _Fast_ I 39-40 & III 85-86 'Mars Latio uenerandus erat, quia praesidet armis: / arma ferae genti remque decusque dabant'. The reference to Mars is very apt in view of the primarily military nature of the republican consul's office. =67. MVLTIPLICAT TAMEN HVNC GRAVITAS AVCTORIS HONOREM.= Flaccus had been nominated for the consulship by Tiberius. For language and sentiment compare _Met_ VIII 430 'illi laetitiae est cum munere muneris _auctor_'. =67. GRAVITAS= is linked with Hercules at _Met_ IX 270, with Jupiter at _Met_ I 207 (considered suspect by Merkel) and II 847, with all the Olympian gods at _Met_ VI 73, and with Augustus at _Tr_ II 512. Underneath the ostensible connection to Jupiter at _Met_ II 846-47 'non bene conueniunt nec in una sede morantur / maiestas et amor' Professor R. J. Tarrant sees an allusion to Augustus. =69-70. IVDICIIS IGITVR LICEAT FLACCOQVE TIBIQVE / TALIBVS AVGVSTI TEMPVS IN OMNE FRVI.= Compare _EP_ II vi 17-18 (to Graecinus) 'quodque soles animo _semper_, quod uoce precari, / omnia Caesaribus sic _tua facta probes_'. =70. AVGVSTI= = _Tiberii_; his name in inscriptions is TI·CAESAR·AVG (Sandys 235). =71. CVM= _FILT_ QVOD _BC_ VT _MH_ QVVM _Weise_. The archetype was illegible at this point, and the manuscripts offer various supplements. Of these _cum_ seems the most appropriate. Ehwald favoured _quod_ (_KB_ 48), but all except one of the passages he cited are instances of _quod superest_ or _quod reliquum est_. The one relevant passage he cited was _Fast_ II 17-18 (to Augustus) 'ergo ades et placido paulum mea munera uultu / respice, pacando _si quid_ ab hoste _uacat_'. Many manuscripts however offer _uacas_ (for which compare Prop II xxxii 7 'quodcumque uacabis'), and the corruption to the third person seems an easy one. _Vacare_ in general does not seem to occur with an expressed impersonal subject. =71. CVRA PROPIORE.= The same phrase at _Met_ XIII 578-79 '_cura_ deam _propior_ luctusque domesticus angit / Memnonis amissi'. =73. SI QVAE DABIT AVRA SINVM.= 'If some wind should give the opportunity of filling my sails'. _Quae_ is my correction for QVA (_CMFHIL_), which would make the sentence mean 'If the wind should in some way ...'. The difficulty here is with the apparently already existing _aura_: what breeze is Ovid referring to? QVEM (_BT_) presents the same difficulty ('If the breeze should offer any opportunity ...') and in any case looks like a scribal correction. I take _qua_ to be an unmetrical form corrupted from the rare form _quae_ of the indefinite adjective. For the form, compare Ter _Heaut_ 44 'si _quae_ [_Bembinus (saec iv-v)_: qua _recc_] [_sc_ fabula] laboriosast, ad me curritur', Hor _Sat_ I iv 93-95 'mentio si _quae_ [_uar_ qua] ... te coram fuerit, defendas, ut tuus est mos', Hor _Sat_ II vi 10 'o si urnam argenti fors _quae_ mihi monstret', and _CIL_ I 583 37 'SEIQVAE CAVSA ERIT'. _Quae_ in the present passage offers the same notion of a fresh breeze rising as is found at viii 27-28 'quamlibet exigua si nos ea [_sc_ ara] iuuerit _aura_, / obruta de mediis cumba resurget aquis' and _Tr_ IV v 19-20 'remis ad opem luctare ferendam / _dum ueniat_ placido mollior _aura_ deo'. _Quae_ should possibly be written at _Met_ VI 231-33 'praescius imbris ... rector / carbasa deducit ne _qua_ leuis effluat aura', but Professor R. J. Tarrant points out that _qua_ can be defended by taking _leuis_ to mean 'nimble', a sense supported here by _effluat_. A strong case could be made for reading _quae_ at Hor _Carm_ III xiv 19-20 'Spartacum si _qua_ potuit uagantem / fallere testa'. =73. SINVM.= _Sinus_ in the sense of 'sail' is common enough (_Am_ II xi 38, _AA_ III 500, _Fast_ V 609, and _Aen_ III 455 & V 16; the origin of the metonymy seen at Prop III ix 30 'uelorum plenos ... sinus'); but the brachylogy here 'opportunity of filling my sails' is remarkable. =73. LAXATE= _editio princeps Romana_ IACTATE _codd_. Korn, Lenz, and André print the manuscript reading, and Korn offers three parallel passages in its defence, none of which stands up to examination. The first is _EP_ III ii 5-6 'cumque labent alii _iactataque_ uela relinquant, / tu lacerae remanes ancora sola rati', where _iactata_ means 'storm-whipped'; compare Statius _Theb_ VII 139-41 'uento / incipiente ... laxi _iactantur_ ubique rudentes'. At Cic _Tusc_ V 40 (a Spartan to a wealthy sea-merchant) 'non sane optabilis quidem ista ... rudentibus apta fortuna', 'Well, your fortune depends on your cables, and I don't think it something to be sought for', _iactare_ does not appear. The third passage, Virgil _G_ II 354-55 'seminibus positis superest diducere terram / saepius ad capita ['roots'] et duros _iactare_ bidentis', hardly seems relevant. For _laxate rudentes_ 'let out the sails' Heinsius cited _Aen_ III 266-67 'tum litore funem / deripere excussosque iubet _laxare_ rudentis' 'Next he commanded us to fling hawsers from moorings and uncoil and ease the sheets' (Jackson Knight), _Aen_ VIII 707-8 'uentis ... uela dare et _laxos_ iamiamque immittere funis', Cic _Diu_ I 127, Lucan V 426-27 'pariter soluere rates, totosque rudentes / _laxauere_ sinus', and Lucan IX 1004. =74. E STYGIIS ... AQVIS.= Similar phrasing at _Met_ X 697 'Stygia ... unda, _Met_ XI 500 'Stygia ... unda', _Aen_ VI 374 'Stygias ... aquas', _Aen_ XII 91 'Stygia ... unda', and _Cons Liu_ 410 'Stygia ... aqua'. Ovid often uses the phrasing of his exile: see _Tr_ I ii 65-66 'mittere me _Stygias_ si iam uoluisset in _undas_ / Caesar, in hoc uestro non eguisset ope', _Tr_ IV v 22, _EP_ I viii 27 'careo uobis, _Stygias_ detrusus in _oras_', and _EP_ II iii 44 'a _Stygia_ quantum mors [_codd_: sors _Heinsius_] mea distat aqua?'. For Ovid's exile as the equivalent of death, see at vi 49 _qui me doluistis ademptum_ (p 243). =75. PRAEFVIT HIS ... LOCIS MODO FLACCVS.= At _Ann_ II 64-67 Tacitus reports how, following the death of Augustus, Rhescuporis attacked and imprisoned his brother Cotys (addressee of _EP_ II ix), alleging a plot against himself; on their father's death, the kingdom of Thrace had been divided between them, Cotys receiving the better regions. Tiberius insisted that Rhescuporis release his brother and come to Rome to explain the situation; Rhescuporis then killed his brother, claiming it was a suicide. 'nec tamen Caesar placitas semel artes mutauit, sed defuncto Pandusa, quem sibi infensum Rhescuporis arguerat [_scripsi_: arguebat _M_], Pomponium Flaccum, _ueterem stipendiis_ et arta cum rege amicitia eoque accommodatiorem ad fallendum ob id maxime Moesiae praefecit'; the previous service mentioned by Tacitus is no doubt the command Ovid is here referring to. Flaccus succeeded in trapping Rhescuporis and bringing him to Rome; he was found guilty and sent in exile to Alexandria, where he died. Velleius Paterculus placed the episode first in his list of memorable events of Tiberius' reign (II 129); it is briefly mentioned at Suet _Tib_ 37 4. =75. FLACCVS.= 'Ab hoc Flacco uolunt quidam Valachiam ['Wallachia'] fuisse dictam olim _Flacciam_, quod nomen sensim corruptela sermonis transiit in Valachiam. Vide Georgii a ['von'] Reychersdorff Chorographiam Transyluaniae. pag. 33 [first published in 1595; see _British Museum Gen Cat_ 200 383] qui addit hinc [_sic_] adhuc Romanum ibi sermonem durare, licet admodum corruptum. sed hae fabulae'--Burman. Clearly the existence of Rumanian was not widely known in Western Europe at the time Burman wrote. =77. MYSAS GENTES= = _Moesos_. Strabo (VII 3 10; cited by André) claims a common origin for the [Greek: Moisoi] of Europe and the [Greek: Mysoi] of Asia. For the Greek form, compare Ovid's use of _Getes_ for _Geta_ and _Sauromates_ for _Sarmata_. =78. ARCV FISOS ... GETAS.= For the bow as the typical Getic weapon, see iii 52 'arcu ... Gete", _EP_ III v 45 'Getico ... arcu' and _Ibis_ 635 'Geticasque sagittas'. =78. ENSE.= The _gladius_, typical weapon of the Roman legionary. For the precise equivalence of the two terms, see Quintilian X i 11. In Ovid's poetry, the proportion of instances of _ensis_ to instances of _gladius_ is about 90:30; in the poetry of exile, it is 21:3. For a discussion of _ensis_/_gladius_, with statistics, see Axelson 51; the only poets to admit _gladius_ more freely than Ovid are Lucan and Juvenal. =79. TROESMIN= _Heinsius_ TROESMEN _C_ TROESENEN _B1_ TROEZEN _uel similia codd plerique_. Troesmis, the modern Galati, is located on the north bank of the Danube, about 160 kilometres inland from Aegissos (Tulcea). Heinsius did not have the assistance of _CIL_ V 6183-88 & 6195, but seems nonetheless to have conjectured that _Troesmin_ was a possible reading ('sed legendum, [Greek: Trôismis] uel [Greek: Trôsmis]'). Korn was the first to place _Troesmin_ in the text. =79. CELERI VIRTVTE.= 'With a bold surprise attack'. =80. INFECITQVE FERO SANGVINE DANVVIVM.= Compare the similar description of Vestalis' recapture of Aegissos: 'non negat hoc _Hister_, cuius tua dextera quondam / _puniceam Getico sanguine fecit aquam_' (vii 19-20). =80. DANVVIVM.= According to Owen at _Tr_ II 192 this, and not DANVBIVM (the reading of the manuscripts), is the spelling certified by the inscriptions. Manuscripts divide between the two spellings at Hor _Carm_ IV xv 21 and Tac _Germ_ I 1. =81-86.= Ovid similarly calls Vestalis as his witness at vii 3-4 'aspicis en praesens quali iaceamus in aruo, / nec me testis eris falsa solere queri'. =81. INCOMMODA.= The word is not found elsewhere in Ovid, and is not used in verse, except for satire (Hor _AP_ 169; Juvenal XIII 21). It is particularly common in Caesar. =81. CAELI= = 'climate', as commonly (_Tr_ III iii 7, Prop II xxviii 5, Cic _Att_ XI xxii 2). =82. QVAM VICINO TERREAR HOSTE ROGA.= An imitation of Tib I i 3 'quem labor assiduus _uicino terreat hoste_'. =83. SINTNE LITAE TENVES SERPENTIS FELLE SAGITTAE.= Similar descriptions of poisoned arrows at _Tr_ IV i 77 'imbuta ... tela uenenis', _Tr_ IV i 84, _Tr_ III x 64, _Tr_ V vii 16 'tela ... uipereo lurida felle', _EP_ I ii 16 'omnia uipereo spicula felle linunt', _EP_ III i 26, and _EP_ III iii 106. =84. FIAT AN HVMANVM VICTIMA DIRA CAPVT.= Human sacrifice similarly mentioned at _Tr_ IV iv 61-62 'illi quos audis hominum gaudere cruore, / paene sub eiusdem sideris axe iacent'. =85. MENTIAR.= Professor J. N. Grant points out to me the asyndeton following _quaere ... sintne_. Compare the similar problem at iv 31-32. =85. AN COEAT DVRATVS FRIGORE PONTVS.= Similar wording at vii 7 'ipse uides certe glacie concrescere Pontum', _Tr_ II 196 'maris astricto quae coit unda gelu', and _Tr_ III x 37. =86. IVGERA MVLTA FRETI.= According to _TLL_ VII.2 629 7-8 this is the unique instance of _iugerum_ being applied to water. The transferred sense is natural enough in view of the poets' application to the sea of such words as _campus_ and _arua_. =89. NON SVMVS ... ODIO.= Basically a prose use; but compare _Met_ II 438 'huic odio nemus est', _Fast_ VI 558, _EP_ II i 4 'iam minus hic odio est quam fuit ante locus', and _Ecl_ VIII 33 'tibi est odio mea fistula'. Owen's second edition has the misprint '_nec_ sumus hic odio', reproduced by Wheeler. The error was induced by _nec_ at the start of the pentameter. =90. NEC CVM FORTVNA MENS QVOQVE VERSA MEA EST.= For Ovid's use of syllepsis, see at vi 16 _spem nostram terras deseruitque simul_ (p 234). For the sentiment of this line, compare Sen _Med_ 176 'Fortuna opes auferre, non animum potest', where Costa cites Accius 619-20 Ribbeck2 'nam si a me regnum Fortuna atque opes / eripere quiuit, at uirtutem non quiit', Sen _Ben_ IV 10 5, Sen _Ep_ XXXVI 6, and Euripides fr. 1066 Nauck. =91. ILLA QVIES ANIMO.= _Animo_ is locative; or perhaps _in_ should be supplied from the following line: for the joining of a noun with a following preposition already with a complement, see Clausen on Persius I 131 'abaco numeros et secto in puluere metas'. I read _animo_ (found in one of Heinsius' Vatican manuscripts) because of the parallel structure it gives with the following _in ore_, but ANIMI (_BCMFHILT_) is possible enough: _OLD quies_ 7 cites _quies animi_ at Celsus III 18 5. =91. QVAM TV LAVDARE SOLEBAS.= The same phrase at _Her_ XV 193 'haec sunt illa [_sc_ pectora], Phaon, _quae tu laudare solebas_'. For the persistence of Ovid's old habits, compare _EP_ I x 29-30 (he remains a moderate drinker, as formerly). =93-94. SIC EGO SVM LONGE, SIC HIC, VBI BARBARVS HOSTIS / VT FERA PLVS VALEANT LEGIBVS ARMA, FACIT= is clearly corrupt, as will be seen from Wheeler's 'Such is my bearing in this far land, where the barbarian foe causes cruel arms to have more power than law' and André's 'Je vis au loin, ici, où un ennemi barbare donne aux armes cruelles plus de force qu'aux lois'. Merkel ejected the distich, which seems the best solution; it is not necessary to the poem's structure, and the iterated _facit ut_ in unrelated clauses at 94 and 97 is suspicious. Also, as Professor R. J. Tarrant notes, the _ut_ in 94 makes one expect that _ut_ in 95 will be correlative, when it in fact continues the thought of 93 (or rather of 91-92, after 93-94 are excised). Heinsius thought 93 alone to be suspect; if so, the meaning lying behind the text is probably something like 'What I once was at Rome, I still am here'. =93-94. HIC, VBI BARBARVS HOSTIS, / VT FERA PLVS VALEANT LEGIBVS ARMA FACIT.= Similar statements at _Tr_ V vii 47-48 'non metuunt leges, sed cedit uiribus aequum, / uictaque pugnaci iura sub ense iacent' and _Tr_ V x 43-44; see also Otto _lex_ 3. =93. BARBARVS HOSTIS.= The same phrase at _Tr_ III x 54, _Tr_ IV i 82, and _EP_ II vii 70. =95. RE ... NVLLA= _MHIL_ REM NVLLAM _BCFT_. The verb _queri_ can take a direct object, or be constructed with _de_ + ablative, but not both; this would in effect give the verb two objects. _Re ... nulla_ removes this difficulty and is obviously prone to corruption, the true object _de nobis_ being postponed to the following line. =96. FEMINA ... VIRVE PVERVE= = 'anyone'; compare _Tr_ III vii 29-30 'pone, Perilla, metum: tantummodo _femina nulla / neue uir_ a scriptis discat amare tuis', and Ovid's use of _femina uirque_ 'everyone' at _Met_ VI 314-15 '_femina uirque_ timent cultuque impensius _omnes_ ... uenerantur numina', _RA_ 814, _Tr_ I iii 23, and _Tr_ II 6. The repeated _u_ in _uirue_ would not have offended the Romans: compare for instance _Tr_ III vii 30 'neue uir', _Am_ I viii 97 'uiri uideat toto uestigia lecto', and _Met_ XII 204 'poteratque uiri uox illa uideri'; conscious alliteration at _Am_ III vii 59 'uiuosque uirosque' and _Met_ XIII 386 'inuictumque uirum uicit'. =98. HAEC QVONIAM TELLVS TESTIFICANDA MIHI EST.= Similar phrasing at _Ibis_ 27-28 (of Augustus) 'faciet quoque forsitan idem / _terra_ sit ut propior _testificanda mihi_'. =100. RESPECTV ... SVI.= 'Out of consideration for themselves'. _Respectus_ elsewhere in Ovid only at _Tr_ I iii 99-100 (of his wife after his departure) '[narratur ...] uoluisse mali [_Madvig_: mori _codd_] moriendo ponere sensus, / _respectu_ tamen non periisse _mei_'. _Respectus_ is found in Phaedrus, Martial, and Juvenal, but not in Virgil, Horace, or Propertius. =101. NEC MIHI CREDIDERIS= in its absolute use here seems colloquial: elsewhere Ovid uses _nec ... credideris_ to introduce a dependent clause (_Tr_ V xiv 43; _EP_ I viii 29). =101. EXTANT DECRETA QVIBVS NOS / LAVDAT ET IMMVNES PVBLICA CERA FACIT.= The same honour described in greater detail at xiv 51-56. =101. EXTANT= ('there exist') is somewhat more forceful than the nearly equivalent _sunt_: compare xiv 44 '_extat_ adhuc nemo saucius ore meo', Cic _Planc_ 2 'uideo ... hoc in numero neminem ... cuius non _extet_ in me summum meritum', and Cic _Diu_ I 71. =102. PVBLICA CERA= = _tabulae publicae_, 'public records', for which compare Cic _Arch_ 8 & _Fl_ 40, and Livy XXVI 36 11. The same metonymy at Val Max II x 1, where _tabulae_ and _cera_ are used as synonyms, and at Hor _Ep_ I vi 62 'Caerite cera', where commentators cite Aulus Gellius' mention of _tabulae Caerites_ (XVI 13). =103. QVAE= _R. J. Tarrant_ HAEC _L, probante Heinsio_ ET _BCMFHIT_. _Quae_ connects with _idem_ in the following line and provides a more satisfactory sense than _et_, which would make the sentence mean that Ovid did not consider the decrees something to boast of. _Quae quamquam_ is preferable to _haec quamquam_ since it connects better with the preceding line and is obviously more prone to corruption; but for a similar corruption of _haec_ compare Prop II xxiii 1 'fuit indocti haec [_uar_ et] semita uulgi'. For _quae_ Professor Tarrant cites _EP_ III v 9-10 '_quae quamquam_ lingua mihi sunt properante per horas / lecta satis multas, pauca fuisse queror' and _EP_ III viii 23-24 '_quae quamquam_ misisse pudet ... tu tamen haec quaeso consule missa boni'. =103. QVAMQVAM ... SIT= _G_ QVAMQVAM ... EST _BCMFHILT_. For the subjunctive Luck compares _Met_ XIV 465 'admonitu quamquam luctus renouentur amari' and _Met_ XV 244-45 '_quae_ [_sc_ elementa] _quamquam_ spatio distent, tamen omnia fiunt / ex ipsis'; in the first passage a few manuscripts and in the second the majority offer the indicative. Ovid usually has the indicative following _quamquam_; but _sit_ should be taken as the correct reading here in view of _G_'s early date. =105. NEC PIETAS IGNOTA MEA EST.= At xiii 19-38 Ovid describes an instance of his _pietas_, the reciting to the Getes of a poem in Getic on Tiberius. =105-10.= The figures of the imperial family had been a gift of Cotta Maximus, for which _EP_ II viii was a letter of thanks. For a discussion of Ovid's treatment of the imperial family, particularly in the poems of exile, see K. Scott "Emperor Worship in Ovid", _TAPA_ LXI [1930] 43-69. =106. CAESARIS.= Augustus, as is made clear by the next line. =107. NATVSQVE PIVS.= Tiberius; see at viii 63 _auum_ (p 277). For Tiberius' piety to Augustus' memory compare Tac _Ann_ IV 37 4 (AD 25; Tiberius speaking) 'cum diuus Augustus sibi atque urbi Romae templum apud Pergamum sisti non prohibuisset, _qui omnia facta dictaque eius uice legis obseruem_, placitum iam exemplum ... secutus sum'. =107. CONIVNXQVE SACERDOS.= Livia, priestess of the deified Augustus; Germanicus was his _flamen_. For the language compare Vell Pat II 75 3 'Liuia ... genere, probitate, forma Romanarum eminentissima, quam postea _coniugem_ Augusti uidimus, quam transgressi ad deos _sacerdotem_ ac filiam'. =108. FACTO ... DEO.= See at viii 63 _quem uirtus addidit astris_ (p 277). =109. VTERQVE NEPOTVM.= Germanicus and Drusus. =111. PRECANTIA VERBA= = _preces_. The same phrase at _Met_ VI 164, IX 159, and XIV 365. =112. EOO ... AB ORBE.= The same phrase at _Fast_ III 466 & V 557. =113-14.= Williams suggested deleting this distich: 'The distance between _Tota_ and _Pontica terra_, the use of _licet_=if, and _Pontica terra_ immediately followed by _Pontica tellus_, point to an interpolation'. The hyperbaton of _tota ... Pontica terra_ seems standard enough. Wheeler translates _licet quaeras_ as 'you are free to inquire', which may be right; however, the phrase does indeed seem awkward, and _licet_ may be an intrusive gloss that has displaced _uelim_: compare _Her_ IV 18 'fama--_uelim quaeras_--crimine nostra uacat'. The repetition of _Pontica terra_ and _Pontica ... tellus_ is a very strong argument for deleting one of the two distichs. However, 115-16 seems more likely to be the interpolation in view of the difficulties discussed in the next note. =115. ORA.= Ehwald (_KB_ 65) read ARA (_B_), citing Dessau _ILS_ 154 14-15 'ara(m) numini Augusto pecunia nostra faciendam curauimus; _ludos_ / ex idibus Augustis diebus sex p(ecunia) n(ostra) faciendos curauimus'; but the _ara_ and _ludi_ are clearly separate items in the inscription, which does not support the phrasing _ara natalem ludis celebrare_. Even with _ora_, 115-16 read rather oddly: the notion of an individual conducting _ludi_ is strange, and the singular _dei_ seems rather vague after the collective _his_ of 111. If the distich is excised (as Professor R. J. Tarrant suggests) 113-14 round out the paragraph that began with 105 (note the correspondence of _uidet hospita terra_ in 105 with _testis Pontica terra_ in 114), and 117 introduces _hospites_ as a second class of witnesses. =118. LONGA.= Not 'distant' (Wheeler) but 'long'; compare _Met_ XIII 407 'longus in angustum qua clauditur Hellespontus'. _Longus_ meaning 'distant' is extremely rare: _OLD longus_ 6 cites only Silius VI 628 'remeans longis ... oris' and ps-Quintilian _Decl_ 320 6 'longas terras ... peragraui' (Lewis and Short add Justinus 18 1 'longa a domo militia'). The normal Latin words for 'distant' were _longinquus_ and _longe_ (ancestor of French _loin_). =119. IS= in its various forms occurs only seven times in _EP_ IV: the other occurrences are of feminine singular _ea_ at i 17, viii 27 & xiv 11, of _eius_ at xv 6 (its only occurrence in the _Ex Ponto_), of accusative _id_ at i 19, and of accusative neuter plural _ea_ at x 35. The elegiac poets avoided the use of _is_, preferring _hic_, _ille_, and _iste_. The singular nominative forms were the only ones used relatively freely by Ovid (about forty instances of each); Tibullus and Propertius avoided even these (Platnauer 116; Axelson 70-71). =119. QVO LAEVVS FVERAT SVB PRAESIDE PONTVS.= See at 75 _praefuit his ... locis modo Flaccus_ (p 308). =119. LAEVVS ... PONTVS= = _Euxini litora laeua_ (_Tr_ IV i 60). A similar brachylogy at _EP_ I iv 31 'iunctior Haemonia est _Ponto_ quam Roma _sinistro_ [_Burman_: sit Histro _codd_]'. =119. PRAESIDE.= This seems to be the first instance of _praeses_ 'governor' in Latin. It is found in prose from Tacitus and Suetonius on: Trajan even uses it in his official correspondence (Pliny _Ep_ X xliv). =119. FVERAT.= See at vi 12 _nec fueram tanti_ (p 230). =121. AVDIERIT.= Probably a perfect subjunctive 'may have heard', although possibly an epistolary future perfect indicative ('when you receive this, your brother will perhaps [_forsitan_] have heard'). For the perfect subjunctive compare _Met_ X 560-62 _'forsitan audieris_ aliquam certamine cursus / ueloces superasse uiros'. =121. FORTVNA EST IMPAR ANIMO.= Similar phrasing at _Tr_ V v 46-47 (on his wife's birthday) 'at non sunt ista gaudia nata die, / sed labor et curae _fortunaque moribus impar_'; but note the different sense of _fortuna_. =121. FORTVNA.= 'My means' (Wheeler). The sense is rare but classical; _OLD fortuna_ 12 cites among other passages Cic _Fam_ XIV 4 2 'periculum fortunarum ['possessions'] et capitis sui' and Caes _BG_ V 43 4. =122. CARPO ... OPES.= For the sense of _carpo_ see at viii 32 _carpsit opes ... meas_ (p 266). =126. ILLVM= _CMFHILTB2_ ILLI _B1_. Either accusative or dative would be acceptable enough with _latere_. The earliest instances from verse given by _TLL_ VII.2 997 49 are Lucretius III 280 for the dative and _Aen_ I 130 for the accusative. I retain the accusative because it is the reading of most manuscripts, including _B_'s close relative _C_. There are similar variants involving the object of _latere_ at _Fast_ V 361: the accusative given by most manuscripts is generally read in preference to the dative. =127-29. TV ... TV.= For the anaphora of _tu_ in hymns or solemn prayer, see the passages collected by Nisbet and Hubbard at Hor _Carm_ I x 9 and by Tarrant at Sen _Ag_ 311. =127. SVPERIS ASCITE.= _Asciscere_ is generally used of admission to the citizenship or to the Senate: for parallels to the metaphorical use here, see Tarrant at Sen _Ag_ 812-13 'tuus ille bis seno meruit labore / _adlegi caelo_ magnus Alcides'. =128.= Causal =VT= [_'ex ueteribus' Naugerius_] seems an appropriate correction for the manuscripts' lame ET. =129-30. NOSTRAS ... PRECES.= The hyperbaton adds elevation and dignity to the prayer. =129-30. INTER CONVEXA ... SIDERA= = _inter sidera conuexi caeli_; the hypallage adds further to the elevation of the passage. For _conuexa_ compare Festus (58 Muller; 51 Lindsay) 'conuexum est ex omni parte declinatum, _qualis est natura caeli_, quod ex omni parte ad terram uersum declinatum est', _Met_ I 26 'ignes _conuexi_ uis et sine pondere _caeli_', _Ecl_ IV 50, and Cic _Arat_ 560 (314). In particular compare _Aen_ I 607-8, which Ovid is clearly imitating: 'dum montibus umbrae / lustrabunt, _conuexa_ polus dum _sidera_ pascet'. There is some question as to whether _conuexa_ should there be taken with _sidera_, or as the object of _lustrabunt_: Ovid clearly took it with _sidera_. =130. SOLLICITO QVAS DAMVS ORE PRECES.= For the general wording compare _Tr_ III viii 20 'tum quoque _sollicita mente rogandus_ erit' and _EP_ III i 148 'nil nisi _sollicitae_ sint tua uerba _preces_': for _sollicito ... ore_ compare _sollicita uoce_ at _Met_ X 639 & XIV 706. =131. PERVENIANT ISTVC.= Compare _EP_ II ii 95 'si tamen haec audis et uox mea _peruenit istuc_ [=_Romam_]'. =131-32. CARMINA ... QVAE DE TE MISI CAELITE FACTA NOVO.= Ovid also mentions his poems on Augustus' apotheosis at vi 17-18, viii 63-64 & xiii 25-26. =133-34. NEC TV / IMMERITO NOMEN MITE PARENTIS HABES.= 'Et ce n'est pas sans raison que tu portes le doux nom de Père' (André) must be correct as against Wheeler's 'for not undeservedly hast thou the gracious name of "Father"', since _nec_, although it can mean _et ... non_ or _sed ... non_, cannot mean _nam ... non_; the proof of this is the frequent occurrence of _neque enim_. The litotes _non (haud, nec) immerito_ is common enough in Latin: see the many examples at _TLL_ VII.1 457 26 ff. But in the four instances given of _nec immerito_, it never serves to introduce a new phrase as here. At Plautus _St_ 28 'decet _neque_ id _immerito_ eueniet' it introduces a second verb which amplifies the preceding one, while it modifies preceding verbs at Ter _Ad_ 615 'tanta nunc suspicio de me incidit _neque_ ea immerito', Val Max IV vii 1 'inimicus patriae fuisse Ti. Gracchus existimatus est, _nec immerito_, quia potentiam suam saluti eius praetulerat', and Quintilian X i 104 'habet amatores--_nec immerito_--Cremuti libertas'. One would expect a clause of causation to follow _auguror his igitur flecti tua numina_, and I think it possible that Ovid wrote NAM TV / E MERITO (Professor C. P. Jones suggests EX MERITO). Both the corruption from _e merito_ and the subsequent interpolation of _nec_ would be easy enough. For _e(x) merito_, compare vii 16 'contigit _ex merito_ qui tibi nuper honor'. =133. NEC TV.= The elegiac poets admitted a monosyllabic ending to the hexameter if it was preceded by another monosyllable closely linked to it in sense: see Platnauer 13. For true monosyllabic endings, see at ii 47 _Aonius fons_. =134. NOMEN MITE PARENTIS= = _nomen parentis, quod significat te mitem esse_. At _Tr_ I i 73 and _EP_ II viii 51 members of the imperial family are called _mitissima numina_. There is another instance of hypallage with _nomen mite_ (a different sense of _mitis_ being used) at _Fast_ V 64 '_nomen_ et aetatis _mite_ [_codd_: rite _Riese_] senatus erat', 'the very name of senate signified a ripe old age' (Frazer). =134. PARENTIS= = _patris patriae_. For the title compare _Res Gestae_ 35 (the final achievement listed by Augustus) 'tertium decimum consulatum cum gerebam, senatus et equester ordo populusque Romanus uniuersus appellauit me _patrem patriae_, idque in uestibulo aedium mearum inscribendum esse et in curia et in foro Aug. sub quadrigis quae mihi ex s.c. positae sunt decreuit'. Suetonius describes the conferring of the title at _Aug_ 58. X. To Albinovanus Pedo The poem is the only one in the _Ex Ponto_ addressed to Albinovanus. Considering the elder Seneca's express testimony that Albinovanus was a close friend of Ovid (see at 4 [pp 327-28]), this is rather surprising; perhaps Albinovanus, an associate of Germanicus (Tac _Ann_ I 60 2), had, like some of Ovid's other friends, asked not to be mentioned in his verse. The poem begins with the statement that Ovid is now in his sixth year of exile; unlike flint and iron, he is not touched by the passing of time (1-8). He says that his tribulations are like those of Ulysses, but more severe; there follows a comparison of his experiences with those of Ulysses (9-30). He then describes the bleakness of the climate, and how the sea freezes over in winter (31-34). He has heard that his accounts are not believed at Rome, and will therefore explain the reasons for the sea's freezing over (35-38). At Tomis the north wind prevails, and the salinity of the sea is reduced by the influx of many large rivers (which are listed in a catalogue); the sea's freezing is caused by these two factors (39-64). He is telling all this to Albinovanus to pass the time; Albinovanus is writing poetry as well, about Theseus, who is an example for him to follow (65-82). Ovid does not wish to imply that Albinovanus is not already doing everything possible to assist him (83-84). The poem combines with remarkable ease a number of quite disparate subjects, and is in this sense reminiscent of Tibullus. Most of the subjects had been used previously in the poetry of exile; in particular, see _Tr_ I v 57-84 for an extended comparison of the trials of Ulysses and those of Ovid. The disquisition on the reasons for the Euxine's freezing over is, however, new. It seems to have been drawn from a geographical or physical treatise which has left its mark elsewhere in Latin literature: see at 37-38 (p 340-42). =1. CIMMERIO= _British Library Harley 2607 (Tarrant)_ CVMERIO _M1_ IN ETIAM MEMORI _C_ IN ********** _B1_ IN HEMONIO _HITP_ IN EVXINO _F_ IN exino _B2c_ BISTONIO _LM2ul_ Many centuries had passed since the Cimmerians had inhabited Scythia; even Herodotus, who tells the story of their departure, seems to regard the event as belonging to the distant past (IV 11-12). Homer was vaguely aware of the nation: at _Od_ XI 13-19 (imitated at _Pan Mess_ 64-66), he speaks of the '[Greek: Kimmeriôn andrôn ... polis]' by the stream of Ocean, which never receives sunlight. For _Cimmerio_ Burman compared Claudian _Cons Stil_ I 129 'nunc prope Cimmerii tendebat litora _Ponti_'; see as well _In Eutr_ I 249 'extra _Cimmerias_, Taurorum claustra, paludes'. =1. BIS TERTIA ... AESTAS.= The poem is therefore dated to the summer of 14. For Ovid's mentions of the length of his exile, see at vi 5 _quinquennis_ (p 227). =3. ECQVOS ... ECQVOD= _Laurentianus 36 2, saec xv_ ET QVOS ... ET QVOD _BCMFHILT_. The same corruption is found in certain manuscripts at _Met_ III 442-45 (Narcissus speaking) '"_ecquis_, io siluae, crudelius" inquit "amauit? ... _ecquem_ ... qui sic tabuerit longo meministis in aeuo?"' and commonly. Other instances of _ecquis_ in emotionally heightened questions at _Fast_ IV 488, _Tr_ I vi 11, _EP_ III i 3, and _Her_ XXI 106. =3. SILICES ... FERRVM.= See at viii 49 _tabida consumit ferrum lapidemque uetustas_ (p 270). =4. ALBINOVANE.= Albinovanus Pedo[21] and Ovid seem to have been close friends. Ovid mentions him again at xvi 6 'sidereusque Pedo', and he was the source of the famous anecdote in the elder Seneca (_Cont_ II 2 12) of how Ovid chose as the three lines in his poems he most wished to retain the same three verses a group of his friends most wished to remove. [Footnote 21: _PIR_1 A 343; _PIR_2 A 479; PW 1,1 1314 21-40; Schanz-Hosius II 266 (§315); Bardon 69-73.] He was a famous raconteur: the younger Seneca calls Pedo _fabulator elegantissimus_ at _Ep_ CXXII 15-16 when repeating one of his anecdotes. At the time this poem was written, Albinovanus was engaged on a _Theseid_ (71). Quintilian perhaps had this poem in mind when he included a rather slighting mention of Albinovanus in his catalogue of epic poets at X i 90: 'Rabirius ac Pedo non indigni cognitione, si uacet'. He may, however, have been thinking of Albinovanus' poem on Germanicus' campaigns, of which the elder Seneca preserves some twenty-three hexameters (_Suas_ I 15; commentary by V. Bongi, _Istituto Lombardo di scienze e lett. Rendiconti [Classe di Lettere]_ ser. 3 13 [1949], 28-48. Norden and others have attributed Morel _Incert_ 46 'ingenia immansueta suoque simillima caelo' to the same poem). Martial several times mentions Albinovanus as a writer of epigrams (II lxxvii 5, V v 5 & X xx (xix) 10); this fits well with the younger Seneca's description of Albinovanus as _fabulator elegantissimus_. At _Ann_ I 60 2, Tacitus mentions Pedo as 'praefectus finibus Frisiorum' in Germanicus' campaign of 15. =5-6. LAPIDEM ... ANVLVS ... VOMER.= See at viii 49 _tabida consumit ferrum lapidemque uetustas_ (p 270), and compare _AA_ I 473-76 'ferreus assiduo consumitur _anulus_ usu, / interit assidua _uomer_ aduncus humo. / quid magis est saxo durum, quid mollius unda? / dura tamen molli saxa cauantur aqua'. =6. ATTERITVR= _Heinsius_. Korn and Riese printed the manuscripts' ET TERITVR, for which Riese cited _Tr_ I iv 9-10 'pinea texta sonant pulsu [_Rothmaler_: pulsi _codd_], stridore rudentes, / ingemit _et_ nostris ipsa carina malis' and _Tr_ III iv 57-58 'ante oculos errant domus, urbsque et forma locorum, / accedunt_que_ suis singula facta locis', but these are extended descriptions of single events, not lists of separate examples. Elsewhere in Ovid, the only form found of _atterere_ is _attritus_: this circumstance perhaps contributed to the corruption of the present passage. =6. ATTERITVR PRESSA VOMER ADVNCVS HVMO.= Professor R. J. Tarrant points out to me the hypallage in this passage. _Pressus_ is to be taken twice, with _uomer_ and with _humo_: the earth is _pressed down_ as the plough is _pressed_ into it. =7. TEMPVS EDAX.= The same phrase at _Met_ XV 234; compare as well _edax ... uetustas_ at _Met_ XV 872. =7. PRAETER NOS.= At _EP_ II vii 39-45, Ovid (with a series of images parallel to that of the present passage) says that he is in fact being worn away by the hardships he is enduring: 'ut ... caducis / percussu crebro _saxa_ cauantur aquis, / sic ego continuo Fortunae uulneror ictu ... nec magis assiduo _uomer_ tenuatur ab usu, / nec magis est curuis Appia trita rotis, / pectora quam mea sunt serie calcata malorum'. =8. PERDIT= _I_ PERDET _BCMFHLT_. The tense is made probable by the preceding _cauat ... consumitur ... atteritur_ and the following _cessat_; compare as well _Tr_ IV vi 17-18 'cuncta pot_est_ ... uetustas / praeter quam curas attenuare meas'. Third conjugation verbs in the third person are for obvious reasons peculiarly apt to corruption of tense and mood. The alteration from present to future is rather less common than the inverse corruption, for an instance of which see at xii 18 _reddet_ (p 378). =8. CESSAT DVRITIA MORS QVOQVE VICTA MEA.= Death does not conquer Ovid, but is conquered by him. Professor E. Fantham points out to me the baroque inversion in the phrase, citing as a parallel Sen _Tr_ 1171-75, where Hecuba says that death fears her and flees her. Riese placed a question mark at the end of the line, but since in 7 Ovid asserts unambiguously that time does not affect him, there seems no reason to make the following line a question. In his poems from exile Ovid often expresses his wish to die; see _Tr_ III viii 39-40 'tantus amor necis est querar ut cum Caesaris ira / quod non offensas uindicet ense suas', _Tr_ III xiii 5-6, IV vi 49-50, and V ix 37-38. =9. EXEMPLVM EST ANIMI NIMIVM PATIENTIS VLIXES.= Ovid frequently compares his trials in exile to those undergone by Ulysses. The longest instance of this is _Tr_ I v 57-84; compare as well _Tr_ III xi 61-62 'crede mihi, si sit nobis collatus Vlixes, / Neptuni minor est quam Iouis ira fuit', _Tr_ V v 1-4, and _EP_ I iii 33-34, II vii 59-60 & III vi 19-20. Ulysses' voyage was a favourite subject of the Latin poets. For a surviving example, see Prop III xii 23-36. An indication of the subject's popularity is the fact that _Pan Mess_ 45-49 'nam seu diuersi fremat inconstantia uulgi, / non alius sedare queat; seu iudicis ira / sit placanda, tuis poterit mitescere uerbis. / non Pylos aut Ithace tantos genuisse feruntur / Nestora uel paruae magnum decus urbis Vlixem' is followed not by a description of Ulysses' eloquence, as would have been appropriate, but by a narrative of his travels (52-81): this illogical sequence was no doubt induced by the poet's familiarity with similar descriptions of Ulysses' voyage in the poetry of his time. Professor E. Fantham cites Seneca's use of Ulysses as an _exemplum patientiae_ at Sen _Dial_ II 2 1, where Hercules is compared to Ulysses. =9. EXEMPLVM EST.= Professor R. J. Tarrant points out to me the unusual baldness of the phrase. In Ovid's earlier verse _exemplum_ has an instructional or minatory overtone (_AA_ III 686, _Met_ IX 454). The flatter use of _exemplum_ seems to be typical of the poetry of exile: compare _EP_ III i 44 'coniugis exemplum diceris esse bonae', and _Tr_ I v 21, IV iii 72 & IV iv 71. =9. NIMIVM PATIENTIS= = [Greek: polytlas] (_Il_ VIII 97, _Od_ V 171, et saep.). The sense of _nimium_ seen here is not generally found in poetry, or even in literary prose; the instances cited by _OLD nimium2_ 2 are all from comedy, Cato, and the letters of Cicero. =10. DVO LVSTRA.= Compare xvi 13-14 'Vlixem / errantem saeuo per _duo lustra_ mari' and _AA_ III 15-16 'est pia Penelope _lustris_ errante _duobus_ / et totidem lustris bella gerente uiro'. =11. SOLLICITI ... FATI= is based on such phrases as _sollicita uita_ (Prop II vii 1) and _sollicitissima aetas_ (Sen _Breu Vit_ 16 1). Similar phrasing at _Tr_ IV x 116 'nec me _sollicitae_ taedia _lucis_ habent'. =11. PLACIDAE SAEPE FVERE MORAE.= Compare Prop III xii 23-24 'Postumus alter erit miranda coniuge Vlixes: / non illi _longae_ tot nocuere _morae_'. =13. SEX ANNIS.= According to Homer (_Od_ VII 261), Ulysses left Calypso in the eighth year of his stay on her island. André points out that Hyginus _Fab_ CXXV 16 has Ulysses on the island for one year only; for other estimates of the length of Ulysses' stay, see Roscher III 627. Ovid was probably influenced by the _bis ... tertia_ of the poem's opening. _Cimmerio_ in 1 furnishes another connection with Ulysses (_Od_ XI 14; quoted at 1). =13. FOVISSE.= Compare _Od_ V 118-120 (Calypso speaking) '[Greek: Schetlioi este, theoi, zêlêmones exochon allôn, / hoi te theais agaasthe par' andrasin eunazesthai / amphadiên, hên tis te philon poiêset' akoitên]'. =13. CALYPSO= _BCMILT_. Lenz and André print CALYPSON (_FH_). Roman poets followed the Greek declension of feminine proper nouns ending in [Greek:-ô]; compare _Pan Mess_ 77 'fecunda Atlantidos arua _Calypsus_ [_uar_ calipsos]'. The accusatives of such nouns are of the same form as the nominative. See for example _Aen_ IV 383-84 'et nomine _Dido_ / saepe uocaturum' and _Aen_ VII 324-25 'luctificam _Allecto_ dirarum ab sede dearum / infernisque ciet tenebris', cited by Charisius 63 (Keil); neither he nor Servius shows knowledge of an accusative in _-on_. Scribes, however, found the declension puzzling; and it is common to find the pseudo-accusative in _-on_ offered by some manuscripts whenever the true form in _-o_ occurs; this has happened at _Her_ VI 65 'ultimus e sociis sacram conscendis in _Argo_', _Her_ VII 7 'certus es ire tamen miseramque relinquere _Dido_ [_edd_: Didon _codd_]', _Her_ XII 9 'cur umquam Colchi Magnetida uidimus _Argo_', _Am_ II ii 45 'dum nimium seruat custos Iunonius _Io_', _Am_ II xix 29 'dum seruat Iuno mutatam cornibus _Io_', and Prop I xx 17-18 'namque ferunt olim Pagasae naualibus _Argo_ [_edd_: Argon _codd_] / egressam longe Phasidos isse uiam'. Modern editors often print the spurious form, even at _AA_ I 323 'et modo se Europen fieri, modo postulat _Io_', where all manuscripts offer the correct reading. For a full discussion of this and the inverse corruption (for instance of _Iason_ to _Iaso_), see Goold 12-14. =14. AEQVOREAEQVE.= Compare _Am_ II xvii 17-18 'creditur _aequoream_ Pthio Nereida regi, / Egeriam iusto concubuisse Numae' and _AA_ II 123-24 'non formosus erat, sed erat facundus Vlixes, / et tamen _aequoreas_ torsit amore deas'. Merkel's AEAEAEQVE is ingenious but unnecessary. =15. HIPPOTADES= = _Aeolus_. The same patronymic at _Met_ IV 663, XI 431, XIV 86, XIV 224 & XV 707. =15. QVI DAT PRO MVNERE VENTOS.= Compare _Met_ XIV 223-26 'Aeolon ille refert Tusco regnare profundo, / Aeolon Hippotaden, cohibentem carcere _uentos_; / quos bouis inclusos tergo, _memorabile munus_, / Dulichium sumpsisse ducem' and _Od_ X 19-26. =17. NEC BENE CANTANTES LABOR EST AVDISSE PVELLAS.= The description is intentionally prosaic. For the Homeric account of the Sirens see _Od_ XII 37-54 & 153-200. =17. AVDISSE= _F_ AVDIRE _BCMHILT_. _Audire_ cannot stand, as the present tense conflicts with _fuit_ in the following line. For _est audisse_ representing _fuit audire_, compare _Met_ IX 5-6 (Achelous hesitates before recounting his wrestling-match with Hercules) 'referam tamen ordine: nec tam / turpe _fuit uinci_ quam _contendisse decorum est_'. =18. NEC DEGVSTANTI LOTOS AMARA FVIT.= See _Od_ IX 82-104 for Homer's account of the Lotus-eaters. =18. NEC ... AMARA= = _et dulcis_. Compare _Od_ IX 94 '[Greek: lôtoio ... meliêdea karpon]'. =18. DEGVSTANTI.= The verb is extremely rare in the sense 'taste, sample'; this is the only instance of the meaning found in poetry, although a transferred use is found at Lucretius II 191-92 'ignes ... celeri flamma _degustant_ tigna trabesque' and _Aen_ XII 375-76 'lancea ... summum _degustat_ uulnere corpus'. Ovid uses the somewhat more common _gustare_ in a similar context at _Tr_ IV i 31-32 'sic noua Dulichio lotos _gustata_ palato / illo quo nocuit grata sapore fuit'. =21. VRBEM LAESTRYGONOS= = '[Greek: Lamou aipy ptoliethron, / Têlepylon Laistrygoniên]' (_Od_ X 81-82) or 'Lami ueterem Laestrygonos ... urbem' (_Met_ XIV 233), where the crews of all the ships but Ulysses' own were killed and eaten; accounts of this at _Od_ X 76-132 and _Met_ XIV 233-42. Ovid refers again to the episode at _EP_ II ix 41 'quis non Antiphaten Laestrygona deuouet?'. =21. LAESTRYGONOS= _BC_ LE(-I-)STRYGONIS _MFHILT_. _Laestrygonos_ = [Greek: Laistrygonos] (_Od_ X 106). At _Met_ XIV 233 (cited above) all manuscripts offer _Laestrygonis_; the Greek genitive should probably be read as here. =22. GENTIBVS OBLIQVA QVAS OBIT HISTER AQVA.= Similar wording at ii 37-38 'hic mea cui recitem nisi flauis scripta Corallis, / quasque alias gentes barbarus Hister obit?'. =22. OBLIQVA= apparently refers to the swirling of a river's eddies. The sense 'winding' generally given the word would fit at _Met_ IX 17-18 (Achelous to the father of Deianira) 'dominum me cernis aquarum / cursibus _obliquis_ inter tua regna fluentum', but not at _Met_ VIII 550-53 (Achelous to Theseus) '"succede meis" ait "Inclite, tectis, / Cecropide, nec te committe rapacibus undis: / ferre trabes solidas _obliquaque_ uoluere magno / murmure saxa solent"' or _Her_ VI 87 'illa refrenat aquas _obliquaque_ flumina sistit'. At _Met_ I 39 'fluminaque _obliquis_ cinxit decliuia ripis', _obliquis_ should be taken with _flumina_, and _decliuia_ with _ripis_; or possibly both adjectives should be taken with both nouns. =23. VINCET.= Like _superare_, _uincere_ has the twin meanings of 'surpass' and 'defeat'. =23. CYCLOPS.= The same pairing of the Laestrygonians and Polyphemus at _EP_ II ii 113-114 (to Messalinus; he should address Augustus on Ovid's behalf) 'nec tamen Aetnaeus uasto Polyphemus in antro / accipiet uoces Antiphatesue tuas'. =23. FERITATE= goes with _uincet_: 'will surpass in savagery'. I once thought PIETATE (_BCIac_) was the correct reading, connecting the word with _saeuum_ and taking it as a reference to human sacrifice; but this seems strained and obscure. _Pietate_ may be an intrusion from ecclesiastical Latin; Professor R. J. Tarrant suggests that it is possibly an anticipation of the following _Piacchen_. =23. PIACCHEN= _B_ PIAECHEN _C_. See the critical apparatus for the other forms offered by the manuscripts. As the king's name is not elsewhere recorded, its true form must remain in doubt. =24. QVI QVOTA TERRORIS PARS SOLET ESSE MEI.= With Burman, Weber, and Wheeler I take the line as a statement: compare _EP_ II x 31 'et _quota pars_ haec sunt rerum quas uidimus ambo' (cited by Williams), where _quota_, as here, takes the meaning 'how small' from context. Most editors take it as a question, for which compare _Am_ II xii 9-10 'Pergama cum caderent bello superata bilustri, / ex tot in Atridis _pars quota_ laudis erat?'. =25-27. SCYLLA ... CHARYBDIN.= Ovid gives similar descriptions of Scylla at _Am_ III xii 21-22 and _EP_ III i 122, of Charybdis at _Am_ II xvi 25-26, and of Scylla and Charybdis at _Her_ XII 123-26 and _Met_ XIII 730-33. All such descriptions in Latin poetry of course derive ultimately from _Od_ XII 73-110. =25. QVOD LATRET AB INGVINE MONSTRIS.= Professor R. J. Tarrant points out to me Ovid's imitation here of _Ecl_ VI 74-75 'Scyllam ... candida succinctam latrantibus inguina monstris'; the _rates_ and _nautae_ of Ovid's line 26 are in lines 76 and 77 of the Virgilian passage. =25. QVOD.= 'Granted that'. Bömer at _Met_ VII 705 claims that the only passage where this is the necessary meaning of _quod_ is _Priapea_ VI 1 'quod sum ligneus ... Priapus ... prendam te tamen', but it seems to be the meaning required at Lucretius II 532-35 'nam _quod_ rara uides magis esse animalia quaedam / fecundamque minus naturam cernis in illis, / at regione locoque alio terrisque remotis / multa licet genere esse in eo numerumque repleri'. All six instances of the idiom cited by the _OLD_ (_quod_ 6c) are from poetry. In the two instances already cited, _quod_ is followed by the indicative, as is the case at Prop III ii 11-16. _Quod_ in this sense followed by the subjunctive seems to be an Ovidian idiom; it is used by him at _Her_ IV 157-61 '_quod_ mihi _sit_ genitor, qui possidet aequora, Minos, / quod _ueniant_ proaui fulmina torta manu, / quod _sit_ auus radiis frontem uallatus acutis, / purpureo tepidum qui mouet axe diem-- / nobilitas sub amore iacet!' and _Met_ VII 704-7 'liceat mihi uera referre / pace deae: quod _sit_ roseo spectabilis ore, / quod _teneat_ lucis, _teneat_ confinia noctis, / nectareis quod _alatur_ aquis, ego Procrin amabam', and by an imitator of Ovid at _Her_ XVIII 41. =26. HENIOCHAE NAVTIS PLVS NOCVERE RATES.= The Heniochi lived on the eastern shore of the Euxine and were, as Ovid indicates, known as pirates (Strabo XI 2 12-13). =27. INFESTIS ... ACHAEIS.= Mela includes the Achaei and the Heniochi in his list of 'ferae incultaeque gentes uasto mari adsidentes' (I 110). The two nations are grouped together by Strabo (XII 2 12) and Pliny (_NH_ VI 30). =28. EPOTVM ... VOMAT.= Professor R. J. Tarrant cites the verbal similarity at (pseudo-Ovidian) _Am_ III v 18 'iterum _pasto pascitur_ ante cibo'. =28. EPOTVM= _B_ ET POTVM _C_ EPOTET _MFHILT_. _Epotet_ is supported by _Her_ XII 125 'quaeque uomit totidem fluctus totidemque resorbet' and Od XII 105-6 '[Greek: tris men gar t' aniêsin ep êmati, tris d' anaroibdei / deinon]'. Professor A. Dalzell points out in particular '[Greek: tris ... tris]' paralleling _ter ... ter_ in the present passage. But at _RA_ 740 Ovid wrote 'hic uomit epotas [_uarr_ et potat; hic potat; optatas; acceptas; aequoreas] dira Charybdis aquas'; and the corruption to _epotet_ seems much more probable than the inverse. Ovid elsewhere uses only the perfect participle of _epotare_. =29. LICENTIVS ERRANT.= Ovid is clearly imitating _Aen_ VII 557-58 (Juno to Allecto) 'te super aetherias _errare licentius_ auras / haud pater ille uelit, summi regnator Olympi', apparently the only other instance of _licentius_ in classical verse. =31-32= act as a bridge to the next major section of the poem, and do not in themselves contribute to what has been said. =31. INFRONDES= is a _hapax legomenon_. =32. HIC FRETA VEL PEDITI PERVIA REDDIT HIEMPS.= Other mentions of the sea's freezing at vii 7, _Tr_ II 196, III x 35-50 & V x 2, and _EP_ III i 15-16 (to the Pontus) 'tu glacie freta uincta tenes, et in aequore piscis / inclusus tecta saepe natauit aqua'. Parts of the Black Sea do in fact freeze: 'In winter, spurs of the Siberian anticyclone (clear, dry, high-pressure air mass) create a strong current of cold air, and the northwestern Black Sea cools down considerably, with regular ice formation' (article on "Black Sea", _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, Macropaedia vol. 2, pp. 1096-98 [Chicago: 1974]). =32. HIEMPS.= For the last one hundred years, the spelling given in editions of Latin texts has generally been _hiems_ (some exceptions are Palmer's _Heroides_, the Paravia Virgil, and Reynolds' editions of Seneca), but the spelling in the ancient manuscripts of Virgil is invariably _hiemps_. Munro's argument for this spelling seems unanswerable: 'obeying the almost unanimous testimony of our own [i.e. _O_ and _Q_ of Lucretius] and other good mss. we cannot but give _umerus_ _umor_ and the like: also _hiemps_. I have heard it asked what then is the genitive of _hiemps_; to which the best reply perhaps would be what is the perfect of _sumo_ or the supine of _emo_. The Latins wrote _hiemps_, as they wrote _emptum_ _sumpsi_ _sumptum_ and a hundred such forms, because they disliked _m_ and _s_ or _t_ to come together without the intervention of a _p_ sound; and our mss. all attest this: _tempto_ likewise is the only true form, which the Italians in the 15th century rejected for _tento_' (Lucretius ed. 4 vol. 1 p. 33). =33-34. VT, QVA REMVS ITER PVLSIS MODO FECERAT VNDIS, / SICCVS CONTEMPTA NAVE VIATOR EAT.= Ovid has in mind Virgil's description of the freezing of a Scythian river (_G_ III 360-62) 'concrescunt subitae currenti in flumine crustae, / undaque iam tergo ferratos sustinet orbis, / puppibus illa prius, patulis nunc hospita plaustris'. =35. QVI VENIVNT ISTINC VIX VOS EA CREDERE DICVNT; / QVAM MISER EST QVI FERT ASPERIORA FIDE.= For Ovid's fear that his accounts of what he has undergone will not be believed, see vii 3-4 and _Tr_ I v 49-50, III x 35-36 & IV i 65-66. In particular, see ix 85-86 'mentiar, an coeat duratus frigore Pontus, / et teneat glacies iugera multa freti'. =37-38. NEC TE CAVSAS NESCIRE SINEMVS / HORRIDA SARMATICVM CVR MARE DVRET HIEMPS.= Ovid's principal explanation of the freezing of the Euxine, the low salinity of the water, is found in four other Latin authors. At IV 718-28, Valerius Flaccus offers a catalogue of rivers similar to that of Ovid, and, like Ovid, gives the cold winter winds as a subsidiary reason for the freezing. It is quite possible that Ovid is Valerius' source; but this is very unlikely to be the case for Macrobius _Sat_ VII xii 28-38 (cited by Burman). The passage is a discussion of why, although oil congeals, wine and vinegar do not. Wine does not freeze because it contains elements of fire; this is why Homer called it [Greek: aithopa oinon]. Vinegar does not freeze because it is so bitter; it is like seawater, which because of its bitterness does not congeal. 'nam quod Herodotus historiarum scriptor contra omnium ferme qui haec quaesiuerunt opinionem scripsit [IV 28], mare Bosporicum, quod et Cimmerium appellat, earumque partium mare omne, quod Scythicum dicitur, id gelu constringi et consistere, aliter est quam putatur'. It is not the seawater that freezes, but the layer of fresh water above it, which comes from the rivers that flow into the Euxine. Macrobius goes on to explain that there is an outflow of fresh water to the Mediterranean and an influx of seawater, with perfect correctness: the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ article cited at 32 notes that 'Flows in the Bosporus are complex, with surface Black Sea water going out and deep, saltier water coming in from the Sea of Marmara*. There can be very little doubt, given the identity of the explanations and the similarity of language, that Ovid and Macrobius were drawing on a common source. The same source is reflected at Gellius XVII viii 8-16. Here Taurus the philosopher asks Gellius why oil often congeals, but wine does not. Gellius answers that wine is fiery by nature, which is why Homer called it [Greek: aithopa oinon]. Taurus responds that wine is indeed known to have fire in it, for it warms the body when drunk; yet vinegar, in spite of its cooling effects, never freezes; perhaps things which are light and smooth are more prone to freezing. It is also worth asking why fresh water freezes, but seawater does not. 'tametsi Herodotus ... historiae scriptor contra omnium ferme qui haec quaesiuerunt opinionem scribit mare Bosporicum, quod Cimmerium appellatur, earumque partium mare omne quod Scythicum dicitur, gelu stringi et consistere'. No explanation for the freezing-over is given.[22] [Footnote 22: Macrobius does include the explanation for the freezing-over. In view of his fuller account, I believe that Macrobius drew his material from Gellius' source and not from Gellius. It is of course possible enough that Macrobius conflated Gellius with another source.] Ammianus Marcellinus XXII 8 48 gives the same two explanations for the Euxine's freezing as Ovid: 'quicquid autem eiusdem Pontici sinus Aquilone caeditur et pruinis, ita perstringitur gelu ut nec amnium cursus subteruolui credantur, nec per infidum et labile solum gressus hominis possit uel iumenti firmari, quod uitium numquam mare sincerum, sed permixtum aquis amnicis temptat'. At XXII 8 46 he once again mentions the sweetness of the Euxine's waters. Lucan describes the freezing of the Euxine (V 436-41), but gives no explanation of the cause. =39. PLAVSTRI PRAEBENTIA FORMAM ... SIDERA.= The Great Bear. Other mentions of the constellation at _Met_ X 446-47 'inter ... triones / flexerat obliquo plaustrum temone Bootes', _Tr_ III iv b 1-2 (47-48), III x 3-4 & V iii 7-8, and _EP_ I v 73-74. Compare as well Germanicus _Aratea_ 24-26 'axem Cretaeae dextra laeuaque tuentur / siue Arctoe seu Romani cognominis Vrsae / Plaustraue [_Grotius_:-que _codd_], quae facie [_scripsi (datiuum)_[23]: facies _codd_] stellarum proxima uerae [_Barth_: uera _uel_ uero _codd_]', _Her_ XVIII 152, Sen _Ag_ 66-68, and Lucan V 23 'Hyperboreae plaustrum glaciale sub Vrsae'. [Footnote 23: This seems the best solution to the awkwardness of the line as currently printed. Gellius IX xiv 21 gives two examples of dative _facie_ from Lucilius. Plautus regularly uses _fide_ (_Aul_ 667, _Pers_ 193, _Poen_ 890, _Trin_ 117) and _die_ (_Am_ 546, _Capt_ 464, _Trin_ 843); dative _pube_ is found at _Pseud_ 126. Sallust and Caesar use _fide_ (_Iug_ 16 3; _BG_ V 3 7); at the time of Germanicus, _fide_ is found at Hor _Sat_ I iii 94-95 'quid faciam si furtum fecerit, aut si / prodiderit commissa _fide_ sponsumue negarit?', and _pernicie_ at Livy V 13 5.] _Praebentia formam_ is elevated diction: Professor R. J. Tarrant cites Lucretius V 581-83 'luna ... claram speciem certamque _figuram_ / _praebet_'. =40. PERPETVVM= _M2ul_ PRAECIPVVM _BCM1FHILT_. _Praecipuum_ could be defended by _EP_ III i 13-14 (to the Pontus) 'nec tibi pampineas autumnus porrigit uuas, / cuncta sed immodicum tempora frigus habet', but _praecipuus_ in fact always seems to have the notion of 'outstanding' or 'superior', which does not seem appropriate to the present passage. For _perpetuum_ compare _Tr_ III ii 7-8 'plurima sed pelago terraque pericula passum / ustus ab _assiduo_ frigore Pontus habet', _Tr_ III x 14 '[niuem ...] indurat Boreas _perpetuamque_ facit', _Tr_ V ii 65-66 'me ... cruciat _numquam sine frigore_ caelum, / glaebaque canenti _semper_ obusta gelu', _EP_ I iii 49-50 'orbis in extremi iaceo desertus harenis, / fert ubi _perpetuas_ obruta terra niues', and _EP_ II vii 72 'frigore _perpetuo_ Sarmatis ora riget'. =41. HINC ORITVR BOREAS.= Compare _Tr_ III xi 7-8 'barbara me tellus et inhospita litora Ponti / cumque suo _Borea_ Maenalis ursa uidet' and _Ibis_ 11-12 'ille relegatum gelidos _Aquilonis ad ortus_ / non sinit exilio delituisse meo'. =41. DOMESTICVS.= The word is rare in verse; Ovid uses it as a substantive at iii 15 'ille ego conuictor densoque _domesticus_ usu'. Here Ovid may be recalling the language of _Met_ VI 685-86 (of Boreas) 'ira, / quae solita est illi nimiumque _domestica_ uento'. =42. VIRES.= Merkel proposed MORES, citing Virgil _G_ I 50-52 'at prius ignotum ferro quam scindimus aequor, / uentos et uarium caeli praediscere _morem_ / cura sit' and Statius _Sil_ III ii 87 'quos tibi currenti praeceps gerat Hadria _mores_'. The second passage is not to the point, since it means 'what sort of obedience to your wishes do you expect from the Adriatic as you make your voyage'. In any case, Professor R. J. Tarrant points out to me the poor logic of Merkel's proposed text: Ovid is deriving the _natura loci_ from its surroundings; he should not now be saying that Boreas gets his _mores_ from the area. The reading of the manuscripts seems acceptable enough if one accepts Meynke's _polo_ for _loco_ ('he gathers strength from the nearby North Pole'). For _sumit uires_ compare _Met_ VIII 882 (Achelous speaking) 'armenti modo dux _uires_ in cornua _sumo_', _Met_ XI 510-11 'ut ... solent _sumptis_ incursu _uiribus_ ire ... feri ... leones' and Hor _Ep_ I xviii 85 'neglecta solent incendia _sumere uires_'. Professor R. J. Tarrant compares such phrases as _sumere iras_ (_Met_ II 175), _animos_ (_Met_ III 544-45), and _cornua_ (_AA_ I 239, _Tr_ IV ix 27). =42. POLO= _Meynke_ LOCO _codd_. The pointlessness of _loco_ is made clear enough by Wheeler's 'and he takes on strength from a place nearer to him'. Meynke's _polo_ removes the difficulty, answers well to the following 'at Notus, _aduerso_ tepidum qui spirat ab _axe_', and is supported by the language of _Met_ II 173 'quaeque _polo_ posita est glaciali _proxima_ Serpens', and _Fast_ IV 575-76 (of Ceres) 'errat et in caelo liquidique immunia ponti / adloquitur gelido _proxima_ signa _polo_'. For the corruption, compare the common misreading of _locum_ for _solum_. =43. ADVERSO ... AB AXE.= Ovid here seeks a contrast with _polo_ in the previous line; but clearly he means only that the south wind comes from the opposite direction, not that it originates at the South Pole. Bentley conjectured AVERSO for _aduerso_, and the two words are obviously prone to interchange: compare _Tr_ I iii 45 (of Ovid's wife, after his departure) 'multaque in auersos [_Heinsius_: aduersos _codd_] effudit uerba Penates' and the variations among the manuscripts at Virgil _G_ I 218 'auerso ... astro', _Aen_ XII 647 'auersa uoluntas', and Sen _Tr_ 1123 'auersa cingit campus' (on which see Housman 1076). But _aduerso_ 'opposite' seems to have the sense required here. =43. TEPIDVM QVI SPIRAT.= For the construction compare _Met_ IX 661 'sub aduentu _spirantis lene_ Fauoni' and Avienus _Descr Orb_ 847 'uel qua _lene_ Notus _spirat_'. The trivialized TEPIDVS QVI SPIRAT is found in _MH2c_. _Tepidus Notus_ occurs four times in Ovid (_Am_ I iv 12, I vii 56 & II viii 20, and _Tr_ III xii [xiii] 42). =44. LANGVIDIORQVE VENIT.= Compare _EP_ II i 1-2 'Huc quoque Caesarei peruenit fama triumphi, / _languida_ quo fessi uix uenit _aura Noti_'. =46. AB AMNE.= Similar instrumental uses of _ab_ at _Her_ X 138 'tunicas lacrimis sicut _ab imbre_ graues', _AA_ III 545 'ingenium placida mollitur _ab arte_', _Met_ I 65-66 'contraria tellus / nubibus assiduis pluuiaque madescit ab Austro', _Met_ IV 162-63 'pectus ... adhuc _a caede_ tepebat', and _Fast_ V 323 'caelum nigrescit _ab Austris_'. =47-58.= For the lengthy catalogue, typical of Ovid, compare the listing of Actaeon's dogs at _Met_ III 206-25 (in particular at 217 'et Dromas et Canache Sticteque et Tigris et Alce') and the catalogue of trees that came to listen to Orpheus sing (_Met_ X 90-107). =47. LYCVS.= A number of rivers had this name in the ancient world. Ovid presumably means the Paphlagonian Lycus referred to by Virgil at _G_ IV 366-67 'omnia sub magna labentia flumina terra / spectabat diuersa locis, Phasimque Lycumque ...'. =47. SAGARIS.= The modern Sakarya; it flows into the Black Sea about 125 kilometres east of Istanbul. It is mentioned at Pliny _NH_ VI 1 4 'Sangaris fluuius ex inclutis. oritur in Phrygia, accipit uastos amnes ... idem Sagiarius plerisque dictus'. =47. PENIVSQVE.= The 'flumen et oppidum Penius' are mentioned at Pliny _NH_ VI 14 as being in the region of the Caucasus on the Euxine coast; nearby were 'multis nominibus Heniochorum gentes'. The river seems not to be mentioned elsewhere in ancient literature. =47. HYPANISQVE.= The modern Bug empties into the Black Sea about 50 kilometres east of Odessa. It is mentioned again by Ovid at _Met_ XV 285-86 'quid? non et Scythicis Hypanis de montibus ortus, / qui fuerat dulcis, salibus uitiatur amaris?' and Virgil _G_ IV 370 'saxosumque sonans Hypanis'. =47. CALESQVE.= Isaac Vossius made this correction for the manuscripts' CATESQVE (_I_ has CHARESQVE) on the basis of 'Eustathio Scholiis in Periegeten'. Heinsius aptly cited a description of the occasionally violent flow of the river at Thucydides IV 75 2. As indicated by this passage, the modern Alapli flows into the Black Sea near Eregli, about 200 kilometres east of Istanbul. =48. CREBRO VERTICE TORTVS HALYS.= An imitation of _Aen_ VII 566-67 'fragosus / dat sonitum saxis et _torto uertice_ torrens'. _Tortus_ when used of water generally refers to the disturbance caused by rowing (_Fast_ V 644; Catullus LXIV 13; _Aen_ III 208). =48. HALYS.= The modern Kizil Irmak flows into the Black Sea about 600 kilometres east of Istanbul. André compares Apollonius' description of the river (II 366-67) '[Greek: rhoai Halyos potamoio / deinon ereugontai]'. =49-50.= The three rivers mentioned in these lines are all named for their swiftness. =49. PARTHENIVSQVE RAPAX.= The modern Bartin flows into the Black Sea about 280 kilometres east of Istanbul and about 240 kilometres west of Sinop. It is in fact a very calm river: this information was available to Ovid from Apollonius II 936-37 '[Greek: Parthenioio rhoas halimurêentos, / prêutatou potamou]' (cited by André). =49. VOLVENS SAXA.= Similar phrasing at _Met_ VIII 552-53 '[undae ...] ferre trabes solidas obliquaque _uoluere_ magno / murmure _saxa_ solent'. =49. CINAPSES= _BC_ CINAPSIS _L_ TYNAPSES _H_ CINASPES _FIT_ NIPHATES _M_. Editors read CYNAPSES; but since the river is not otherwise known, restoration is dangerous. _M_'s reading looks like an interpolation from Lucan III 245 'Armeniusque tenens _uoluentem saxa_ Niphaten' (cited by Micyllus). =50. NVLLO TARDIOR= = _uelocior omni_; André mistranslates 'le plus lent des fleuves'. Compare _Tr_ I v 1 'O mihi post nullos umquam [_uar_ ullos numquam] memorande sodales' and _EP_ I iii 65-66 'Zmyrna uirum tenuit, non Pontus et hostica tellus, / paene _minus nullo_ Zmyrna petenda loco'. =50. TYRAS.= The modern Dnestr flows into the Black Sea about fifty miles south of Odessa; near its mouth is the city of Ovidiopol. The river is briefly mentioned at Pliny _NH_ IV 82 & 93, and at Mela II 7, where it is called the 'Tyra'; this however seems to be a scribal error induced by the following _separat_. =51. THERMODON.= The modern Terme flows into the Black Sea about 100 kilometres southeast of the mouth of the Kizil Irmak (Halys). It was conventional to mention the Amazons in connection with the river (_Met_ XII 611, _Aen_ XI 659-60, Prop III xiv 13-14, Ammianus Marcellinus XXII 8 17). Professor E. Fantham suggests to me that Ovid may here be providing Albinovanus with material for the part of his _Theseid_ dealing with Theseus' expedition against the Amazons. Ovid also mentions the Thermodon at _Met_ I 248-49 (the story of Phaethon) 'arsit et Euphrates Babylonius, arsit Orontes / Thermodonque citus Gangesque et Phasis et Hister'. As in the present distich, the Thermodon and Phasis, both prominent in mythology, are mentioned together. =51. TVRMAE= _BCM_ TVRBAE _FHILT_. There is a similar variation among the manuscripts at _AA_ III l-2 'Arma dedi Danais in Amazonas; arma supersunt / quae tibi dem et _turmae_, Penthesilea, tuae'. From other descriptions of the Amazons, the Auctor Electorum Etonensium aptly compares Val Fl IV 603 (_cateruas_) and 607 (_turma_); compare as well Statius _Sil_ I vi 56 (_turmas_). It is possible that _turma_ should be read at Prop III xiv 13-14 'qualis Amazonidum nudatis bellica mammis / Thermodontiacis _turba_ lauatur aquis'; but this would make _bellica_ redundant. =53. BORYSTHENIO ... AMNE= = _BorYsthenE_. The river is the modern Dnepr, which flows into the Black Sea about 120 kilometres east of Odessa, about 50 kilometres east of the mouth of the Bug (Hypanis). For the metrical device here employed, compare Prop II vii 17-18 'hinc etenim tantum meruit mea gloria nomen, / gloria ad hibernos lata _Borysthenidas_', Avienus _Descr Orb_ 448 'inde _Borysthenii_ uis sese _fluminis_ effert' & 721 'ora _Borysthenii_ qua _fluminis_ in mare uergunt'. =53. LIQVIDISSIMVS= is not found elsewhere in Ovid. =53. DIRAPSES.= The river is not mentioned elsewhere. =54. MELANTHVS.= The modern Melet Irmak flows into the Black Sea about 25 kilometres west of Trabzon (Trapezus). It is mentioned in passing at Pliny _NH_ VI 11. =55-56. QVIQVE DVAS TERRAS, ASIAM CADMIQVE SOROREM, / SEPARAT ET CVRSVS INTER VTRAMQVE FACIT.= The Tanais (Don) is named as the border between Europe and Asia by Pliny (_NH_ IV 78) and Avienus (_Descr Orb_ 28 & 861). Compare as well Lucan III 272-76 'qua uertice lapsus / Riphaeo Tanais diuersi nomina mundi / imposuit ripis Asiaeque et terminus idem / Europae, mediae dirimens confinia terrae, / nunc hunc, nunc illum, qua flectitur, ampliat orbem'. Vibius Sequester (_Geog Lat min_ [Riese] p. 212) has an entry 'Hypanis Scythiae qui, ut ait Gallus "uno tellures diuidit amne duas": Asiam enim ab Europa separat'. The Hypanis cannot be the river Ovid is here referring to, for it has already been mentioned in 47; but, as Lenz saw, the line from Gallus could well have been in Ovid's mind as he wrote this passage. Professor R. J. Tarrant notes that the extraordinary _Cadmique sororem_ could well be a borrowing from the earlier poet. =57-58. INTER MAXIMVS OMNES / CEDERE DANVVIVS SE TIBI, NILE, NEGAT.= A similar conjunction at _Tr_ III x 27-28 'ipse, papyrifero qui non angustior amne, / miscetur uasto multa per ora freto'. Herodotus compares the courses of the Nile and the Danube, concluding '[Greek: houtô ton Neilon dokeô dia pasês tês Libyês diexionta exisousthai tôi Istrôi]' (II 34), referring to the length of the rivers, however, rather than their volume of discharge. At _NQ_ III 22 Seneca mentions the belief of some that because of their large size and the fact that their sources were both unknown the Nile and the Danube must both have been formed at the creation of the world, unlike other rivers. At IV 1 1-2 he argues against those who equated the two rivers, pointing out that the source of the Danube was known to be in Germany, and that the two rivers flood at different times of the year. =59. COPIA TOT LATICVM QVAS AVGET ADVLTERAT AQVAS.= The comparative freshness of the waters of the Black Sea was well known in antiquity. Besides the passages cited at 37-38, see Polybius IV 42 3 and Philostratus _Imag_ I 13 7. =61-62. QVIN ETIAM, STAGNO SIMILIS PIGRAEQVE PALVDI, / CAERVLEVS VIX EST DILVITVRQVE COLOR.= Ovid's drinking water was, on the other hand, rather brackish: 'est in aqua dulci non inuidiosa uoluptas: / aequoreo bibitur cum sale mixta palus' (_EP_ II vii 73-74). =63. INNATAT VNDA FRETO DVLCIS.= Similar wording at Macrobius _Sat_ VII 12 32 'superficies maris, cui dulces aquae _innatant_, congelascit'. =64. PONDVS= _B1CMFHT_ NOMEN _ILB2_. Wakefield conjectured MOMEN on the basis of Lucretius VI 473-74 'quo magis ad nubis augendas multa uidentur / posse quoque e salso consurgere momine ponti'. But _pondus_ seems appropriate to the context in a way that _momen_ 'heaving' does not. _Nomen habe(n)t_ is a frequent line-ending in Ovid, occurring some twenty-five times (once in _Her_ XVI). _Proprium nomen_ occurs in Ovid at _Fast_ V 191-92 (Ovid is addressing Flora) 'ipsa doce quae sis. hominum sententia fallax: / optima tu _proprii nominis_ auctor eris' and _EP_ I viii 13-14 'Caspius Aegissos, de se si credimus ipsis, / condidit et _proprio nomine_ dixit opus'. The phrase would have been very familiar to the scribes from grammatical treatises ('proper noun'). A combination of these circumstances no doubt induced the error. Professor A. Dalzell suggests to me that _momen_ is perhaps correct, the notion being that the salt water keeps moving, and so does not freeze. _Pondus_ would then be a (mistaken) gloss that has displaced _momen_ from the text; _nomen_ would be a simple misreading of _momen_. =66. CERTIS ... MODIS.= 'Metre'; compare _Fast_ III 388 'ad _certos_ uerba canenda _modos_', Tib II i 51-52 'agricola ... primum ... cantauit _certo_ rustica uerba _pede_' and Manilius III 35 '_pedibus_ ... iungere _certis_'. =67. DETINVI ... TEMPVS, CVRASQVE FEFELLI= _excerpta Politiani_ DETINVI ... TEMPVS CVRAMQVE FEFELLI _LT_ DETINVI ... CVRAS TEMPVSQVE FEFELLI _BCMFHI_. _Tempus fallere_ 'make time pass unnoticed' is perfectly acceptable Latin; compare _Tr_ III iii 11-12 'non qui labentia tarde / _tempora_ narrando _fallat_ amicus adest', _Her_ I 9-10 'nec mihi quaerenti spatiosam _fallere noctem_ / lassaret uiduas pendula tela manus', _Met_ VIII 651 'interea medias _fallunt_ sermonibus _horas_', _Tr_ IV x 112-14 'tristia ... carmine fata leuo. / quod quamuis nemo est cuius referatur ad aures, / sic tamen absumo _decipioque diem_', and _Her_ XIX 37-38 'tortaque uersato ducentes stamina fuso / feminea tardas _fallimus_ arte _moras_'. The difficulty with the manuscript reading in the present passage is that _detinui curas_ is without parallel. Heinsius therefore accepted Politian's reading, citing in its support _Met_ I 682-83 'sedit Atlantiades et euntem multa loquendo / _detinuit_ sermone _diem_'. The Auctor Electorum Etonensium objected that _detinui tempus_ was inappropriate: 'poeta tempus detinere noluit, quod scilicet per se morari atque haerere uidebatur inuisum'. He conjectured DISTINVI CVRAS and Burman DIMINVI CVRAS, which he later found in one of his manuscripts. But _detinere_ here can have the same meaning 'occupy, keep busy' as it has at the _Metamorphoses_ passage, where A. G. Lee cites the present passage (with Politian's reading) and _Tr_ V vii 39 '_detineo studiis animum_ falloque dolores'. The interchange of adjoining metrically and grammatically equivalent substantives is very common. =67-68. "DETINVI" DICAM "TEMPVS, CVRASQVE FEFELLI; / HVNC FRVCTVM PRAESENS ATTVLIT HORA MIHI".= The thought of the passage also at ii 39-40 & 45 'quid nisi Pierides, solacia frigida, restant', _Tr_ V i 33-34 'tot mala pertulimus, quorum medicina quiesque / nulla nisi in studio est Pieridumque mora', and _EP_ I v 53-55 'magis utile nil est / artibus his, quae nil utilitatis habent. / consequor ex illis casus obliuia nostri'. =69. ABFVIMVS SOLITO ... DOLORE.= Compare Cic _Fam_ IV iii 2 'a multis et magnis molestiis abes'; I have found no parallel from verse. =71. CVM THESEA CARMINE LAVDES.= See at 4 _Albinouane_ (p 327). =71. THESEA.= For Theseus as the type of loyalty, compare _Tr_ I iii 66 'o mihi Thesea pectora iuncta fide!', I v 19-20, I ix 31-32, V iv 25-26 (Ovid's letter speaking) 'teque Menoetiaden, te qui comitatus Oresten, / te uocat _Aegiden_ Euryalumque suum', and _EP_ II iii 43, II vi 26 & III ii 33-34 'occidit et Theseus et qui comitauit Oresten; / sed tamen in laudes uiuit uterque suas'. From other authors, Otto _Theseus_ cites Prop II i 37-38, Martial VII xxiv 3-4 & X xi 1-2, Claudian _Ruf_ I 107, Ausonius _Epist_ XXV 34, Apollinaris Sidonius _Ep_ III xiii 10, _Carm_ V 288 & _Carm_ XXIV 29. Professor R. J. Tarrant notes that in Bion fr. 12 (Gow) there is a pairing of Theseus/Pirithous and Orestes/Pylades similar to what we find in Ovid. =72. TITVLOS.= 'Claims to glory'; compare _Met_ VII 448-49 (to Theseus) 'si _titulos_ annosque tuos numerare uelimus, / facta prement annos' and _Met_ XII 334 'uictori titulum ... Dictys Helopsque dederunt'. =73. VETAT ILLE PROFECTO.= 'I am quite certain that he does not allow ...' =74. TRANQVILLI ... TEMPORIS= implies _sed non temporis aduersi_. =75. CONDITVR A TE.= Ovid does not elsewhere use a person as the object of _condere_, although at _Tr_ II 335-36 he uses a person's achievements as object: 'diuitis ingenii est immania Caesaris acta / condere'. =76. TANTVS QVANTO= _L_ TANTO QVANTVS _BacCFHITpc_ TANTus QVANTVS _M2c_ TANTO QVANTO _BpcTac_ QVANTO TANTVS _fort legendum_. The transmitted reading, _tanto quantus_, can be construed: Professor E. Fantham translates 'a man so great as should have been sung with this mighty style'. This however subordinates Theseus to Albinovanus, while the purpose of the line is to emphasize Theseus' greatness. _Tanto quanto_ is generally printed: it is acceptable enough (compare _EP_ II ix 11-12 'regia, crede mihi, res est succurrere lapsis, / conuenit et _tanto_, _quantus_ es ipse, uiro'), but is very weakly attested, and does not explain the transmitted reading. I have printed _L_'s _tantus quanto_; _quanto tantus_ might also be read. =76. QVANTO ... ORE.= For _os_ 'grandness of utterance' Professor R. J. Tarrant compares _Am_ II i 11-12 'ausus eram, memini, caelestia dicere bella ... et satis _oris_ erat'. =78. INQVE FIDE THESEVS QVILIBET ESSE POTEST.= For the use of mythological figures as character types, compare _RA_ 589 'semper habe Pyladen aliquem qui curet Oresten' and Martial VI xi 9-10 'ut praestem Pyladen, aliquis mihi praestet Oresten. / hoc non fit uerbis, Marce: ut ameris, ama'. =79-82.= Professor R. J. Tarrant points out to me how the example of Theseus balances the comparison with Ulysses at the start of the poem. Earlier Ovid argued against a difference of scale between his own case and the mythic figure's: here he insists on it. =79. HOSTES ... DOMANDI.= For lists of these enemies, see _Her_ II 69-70 'cum fuerit Sciron lectus toruusque Procrustes / et Sinis' and the Athenians' hymn of praise to Theseus at _Met_ VII 433-50. =79. CLAVAQVE.= For Theseus' club see _Her_ IV 115-16 (Phaedra to Hippolytus) 'ossa mei fratris _claua_ perfracta trinodi / sparsit humi' and _Her_ X 77 'me quoque, qua fratrem, mactasses, improbe, _claua_'. Ovid mentions the club of Hercules about a dozen times. =80. VIX ILLI.= For _uix_ 'with difficulty' _OLD uix_ 1 cites _Fast_ I 508 'uix est Euandri uixque retenta manu'. Most editors print VIX VLLI (_BCT_), which is possible enough. _Vix illi_ seems rather more forceful, however, as making the point that even Theseus was able to make the dangerous journey only with difficulty, and that before him the road was impassable. Compare _Met_ VII 443-44 'tutus ad Alcathoen, Lelegeia moenia, limes / composito Scirone patet'. =81. OPEROSA.= The word in the sense 'troublesome' seems confined to prose except for this passage and _Her_ II 63-64 'fallere credentem non est _operosa_ puellam / gloria; simplicitas digna fauore fuit'. =83. PERSTAS= _IPF2ul_. Compare _Tr_ IV i 19-20 'me quoque Musa leuat Ponti loca iussa petentem: / sola comes nostrae _perstitit_ illa fugae' and _Tr_ V xiv 19-20 'quae ne quis possit temeraria dicere, persta [_uar_ praesta] / et pariter serua meque piamque fidem'. PERSTAS, the reading of most manuscripts, would have no acceptable meaning in the present passage; it has no object, and the intransitive meaning, 'stand out', is clearly inappropriate. The error may have been induced by _Tr_ IV v 23-24 'teque, quod est rarum, _praesta_ constanter ad omne / indeclinatae munus amicitiae'; more probably, it is an aftereffect of _praestandus_ in 81. =83. INDECLINATVS= governs _amico_. The only other instance of the word in classical Latin seems to be _Tr_ IV v 24, quoted at the end of the last note. =84. LINGVA QVERENTE.= Ovid elsewhere uses persons as the subject of _queri_, except for similar uses of metonymy at xiv 26 '_littera_ de uobis est mea _questa_ nihil' and _Tr_ V xi 1-2 'Quod te nescioquis per iurgia dixerit esse / exulis uxorem, _littera questa_ tua est'. XI. To Gallio The poem is a letter of condolence to the famous rhetor Junius Gallio, an old friend of Ovid (see at 1). Ovid starts the poem by saying that Gallio should certainly be mentioned in his poetry, because he helped Ovid at the time of his catastrophe (1-4). This one misfortune should have been enough for him, but now he has lost his wife (5-8). Ovid wept on receiving the news, but will not attempt to comfort him, since by now the grief is in the past, and he would risk renewing it (9-20). Also (and he hopes this will turn out to be the case), Gallio may already have remarried (21-22). The poem is one of the shortest in Ovid's canon (_Am_ II iii is shorter), and has few parallels with his other poems. The one that comes closest is _EP_ I ix, addressed to Cotta Maximus, which describes Ovid's reaction on hearing of the death of Celsus. There are some verbal parallels as well with _EP_ I iii, Ovid's answer to Rufinus' letter of consolation on his exile. In the commentary I cite passages from Ser. Sulpicius Rufus' famous letter to Cicero on the death of his daughter Tullia (_Fam_ IV v) and from Seneca's treatises of consolation; Ovid was clearly making use of the common topics of the genre. =1. GALLIO.= Junius Gallio[24], adoptive father of the younger Seneca's elder brother, is often cited by the elder Seneca, who considered him one of the four supreme orators of his time (_Contr_ X praef. 13). At _Suas_ III 6-8, Seneca discusses Gallio's fondness for the Virgilian phrase _plena deo_ (which, oddly, is not found in our text of the poet), and quotes Gallio as saying that his friend Ovid was also very fond of the phrase. Quintilian and Tacitus did not share Seneca's high opinion of Gallio: Quintilian criticizes the lack of restraint in his style (IX ii 92), while at _Dial_ 26 1 Tacitus has Messalla say how he prefers 'G. Gracchi impetum aut L. Crassi maturitatem quam calamistros ['curling irons' = 'excessive ornament'] Maecenatis aut tinnitus Gallionis'. [Footnote 24: _PIR_1 I 493; _PIR_2 I 756; PW X,l 1035 26; Schanz-Hosius 349 (§ 336)] In AD 32 Gallio proposed in the Senate that ex-members of the Praetorian guard be permitted to use the theatre seats reserved for members of the equestrian order; this resulted in a bitter and sarcastic letter from Tiberius to the Senate attacking Gallio's presumption; he was first exiled, then brought back to custody in Rome after it was decided that Lesbos, chosen by him, was too pleasant a place of exile (Tac _Ann_ VI 3; Dio LXVIII 18 4). =1. EXCVSABILE.= The word is extremely rare, and is not found in verse outside the _Ex Ponto_: compare I vii 41-42 'quod nisi delicti pars _excusabilis_ esset, / parua relegari poena futura fuit' and III ix 33-34 'nil tamen e scriptis magis _excusabile_ nostris / quam sensus cunctis paene quod unus inest'. =2. HABVISSE= could have the usual past sense of the perfect infinitive, but more probably is equivalent to _habere_: compare ix 20 'gauderem lateris non _habuisse_ locum' and see at viii 82 _imposuisse_ (p 282). =3-4. CAELESTI CVSPIDE FACTA ... VVLNERA.= 'Wounds inflicted by no human weapon'. The _cuspis_ is attributed to Mars at _Am_ I i 11, to Neptune at _Met_ XII 580, and to Athena at _Fast_ VI 655. At Sen _Ag_ 368-71 'tuque, o magni nata Tonantis / inclita Pallas, / quae Dardanias saepe petisti / cuspide terras', R. J. Tarrant cites _HF_ 563 (Dis), _HF_ 904 & _Phaed_ 755 (Bacchus), _HO_ 156 (Hercules), and Juvenal II 130 (Mars). Professor Tarrant points out to me that the _cuspis_ does not seem to be attributed to Jupiter, no doubt because the _fulmen_ was too firmly established as his weapon. Ovid is therefore not making his customary specific equation of Augustus with Jupiter. =4. FOVISTI.= _Fouere_ was a technical term in medicine for bathing something in a liquid (Cato _Agr_ 157 4, Celsus IV 2 4, Columella VI 12 4). The word occurs in this sense in poetry: see _Met_ II 338-39 'nomen ... in marmore lectum / perfudit lacrimis et aperto pectore _fouit_', _Met_ VIII 654 (perhaps spurious; the passage is one where textual doublets occur), _Met_ X 186-87 (Hyacinthus has just been struck by Apollo's discus) 'deus conlapsos ... excipit artus, / et modo te _refouet_, modo tristia uulnera siccat', _Met_ XV 532 'et lacerum _foui_ Phlegethontide corpus in unda', and _Aen_ XII 420 '_fouit_ ea uulnus lympha longaeuus Iapyx'. =5. RAPTI.= The word could be taken to mean 'dead'; compare xvi 1 'Nasonis ... rapti', where the context shows this is the meaning, and _EP_ I ix 1-2 (to Cotta Maximus) 'Quae mihi de _rapto_ tua uenit epistula Celso, / protinus est lacrimis umida facta meis'. For the similarly ambiguous use of _ademptus_, see at vi 49 _qui me doluistis ademptum_ (p 243). =6. QVOD QVERERERE.= For the phrase, compare _Am_ I iv 23-24 (Ovid is listing the signals his girl should use at the dinner-table) 'si quid erit de me tacita _quod_ mente _queraris_, / pendeat extrema mollis ab aure manus', _Tr_ V i 37 (of Fortune) '_quod querar_, illa mihi pleno de fonte ministrat', _Her_ XIX 79, and _Her_ XX 34 & 94. =7-8. PVDICA / CONIVGE.= Being _pudica_, she deserved to survive--Professor E. Fantham points out to me here Ovid's use of what could be called the _quid profuit_ topic. The reference to Gallio's wife seems rather cool in tone. For some very warm descriptions of recently deceased wives, see Lattimore 275-80. =8. NON HABVERE NEFAS.= This sense of _habere_, very common in prose, does not seem to occur elsewhere in Ovid; but Professor R. J. Tarrant cites _Aen_ V 49-50 'dies ... adest quem semper acerbum, / semper honoratum ... _habebo_'. =9. LVCTVS= = _causae luctus_. Other instances of this sense of _luctus_, which seems to be confined to poetical passages of great emotional content, at _Met_ I 654-55 (Inachus to Io) 'tu non inuenta reperta / _luctus_ eras leuior', _Met_ IX 155, and _Aen_ VI 868 (Aeneas has just seen Marcellus) 'o nate, ingentem _luctum_ ne quaere tuorum'. =10. LECTAQVE CVM LACRIMIS SVNT TVA DAMNA MEIS.= Compare _EP_ I ix 1-2 (quoted above at 5 _rapti_) and _Fam_ IV v 1 (Ser. Sulpicius Rufus to Cicero) 'Postea quam mihi renuntiatum est de obitu Tulliae, filiae tuae, sane quam pro eo ac debui grauiter molesteque tuli communemque eam calamitatem existimaui'. =10. TVA DAMNA.= Compare _Fast_ II 835-36 (Lucretia has just killed herself) 'ecce super corpus _communia damna_ gementes / obliti decoris uirque paterque iacent' and _Tr_ IV iii 35 'tu uero tua damna dole, mitissima coniunx'. =11. SED NEQVE SOLARI PRVDENTEM STVLTIOR AVSIM.= Compare _Fam_ IV v 6 'plura me ad te de hac re scribere pudet, ne uidear _prudentiae_ tuae diffidere'. For the opposite reasoning, see Sen _Cons Marc_ 1 1 'Nisi te, Marcia, scirem tam longe ab infirmitate muliebris animi quam a ceteris uitiis recessisse et mores tuos uelut aliquod antiquum exemplar aspici, non auderem obuiam ire dolori tuo'. =12. VERBAQVE DOCTORVM NOTA.= Compare _EP_ I iii 27-30 (to Rufinus, who has written him a letter of consolation on his exile) 'cum bene firmarunt animum _praecepta_ iacentem, / sumptaque sunt nobis pectoris arma tui, / rursus amor patriae _ratione ualentior omni_, / quod tua fecerunt scripta retexit opus', and Sen _Cons Marc_ 2 1 'scio a praeceptis incipere omnes qui monere aliquem uolunt, in exemplis desinere'. =13-14. FINITVMQVE TVVM ... DOLOREM / IPSA IAM PRIDEM SVSPICOR ESSE MORA.= Compare _EP_ I iii 25-26 'cura quoque interdum nulla medicabilis arte est-- / aut, ut sit, longa est extenuanda mora', _Fam_ IV v 6 'nullus dolor est quem non longinquitas temporis minuat ac molliat', and _Cons Marc_ 8 1 'dolorem dies longa consumit'. For a variation of the theme, see _Cons Marc_ 1 6 'illud ipsum naturale remedium temporis, quod maximas quoque aerumnas componit, in te una uim suam perdidit'. The topic of time as the healer of pain is common in ancient literature from New Comedy on: see Tarrant on Sen _Ag_ 130 'quod ratio non quiit, saepe sanauit mora', Otto _dies_ 6, and Kassel 53. =13. SI NON RATIONE.= _Ratio_ similarly used to counter strong emotion (without success) at _EP_ I iii 27-30 (quoted at 12), _Met_ VII 10-11 (Medea falls in love with Jason) '_ratione_ furorem / uincere non poterat', and _Met_ XIV 701-2 (similar phrasing for Iphis' falling in love with Anaxarete). =14. IPSA ... MORA.= 'By the mere passage of time'. =15-16. DVM TVA PERVENIENS, DVM LITTERA NOSTRA RECVRRENS / TOT MARIA AC TERRAS PERMEAT, ANNVS ABIT.= Similar phrasing at _EP_ III iv 59-60 'dum uenit huc rumor properataque carmina fiunt / factaque eunt ad uos, annus abisse potest'. =15. PERVENIENS= is my correction for the manuscripts' _peruenit_. The perfect tense of _peruenit_ conflicts with the following _permeat_ and _abit_. It might be argued that the perfect is acceptable, since Ovid is speaking of a past event; but he would not have used the perfect of an action which took place over a considerable period of time. For _perueniens ... permeat_ referring to a past event, compare Ovid's use of the present _uenit_ in the very similar passage _EP_ III iv 59-60 (quoted at the end of the last note). The postponement of _permeat_ to the following line made the corruption of _dum ... perueniens_ to _dum ... peruenit_ simple enough. =17. TEMPORIS OFFICIVM EST SOLACIA DICERE CERTI.= Here Ovid says that words of comfort should not be offered too late; at _RA_ 127-30 he says they should not be offered too early: 'quis matrem, nisi mentis inops, in funere nati / flere uetet? non hoc illa monenda loco est. / cum dederit lacrimas animumque impleuerit aegrum, / ille dolor uerbis emoderandus erit'. For the same concern with time as in the present passage and medical imagery similar to that in 19-20, see _Cons Marc_ 1 8 and _Cons Hel_ 1 2 'dolori tuo, dum recens saeuiret, sciebam occurrendum non esse, ne illum ipsa solacia irritarent et accenderent; nam in morbis quoque nihil est perniciosius quam immatura medicina. expectabam itaque, dum ipse uires suas frangeret et ad sustinenda remedia mora mitigatus tangi se ac tractari pateretur'. See as well the passages cited at Kassel 52-53: from modern literature he quotes Sterne _Tristram Shandy_ III 29 'Before an affliction is _digested_ consolation ever comes too soon;--and after it is digested--it comes too late: so that you see ... there is but a mark between those two, as fine almost as a hair, for a comforter to take aim at'. =18. DVM DOLOR IN CVRSV EST.= Compare _RA_ 119 _'dum furor in cursu est_, currenti cede furori' and _Met_ XIII 508-10 (Hecuba speaking) '_in cursuque meus dolor est_: modo maxima rerum ... nunc trahor exul, inops, tumulis auulsa meorum'. =18. AEGER.= The substantive _aeger_ is quite common in both verse and prose, but always with the meaning 'physically ill'; even when used, as here, with a transferred meaning, the sense of metaphor is still present. Compare _RA_ 313-14 'curabar propriis aeger Podalirius herbis, / et, fateor, medicus turpiter _aeger_ eram', _EP_ I iii 17 'non est in medico semper releuetur ut _aeger_', and _EP_ III iv 7-8 'firma ualent per se, nullumque Machaona quaerunt; / ad medicam dubius confugit _aeger_ opem'. The adjective, however, is used by the poets from Ennius on (_Sc_ 254 & 392 Vahlen3), particularly in the phrases _mens aegra_ and _animus aeger_, to indicate a state of mental anguish. Compare, from Ovid, _Tr_ III viii 33-34 'nec melius ualeo quam corpore mente, sed aegra est / utraque pars aeque', _Tr_ IV iii 21, IV vi 43 & V ii 7, _EP_ I iii 89-90 'uereor ne ... frustra ... iuuer admota perditus _aeger ope_', I v 18 & I vi 15 'tecum tunc aberant _aegrae solacia_ mentis', and _Ibis_ 115; from other poets, compare _Cons ad Liuiam_ 395, Hor _Ep_ I viii 8, and _Aen_ I 208 & IV 35. The same use of the adjective is found occasionally in the historians (Sallust _Iug_ 71 2, Livy II 3 5, etc). =19. LONGA DIES= = _tempus_. Compare _Met_ I 346, _Met_ XIV 147-48 (the Sibyl to Aeneas) 'tempus erit cum de tanto me corpore paruam / _longa dies_ faciet', and _Tr_ I v 11-14 'spiritus et uacuas prius hic tenuandus in auras / ibit ... quam subeant animo meritorum obliuia nostro, / et _longa_ pietas excidat ista _die_'. =19. VVLNERA MENTIS.= Ovid is fond of this metaphorical sense of _uulnus_; see _Met_ V 425-27 'Cyane ... inconsolabile _uulnus_ / _mente_ gerit tacita', _Tr_ IV iv 41-42 'neue retractando nondum coeuntia rumpam / _uulnera_: uix illis proderit ipsa quies', _EP_ I iii 87-88 'nec tamen infitior, si possent nostra coire / _uulnera_, praeceptis posse coire tuis', and _EP_ I v 23 'parcendum est animo miserabile _uulnus_ habenti'. To judge from Seneca, the metaphor was usual in treatises of consolation: 'antiqua mala in memoriam reduxi et, ut scires [_Schultess_: uis scire _codd_] hanc quoque plagam esse sanandam, ostendi tibi aeque magni _uulneris_ cicatricem' (_Cons Marc_ 1 5), 'itaque utcumque conabar manu super plagam meam imposita ad obliganda _uulnera_ uestra reptare' (_Cons Hel_ 1 1). =20. FOVET= _Heinsius_ MOVET _codd_. For the meaning of _fouet_ see at 4 _fouisti_ (p 361). _Mouet_ here is to some extent supported by Ovid's use of such verbs as _tangere_ and _tractare_ in contexts like that of the present passage; compare _EP_ I vi 21-22 'nec breue nec tutum peccati quae sit origo / scribere; _tractari uulnera_ nostra timent', _EP_ II vii 13, and _EP_ III vii 25-26 'curando fieri quaedam maiora uidemus / uulnera, quae melius non _tetigisse_ fuit'. But _tractare_ and _tangere_ are neutral in force, while _mouet_ here would mean 'disturb', as at Hor _Carm_ III xx 1-2 'Non uides quanto _moueas_ periclo, / Pyrrhe, Gaetulae catulos leaenae?' and Lucan VIII 529-30 'bustum cineresque _mouere_ / Thessalicos audes bellumque in regna uocare?'. As Professor R. J. Tarrant comments, if _mouet_ were read in the present passage, _intempestiue_ would lose the appropriateness it has when _fouet_ is read: there is no proper time to "disturb" a wound. =20. NOVAT.= Similar phrasing at _Tr_ II 209 'nam non sum tanti _renouem_ ut tua _uulnera_, Caesar' and _RA_ 729-30 'admonitu refricatur amor, _uulnusque nouatum_ / scinditur'. =21. ADDE QVOD.= Professor E. Fantham points out to me how extraordinary the occurrence of this phrase in the last distich of the poem is. Of the twenty-five instances of the idiom in Ovid's poems[25], none except the present passage occur in the final distich of a poem or book. The other examples all occur in the middle of an argument, or lead into another distich containing a final injunction or proof of an argument. As Professor J. N. Grant suggests to me, this poem therefore furnishes another example of Ovid's favourite device of unexpectedly altering a poem's tone in the final distich, for a discussion of which see at xiv 61-62 (p 427). [Footnote 25: Instances at _Her_ VI 99, _Am_ I xiv 13 & II vii 23, _AA_ II 675, III 81 & III 539, _Met_ XIII 117, XIII 854 & XIV 684, _Fast_ III 143, III 245 & VI 663, _Tr_ I v 79, II 135, V x 43, V xii 21 & V xiv 15, _EP_ I vii 31, II xi 23, III ii 103, III iv 45, III vi 35, IV x 45, the present passage, and IV xiv 45. (Ovid's imitator uses the expression at _Her_ XVII 199.) The preponderance of this presumably colloquial expression in the poems of exile is noteworthy.] =21. MIHI= _BF1_ TIBI _MHILTF2_ _om C_. As Burman saw, _mihi_ must be the correct reading, the perfect subjunctive acting as a past optative: 'certe ego _mihi_ praeferrem: utinam mihi, mentionem facienti noui tui coniugii, uerum illud omen uenerit, neque fallar, sed tu iam uxorem duxeris, ut ego uoueo'. _Tibi_ is hardly possible, since an omen to Gallio indicating that he had remarried would be superfluous. XII. To Tuticanus Tuticanus[26] (known only from the _Ex Ponto_) seems from the testimony of the poem (19-30) to have been a close friend of Ovid; he is mentioned again at xiv 1-2 and xvi 27. It is reasonable to suppose that, like Sextus Pompeius, he had previously been unwilling to allow Ovid to mention him in his verse. [Footnote 26: _PIR_1 T 314; PW VII A,2 1611 62; Schanz-Hosius 272 (§ 318 16)] The poem opens with a discussion of the difficulty of fitting Tuticanus' name into elegiac verse: Ovid could split the name between verses, or alter the quantity of one or another of the name's syllables, but neither procedure would be acceptable to Ovid or to his readers (1-18). He has known Tuticanus since early youth; they assisted each other in their verse (19-30). He is quite certain that Tuticanus will not desert him (31-38). He should use his influence with Tiberius to assist Ovid; but Ovid is so confused after his hardships that he cannot suggest precisely what Tuticanus should do; he leaves this to Tuticanus' judgment (39-50). The appeal for assistance is a constant theme of the poetry of exile; and the recalling of their assisting each other with their poetry is paralleled by _EP_ II iv, in which Ovid recalls how he used to submit his verse to Atticus for criticism, and by _Tr_ III vii, Ovid's letter to his stepdaughter Perilla, whom he assisted when she first began writing verse. The opening discussion of the metrical difficulty of Tuticanus' name finds parallels elsewhere in Latin and Greek literature (see at 1-2), but is remarkable for its fullness. The explanation for this fullness may well be Tuticanus' being a fellow poet: he would be amused by the use of his own name for the witty discussion of the handling of metrical difficulties with which he himself would be familiar enough. =1-2. QVOMINVS IN NOSTRIS PONARIS, AMICE, LIBELLIS, / NOMINIS EFFICITVR CONDICIONE TVI.= A constant problem for the Latin poets was the impossibility of using words with cretic patterns (a long syllable, followed by a short syllable, followed by another long syllable) in hexameter or elegiac verse. The fact played an important part in determining Latin poetic vocabulary; for instance, such an ordinary word as _femina_, cretic in its oblique cases, is usually represented through metonymy by such words as _nurus_ and _mater_. Proper names presented a special problem, which could however occasionally be solved through the use of special forms or circumlocutions; hence such lines as 'cumque _Borysthenio_ liquidissimus _amne_ [=BorYsthenE] Dirapses' (x 53) and '_Scipiadas_ [=ScIpiOnes], belli fulmen, Carthaginis horror' (Lucretius III 1034). Sometimes, as in the present passage, such avenues were not available, and the poet was simply unable to use the name he wanted. From Greek authors Marx, commenting on Lucilius 228-29, cites Critias fr. 5 '[Greek: ou gar pôs ên tounoma epharmozein elegeiôi]' Archestratus fr. 29 (Brandt) '[Greek: ichthyos auxêthentos hon en metrôi ou themis eipein]' and _Ep Gr_ 616 (Kaibel) '[Greek: ou gar en hexametroisin hêrmosen tounom' emon]' In Latin, the best-known reference to this difficulty is Hor _Sat_ I v 86-87 'quattuor hinc rapimur uiginti et milia raedis, / mansuri oppidulo, quod uersu dicere non est'. On the passage Porphyrion comments 'Aequum Tuticum significat [this is disputed by modern commentators, since the town's known location does not fit with Horace's indication; no certain candidate has been proposed], cuius nomen hexametro uersu compleri [_codd_: contineri _fort legendum_] non potest. hoc autem sub exemplo Lucili posuit. nam ille in sexto Saturarum [228-29 Marx] sic ait: "seruorum est festus dies hic, / quem plane hexametro uersu non dicere possis"'. In his comment on the passage from Horace, Lejay cites Martial IX xi 10-17 (Martial wanted to mention Flavius Earinus, whose name starts with three consecutive short vowels) 'nomen nobile, molle, delicatum / uersu dicere non rudi uolebam: / sed tu, syllaba contumax, rebellas. / dicunt Eiarinon tamen poetae, / sed Graeci, quibus est nihil negatum, / et quos [Greek: Âres Ares] decet sonare: / nobis non licet esse tam disertis / qui Musas colimus seueriores', Rutilius Namatianus 419-22 (of Volusianus [short 'o', 'u', and 'i'] Rufius) 'optarem uerum complecti carmine nomen, / sed quosdam refugit regula dura pedes. / cognomen uersu ueheris [_Préchac_: ueneris _uel_ uenens _codd_], carissime Rufi; / illo te dudum pagina nostra canit', and Apollinaris Sidonius _Carm_ XXIII 485-86 'horum nomina cum referre uersu / affectus cupiat, metrum recusat'. Professor C. P. Jones cites the discussion at Pliny _Ep_ VIII iv 3-4. Pliny, writing to Caninius, who is composing a poem in Greek on the Dacian war, discusses the difficulty of using _barbara et fera nomina_ in the poem: 'sed ... si datur Homero et mollia uocabula et Graeca ad leuitatem uersus contrahere extendere inflectere, cur tibi similis audentia, praesertim non delicata sed necessaria, non detur?'. For a further discussion of the topic, see L. Radermacher, "Das Epigramm des Didius", _SAWW_ 170,9 [1912] 1-31. =1. QVOMINVS= is rare in Augustan verse; but compare _AA_ II 720 'non obstet tangas quominus illa [_sc_ loca] pudor'. =3. AVT= _BC_ AST _MFHILT_. The false reading was probably induced by a failure to understand the meaning of _aut_ 'otherwise', for which compare iii 21 '_aut_ age, dic aliquam quae te mutauerit iram', _Met_ VII 699, _Met_ X 50-52 'hanc [_sc_ Eurydicen] simul et legem Rhodopeius accipit heros, / ne flectat retro sua lumina donec Auernas / exierit ualles; _aut_ inrita dona futura', and _Tr_ I viii 43-45 'quaeque tibi ... dedit nutrix ubera, tigris erat. / _aut_ mala nostra minus quam nunc aliena putares'. =2. CONDICIONE.= 'Nature'. Compare Lucretius II 300-1 'et quae consuerint gigni gignentur eadem / _condicione_ et erunt et crescent uique ualebunt'. =4. SI MODO.= 'If, that is ...' Compare 43-44 'quid mandem quaeris? peream nisi dicere uix est, / _si modo_ qui periit ille perire potest'. =5. LEX PEDIS.= 'The rules of metre'. _Lex_ used similarly at Hor _Carm_ IV ii 10-12 'per audaces noua dithyrambos / uerba deuoluit numerisque fertur / _lege_ solutis', Cic _Or_ 58 'uersibus est certa quaedam et definita _lex_', and Columella XI 1 1. =5. FORTVNAQVE.= The sense of the word is difficult. It seems, as Professor R. J. Tarrant notes, to combine the idea of 'condition, state' (compare for example _Aen_ II 350 'quae sit rebus _fortuna_ uidetis') with that of 'unfortunate circumstances', giving the general sense 'the fact that you have the bad luck to possess a metrically impossible name'. Three lines before, Ovid used _nominis ... condicione tui_; and in the present line he seems to have been influenced by the common phrase _condicio et fortuna_, 'allotted circumstances of life', for which compare Cic _Off_ I 41 'est autem infima _condicio et fortuna_ seruorum', _Mil_ 92 'in infimi generis hominum _condicione atque fortuna_'. At _II Verr_ I 81 Cicero similarly adapts the expression to suit his context: 'Lampsacenis ... populi Romani _condicione_ sociis, _fortuna_ seruis, uoluntate supplicibus'. =7. NOMEN SCINDERE.= That is, split the name so that the hexameter (_uersus prior_) would end in _TUti-_ and the following pentameter (_uersus minor_) begin with _-cAnus_. Such word-divisions are not permissible in Augustan verse; from earlier poetry Professor C. P. Jones cites Ennius _Ann_ 609 Vahlen3 'saxo _cere_ comminuit _brum_'. =8. HOC= = _nomine tuo_. =9-14.= Ovid lists the three possible ways of scanning the name so as to remove the cretic: _TUticanus_, _TuticAnus_, and _TUtIcAnus_. =9. MORATVR= = _longa est_. The _TLL_ cites Velius Longus VII 55 5 Keil 'hanc ... naturam esse quarundam litterarum, ut _morentur_ et enuntiatione sonum detineant'. =11. ET= _BCHIacLT_ NON _M_ NEC _FIpc_. _Nec_, printed by some editors, cannot by itself be correct, for there is no negative with the corresponding _producatur_ in the following distich. A negative is implicitly supplied for _potes ... uenire_ and _producatur_ by 15-16 'his ego si uitiis ...', but Professor R. J. Tarrant is possibly right to suggest that _nec_ should be read both here and (replacing _aut_) at the beginning of 13. W. A. Camps (_CQ_ n.s. IV [1954] 206-7) has pointed out that it is somewhat odd that 'The first two possibilities are introduced, in lines 7 and 9, in terms that disclaim them at once' and that 'the third and fourth possibilities are added without disclaimer ... in terms that would be quite appropriate to serious suggestions'. He suggests reading _at_, so that 11-12 represent an imaginary rejoinder to Ovid's rejection of the possibilities already suggested; Ovid's rejoinder is given at 15 'his ego si uitiis ...'. But _at potes_ is difficult: Ovid could have written 'at, puto, potes', speaking in his own person to raise an objection he would then counter, or he could have represented Tuticanus as saying 'at ... possum'; but it is hard to see how he could have written 'at potes'. =13. PRODVCATVR= _MHI_ VT DVCATVR _LTB2F2ul_ VT DICATVR _B1CF1_. _Producere_ is the correct technical term for 'lengthen'; compare Quintilian VII ix 13 '_productio_ quoque in scripto et correptio in dubio relicta causa est ambiguitatis' & IX iii 69 'uoces ['words'] ... _productione_ tantum uel correptione mutatae'. _Vt ducatur_ is unlikely to be right. _Ducatur_ could certainly stand for _producatur_ (although this would destroy the balance with the following _correptius_), but the verb is clearly indicated as a potential subjunctive by the preceding _potes ... uenire_; and _ut_ (which would in any case be taken as correlative with _ut_ in line 12) cannot stand with this construction. _Vt dicatur_, Ehwald's preferred reading ('dicatur et sit secunda [syllaba] productâ morâ longa'--_KB_ 68), is even less likely to be right, since _dicere_ in this context could only mean 'pronounce', as at Cic _Or_ 159 '"inclitus" dicimus breui prima littera, "insanus" producta'. =13. EXIT.= _Exire_ similarly used of words being uttered at _Her_ VIII 115-16 (Hermione speaking) 'saepe Neoptolemi pro nomine nomen Orestae / _exit_, et errorem uocis ut omen amo'. _OLD exeo_ 2d gives other instances from Cicero (_Brutus_ 265), Seneca (_Ben_ V 19 4), and Quintilian (XI iii 33), but from verse outside Ovid only Martial XII xi 3, where the word has a somewhat different meaning: 'cuius Pimpleo lyra clarior exit ab antro?'. =14. PORRECTA= is equivalent to _longa_, and belongs to _secunda_ (_sc_ syllaba) by hypallage. Compare Quintilian I vi 32 'aut correptis aut _porrectis_ ... litteris syllabisue' & I vii 14 'usque ad Accium et ultra _porrectas_ syllabas geminis, ut dixi, uocalibus scripserunt [that is, they wrote _uiita_ for _uita_ and so on; such spellings occur sometimes in inscriptions]', and Rutilius Lupus I 3. =15. VITIIS.= _Vitium_ similarly used for faults of diction at _AA_ III 295-96 'in _uitio_ decor est: quaerunt male reddere uerba; / discunt posse minus quam potuere loqui', Cic _de Or_ I 116, and Quintilian I v 17, a discussion of the shortening and lengthening of vowels; this he includes among the 'quae accidunt in dicendo _uitia_'. Ovid is probably combining this sense with that of 'poetic weakness', for which compare _Tr_ I vii 39-40 'quicquid in his igitur _uitii_ rude carmen habebit, / emendaturus, si licuisset, eram' and the use of _uitiosus_ at xiii 17 and _Tr_ IV i 1 and IV x 61. =16. MERITO PECTVS HABERE NEGER.= 'People would quite rightly say that I was ignorant'. Compare _Met_ XIII 290-91 & 295 (Ulysses is speaking of Ajax's claim to the arms of Achilles) 'artis opus tantae rudis et _sine pectore_ miles / indueret? neque enim clipei caelamina nouit ... postulat ut capiat _quae non intellegit_ arma!'. =17-18. MVNERIS ... QVOD MEVS ADIECTO FAENORE REDDET AMOR.= _Adiecto faenore_ = 'with interest added on'; Ovid will make up for his past negligence by sending Tuticanus more than one poem ('tibi _carmina_ mittam'). It is clear from the opening distich of poem xiv that Ovid sent the poem to Tuticanus very soon after the composition of xii: 'Haec tibi mittuntur quem sum _modo_ carmine questus / non aptum numeris nomen habere meis'. A similar use of _faenus_ at _EP_ III i 79-81 'nec ... debetur meritis gratia nulla meis. / redditur illa quidem grandi cum _faenore_ nobis'. The variant AGER (_TM2I2_) for _amor_ was clearly induced by such passages as Tib II vi 21-22 'spes sulcis credit aratis / semina quae magno _faenore_ reddat _ager_', _RA_ 173-74 'obrue uersata Cerealia semina terra, / quae tibi cum multo _faenore_ reddat _ager_', and _EP_ I v 25-26 'at, puto ... sata cum multo _faenore_ reddit _ager_': these passages refer to the original meaning of _faenus_ ('faenum appellatur naturalis terrae fetus; ob quam causam et nummorum fetus _faenus_ est uocatum'--Festus 94 Muller, 83 Lindsay). =18. REDDET= _GCMIT_ REDDIT _BFHL_. Numerous instances of similar corruptions in Lucan and Juvenal given by Willis (166-67), who remarks 'The general trend seems to be from other tenses to the present, and from other persons and numbers to the third person singular'. =19. QVACVMQVE NOTA.= 'With whatever method of indicating your name is possible'. For the collocation of _nota_ and _nomen_, see _Aen_ III 443-44 'insanam uatem aspicies, quae rupe sub ima / fata canit foliisque _notas et nomina_ mandat'. Luck joins the phrase with the following _tibi carmina mittam_, but the construction seems somewhat cumbersome; it is probably better to retain the comma after _nota_ and take the phrase with _teque canam_. =20-22. PVERO ... PVER ... FRATRI FRATER.= For Ovid's use of polyptoton, see at viii 67 _uatis ... uates_ (p 278). =23. DVXQVE COMESQVE.= The same phrase at _Tr_ III vii 18 (to his stepdaughter Perilla) 'utque pater natae _duxque comesque_ fui' and _Tr_ IV x 119-20 (to his Muse) 'tu _dux et comes_ es, tu nos abducis ab Histro, / in medioque mihi das Helicone locum'. =24. FRENA NOVELLA.= For the image, see at ii 23 _frena remisi_ (p 169). _Nouellus_ is a rare word in poetry. In prose, the word is often used of young plants or farm animals; and here _frena nouella_ may well be a metonymy for _frena nouellorum equorum_. Alternatively, the word could be equivalent to _noua_ 'new, unfamiliar', as at _Fast_ III 455 'iamque indignanti _noua frena_ receperat ore'. In either case, Ovid is clearly referring to the beginning of his poetic career. =25. SAEPE EGO CORREXI SVB TE CENSORE LIBELLOS.= Compare _Tr_ III vii 23-24 (to Perilla) 'dum licuit, tua saepe mihi, tibi nostra legebam; / saepe tui _iudex_, saepe magister eram'. _Censore_ was probably still felt as a metaphor; the only precedent given at _OLD censor_ 2b is Hor _Ep_ II ii 109-10 'at qui legitimum cupiet fecisse poema / cum tabulis _animum censoris_ sumet _honesti_', which is virtually a simile. =26. SAEPE TIBI ADMONITV FACTA LITVRA MEO EST.= Similar phrasing in a similar context at _EP_ II iv 17-18 (to Atticus) 'utque meus lima rasus liber esset amici, / _non semel admonitu facta litura tuo est_'. =27. DIGNAM MAEONIIS PHAEACIDA ... CHARTIS.= 'A Phaeacid worthy of the Homeric original you were translating'. It is clear from xvi 27 that Tuticanus produced a translation rather than a new work in imitation of Homer: 'et qui Maeoniam Phaeacida _uertit_'. =27. MAEONIIS= = 'Homeric', Homer being considered a native of Maeonia (Lydia). The same use at _RA_ 373 'Maeonio ... pede', _EP_ III iii 31-32 'Maeonio ... carmine', and Prop II xxviii 29 'Maeonias ... heroidas'; the word in this sense perhaps brought into standard poetic vocabulary by Horace (_Carm_ I vi 2 'Maeonii carminis', _Carm_ IV ix 5-6 'Maeonius ... Homerus'). =27. CHARTIS= = _carminibus_. Compare _AA_ II 746 'uos eritis _chartae_ proxima cura meae'. The metonymy is not found in Virgil or Propertius, but compare Lucretius IV 970 'patriis ... _chartis_' = 'Latinis uersibus' (I 137) and Hor _Carm_ IV ix 30-31 'non ego te meis / _chartis_ inornatum silebo' (where Kiessling-Heinze point out that _chartis_ refers to the poem in its published state being transmitted to others, rather than to the poem at its moment of composition). =28. CVM TE PIERIAE PERDOCVERE DEAE.= For the poet's being divinely taught, compare Prop II x 10 & IV i 133, _Her_ XV 27-28 'at mihi Pegasides blandissima carmina dictant; / iam canitur toto nomen in orbe meum', and the disclaimers at Prop II i 3 and _AA_ I 25-28 'non ego, Phoebe, datas a te mihi mentiar artes, / nec nos aeriae uoce monemur auis, / nec mihi sunt uisae Clio Cliusque sorores / seruanti pecudes uallibus, Ascra, tuis'. The topic is an important one in ancient literature, the most influential passages being the opening of Hesiod's _Theogony_ (referred to in the passage just cited) and the beginning of Callimachus' _Aetia_. =29. TENOR.= 'Course'; the same use at _Her_ VII 111-12 (Dido speaking) 'durat in extremum uitaeque nouissima nostrae / prosequitur fati qui fuit ante _tenor_'. =29. VIRIDI ... IVVENTA.= Ovid is perhaps imitating _Aen_ V 295 'Euryalus forma insignis _uiridique iuuenta_'. Similar phrasing at _AA_ III 557 'uiridemque iuuentam', _Tr_ IV x 17 'frater ad eloquium _uiridi_ tendebat ab aeuo', and _Tr_ III i 7-8 'id quoque quod _uiridi_ quondam male lusit in aeuo / heu nimium sero damnat et odit opus'; at the last passage Luck aptly cites _Met_ XV 201-3 'nam tener et lactens puerique simillimus aeuo / uere nouo [_sc_ annus] est; tunc _herba nitens_ et roboris expers turget'. =30. ALBENTES ... COMAS.= For the synecdoche compare Callimachus _Ep_ LXIV (=_Anth Pal_ V xxiii) 5-6 '[Greek: hê poliê de / autik' anamnêsei tauta se panta komê]'. Ovid would have been about sixty years of age at the time of this poem, old by Roman standards; but his father lived to ninety, and was survived by his wife (_Tr_ IV x 77-80). =30. INLABEFACTA= occurs in classical Latin only here and at viii 9-10 'ius aliquod faciunt adfinia uincula nobis / (quae semper maneant _inlabefacta_ precor)'. =31-32. QVAE NISI TE MOVEANT, DVRO TIBI PECTORA FERRO / ESSE VEL INVICTO CLAVSA ADAMANTE PVTEM.= Compare _Her_ II 137 'duritia _ferrum_ ut superes _adamantaque_ teque', _Her_ X 109-10, and _Met_ IX 614-15 (Byblis on her brother) 'nec rigidas silices solidumue in pectore _ferrum_ / aut _adamanta_ gerit'. Professor R. J. Tarrant notes the unexpected shift in the thought of the poem: earlier it was Ovid who was guilty of delaying in sending Tuticanus any sign of his friendship. Ovid might be postponing the real point of the letter for reasons of tact: Tuticanus has acted as though his long association with Ovid meant nothing to him, but Ovid does not want to complain of this openly, and so stresses his own failure to send Tuticanus a letter. =33-36.= The set of _adynata_ is remarkable for the way Ovid makes each of them relate to his own hardships; even Boreas and Notus have a specific connection, since Ovid complains so often of the climate of Tomis. =35. TEPIDVS BOREAS ... SIT.= A comparable inversion of nature described at _Ibis_ 34 'et tepidus gelido flabit ab axe Notus' (before Ovid will forgive his enemy). =35. PRAEFRIGIDVS= appears here for the first time in Latin; it occurs later in Celsus and the elder Pliny. _Praegelidus_, however, is found at Livy XXI 54 7. =36. ET POSSIT FATVM MOLLIVS ESSE MEVM.= The personal reference in the last element of the series of _adynata_ is a clear break with the conventions of the topic. The last (and therefore greatest) curse in the _Ibis_ has a similar personal reference: 'denique Sarmaticas inter Geticasque sagittas / his precor ut uiuas et moriare locis'. =37. LAPSO= _FHILT_ LASSO _BCM_. _Lapso ... sodali_ seems to me the preferable reading, since it contrasts Ovid's former life in Rome with his disgrace and exile; but _lasso_ is well attested and can be construed easily enough. Unfortunately, parallels from the poems of exile are of little use, since in most of them the one word could easily be read for the other: 'tu quoque magnorum laudes admitte uirorum, / ut facis, et lapso [_uar_ lasso] quam potes adfer opem' (_EP_ II iii 47-48), 'fac modo permaneas lasso [_uar_ lapso], Graecine, fidelis, / duret et in longas impetus iste moras' (_EP_ II vi 35-36), 'regia, crede mihi, res est succurrere lapsis [_uar_ lassis], / conuenit et tanto, quantus es ipse, uiro' (_EP_ II ix 11-12), 'digne uir hac serie, lapso [_uar_ lasso] succurrere amico / conueniens istis moribus esse puta' (_EP_ III ii 109). Professor R. J. Tarrant cites similar variants in the text of Seneca at _HF_ 646 & 803 and _Thy_ 616 & 658. A clear decision can be made, however, for the phrase _res lassae_; it is certified as the correct term by the parallel phrase _res fessae_, for which see _Aen_ III 145 'quam _fessis_ finem _rebus_ ferat' and _Aen_ XI 335 'consulite in medium et _rebus_ succurrite _fessis_', cited by Luck at _Tr_ I v 35. For _res lassae_ in Ovid, compare _Tr_ I v 35 'quo magis, o pauci, _rebus_ succurrite _lassis_', _Tr_ V ii 41 'unde petam _lassis_ solacia _rebus_?', _EP_ II ii 47 'nunc tua pro _lassis_ nitatur gratia _rebus'_, and _EP_ II iii 93 'respicis antiquum _lassis_ in _rebus_ amicum'; in each of these passages _lapsis_ is found as a variant for _lassis_. Similarly, the sixth-century _codex Romanus_ reads _lapsis_ at Virgil _G_ IV 449 'uenimus hinc _lassis_ quaesitum oracula rebus'. =38. HIC CVMVLVS NOSTRIS ABSIT ABESTQVE MALIS.= Festus defines _cumulus_ as a heap added to an already full measure (s.u. _auctarium_, 14 Muller, 14 Lindsay). The transferred sense is common in Cicero (_Prou Cons_ 26, _S Rosc_ 8, _Att_ XVI iii 3), and is found elsewhere in Ovid at _EP_ II v 35-36 'hoc tibi facturo uel si non ipse rogarem / accedat cumulus gratia nostra leuis' and _Met_ XI 205-6 'stabat opus: pretium rex infitiatur et addit, / perfidiae _cumulum_, falsis periuria uerbis'. =38. ABSIT ABESTQVE.= The more natural _abest absitque_ cannot be placed in a pentameter. =39. PER SVPEROS, QVORVM CERTISSIMVS ILLE EST.= Similar line-endings at _Ibis_ 23-24 'di melius! _quorum longe mihi maximus ille est_, / qui nostras inopes noluit esse uias' and _EP_ I ii 97-98 'di faciant igitur, _quorum iustissimus ipse est_, / alma nihil maius Caesare terra ferat'. =40. QVO ... PRINCIPE.= Professor R. J. Tarrant points out that Augustus must here be meant, since it appears from 20 that Ovid and Tuticanus were contemporaries: Tuticanus must by the time of the poem's writing have been in later middle age, rather late to be prospering only under Tiberius. T. P. Wiseman (268) has suggested that Ovid's Tuticanus might be the son of a Tuticanus Callus known to have been senator before 48 BC. =41-42. EFFICE ... NE SPERATA MEAM DESERAT AVRA RATEM.= 'See to it that the breeze I hope for does not fail to come to my ship'. _Deserere_ generally refers to something failing one that was originally operative: compare Cic _Att_ VII vii 7 'nisi me lucerna desereret' ('if the lamp were not going out'--Shackleton Bailey), Plautus _Mer_ 123 'genua hunc cursorem deserunt' and the other passages cited at _OLD desero_ 2b. But _sperata_ indicates that the breeze cannot yet be present; other instances of the same metaphor at viii 27-28 'quamlibet exigua si nos ea _iuuerit_ aura, / obruta de mediis cumba resurget aquis', ix 73 'et si quae _dabit_ aura sinum, laxate rudentes', and _Tr_ IV v 19-20 'utque facis, remis ad opem luctare ferendam, / _dum ueniat_ placido mollior aura deo', =43. QVID MANDEM QVAERIS.= Similar wording at _EP_ III i 33-34 (to his wife) '_quid facias quaeris?_ quaeras hoc scilicet ipsa [_Riese_: ipsum _codd_]: / inuenies, uere si reperire uoles'. Ovid's pretense of not knowing what to tell Tuticanus to do was an ingenious solution to his friends' complaint that he was constantly repeating the same instructions to them (_EP_ III vii 1-6). Professor R. J. Tarrant points out the balance with the poem's start, where Ovid pretends not to know how to address Tuticanus. =43. PEREAM NISI DICERE VIX EST.= Similar doubt expressed at _Tr_ IV iii 31-32 'quid tamen ipse precer dubito, nec dicere possum / affectum quem te mentis habere uelim'. _Peream nisi_, which Ovid plays on in the next line, is colloquial and foreign to poetic diction: instances at _OLD pereo_ 3b. =44. SI MODO QVI PERIIT ILLE PERIRE POTEST.= Similar phrasing at _Tr_ I iv 27-28 'uos animam saeuae fessam subducite morti, / _si modo qui periit non periisse potest_'. =45. NEC QVID NOLIMVE VELIMVE.= Compare _Met_ XI 492-93 '_nec_ se ... fatetur / scire ratis [_codd_: satis _fort scribendum_] rector ... _quid iubeatue uetetue_' and _Tr_ I ii 31-32 'rector in incerto est _nec quid fugiatue petatue_ / inuenit'. =46. NEC SATIS VTILITAS EST MIHI NOTA MEA.= 'And I am at a loss to know what is to my advantage'. _Satis_ strengthens the sentence: compare Ter _Hec_ 877 'ego istuc sati' scio', 'I know that very well'. For _utilitas_, see at ix 48 _publica ... utilitas_ (p 300). =48. SENSVS= here means 'judgement' or 'good sense', as at Prop II xii 3 'is primum uidit sine _sensu_ uiuere amantes' and Val Max I vi ext 1 'si quod uestigium in uecordi pectore _sensus_ fuisset'. Elsewhere in Ovid _sensus_ carries the meaning 'awareness, consciousness'. =48. CVM RE= _codd_ CVM SPE _Heinsius_. _Cum re_, 'along with my fortune', seems somewhat out of place; but Burman pointed out that _consilium et res_ seems to have been a Latin phrase, citing Sallust _Iug_ 74 'neque illi _res neque consilium_ aut quisquam hominum satis placebat' and Ter _Eun_ 240-41 'itan parasti te ut spes nulla relicua in te siet tibi? / simul _consilium cum re_ amisti?'. =50. QVAQVE VIA VENIAS AD MEA VOTA, VIDE.= This is a provisional restoration of the line. The manuscript reading which most closely approaches this text is that of _L_ and _F3_, QVAQVE VIAM FACIAS AD MEA VOTA, VIDE; the other manuscripts have the same text, except that QVOQVE is found in some for _quaque_, while for _uide_ there are the variants MODO, VADO, and VALE. My restoration is based on 6 '_quaque_ meos _adeas_ est _uia_ nulla modos' and _Fast_ I 431-32 (Priapus approaches the sleeping nymph Lotis) 'a pedibus tracto uelamine _uota_ / _ad sua felici coeperat ire uia_'. Before Professor E. Fantham brought this passage to my attention, I had thought that _M_'s _quoque uiam facias ad mea uota modo_ was correct. _Modo_ is weak and does not fit well with the preceding _qua ... parte_, but at least is acceptable Latin; for _quo ... modo_ compare _Med_ 1-2 'Discite quae faciem commendet cura, puellae, / et _quo_ sit uobis forma tuenda _modo_' and _Ibis_ 55-56 'nunc _quo_ Battiades inimicum deuouet Ibin, / _hoc_ ego deuoueo teque tuosque _modo_'. The image in _quoque ... uado_ ['ford'] is rather strange, and for this sense of the word Ovid seems to have used the plural (_Met_ III 19; _Met_ IX 108). At _Fast_ IV 300 'sedit limoso pressa carina _uado_', _uado_ means 'river-bottom'. Ovid does not end any one of his dozens of verse epistles with _uale_, so the reading of _FTI2ul_ must be discounted. If my restoration is correct or nearly correct, the original corruptions would have been of _uia_ to _uiam_ and of _uenias_ to _facias_; the latter corruption might have been a deliberate interpolation to procure a governing verb for _uiam_, or might have been a misreading of or conjectural restoration for a damaged archetype. The variant _quoque_ for _quaque_ and the different variants for _uide_ would have been secondary corruptions, unless they also were the result of a damaged archetype. =50. VIDE.= For _uide_ at the end of the pentameter, compare _EP_ II ii 55-56 'num tamen excuses erroris origine factum, / an nihil expediat tale mouere, uide'. It must however be said that _uide_ is somewhat strange following the subjunctive _quaeras_. XIII. To Carus Nothing is known of the Carus to whom this poem is addressed beyond what Ovid tells us: that he wrote a poem on Hercules (11-12; xvi 7-8) and that he was teacher of the sons of Germanicus (47-48). The poem begins with a pun on the meaning of Carus' name (1-2). This opening will in itself demonstrate to Carus who his correspondent is (3-6). Carus can himself be recognized through his style (7-12). Ovid does not claim that his poetry is excellent, only that it is individual; if his poetry is poor, it is because he is almost a Getic poet now (13-18). He has written a poem in Getic, which was well received (19-22). It was a description of the apotheosis of Augustus and a laudation of the members of the imperial family (23-32). When he finished reciting the poem, he was applauded; one person even suggested that his piety merited a recall (33-38). But it is now the sixth year of his exile, and poems will not assist him, since in the past they have done him harm. Carus should use his influence to secure Ovid's recall (39-50). Certain elements of the poem, such as the flattering references to Carus' poetry and the request for his help, are commonplaces of the poetry of exile; the list of the members of the imperial family is similarly paralleled in Ovid's other poems (see at 25-32 [p 400]). Ovid nowhere else explicitly describes any of his Getic poems. =1. MEMORANDE= _BMFHILT_ NVMERANDE _C_. For _memorande_ compare _Tr_ I v 1 'O mihi post nullos umquam _memorande_ sodales'. _Numerande_ is in itself acceptable enough: see ix 35 'hic ego praesentes inter _numerarer_ amicos'. =2. QVI QVOD ES, ID= _BCFI_ QVI QVOD ID ES _MH_ QVIQVE QVOD ES _LT_. For the use of _id_, Ehwald (_KB_ 47) cited _Fast_ II 23-24 'quaeque capit lictor domibus purgamina uersis ['swept out'] / torrida cum mica farra, uocantur _idem_ [_sc_ februa]', Hor _Sat_ II iii 139-41 (of Orestes) 'non Pyladen ferro uiolare aususue sororem / Electram, tantum male dicit utrique uocando / hanc Furiam, hunc _aliud_', Sen _Ben_ I 3 10 'id quemque uocari iubent', and Tac _Germ_ 6 'definitur et numerus: centeni ex singulis pagis sunt, _id_que ipsum inter suos uocantur' ['they are called "The Hundred"']'. _Quique quod es_ is, however, an attractive reading: compare _Tr_ I v 1-2 'O mihi post nullos umquam memorande sodales, / _et cui_ praecipue sors mea uisa sua est'. _Quique quod_ is obviously prone to haplography; on the other hand, it could be a rewriting of _qui quod id es_, which is itself presumably a simple corruption through interchange of _qui quod es id_. I therefore print _qui quod es id_, although with some hesitation. =2. VERE.= 'Justly'. For the same adverb used once again of names "properly" applied, see _Tr_ V x 13-14 'quem tenet Euxini mendax cognomine litus, / et Scythici _uere_ terra _sinistra_ freti'. =2. CARE.= Luck among others believes that Carus is also addressed at _Tr_ III v 17-18 'sum quoque, _care_, tuis defensus uiribus absens / (scis "carum" ueri nominis esse loco)'; but it seems excessively ingenious to make Ovid say 'I call you _carus_ instead of your real name, Carus'. Still, as Professor R. J. Tarrant points out to me, the passage is odd, in that Ovid elsewhere uses _care_ only in conjunction with another vocative (compare viii 89 '_care_ Suilli' and _Tr_ III iv 1-2 '_care_ quidem ... sed tempore duro / cognite'); _care_ may have been used as a metrical equivalent to the suppressed name, in the way the "cover names" in elegy correspond to the shape of the alleged actual names of the women. Unlike _care_, _carissime_ is often found by itself (_Tr_ I v 3, III iii 27, III vi 1, IV vii 19 & V vii 5; _EP_ II iv 21 & IV x 3). =2. AVE= occurs in Ovid only here and at _RA_ 639-40 'nec ueniat seruus, nec flens ancillula fictum / suppliciter dominae nomine dicat "aue!"', and is not common in writing. It was, however, frequent in everyday speech, as is clear from Sen _Ben_ VI 34 3 'uulgare et publicum uerbum et promiscuum ignotis "aue"'. =3. SALVTERIS= _MFT_ SALVTARIS _BCHIL_. Ovid usually employs the subjunctive in indirect questions; this is demonstrated by metre at such passages as _Fast_ VI 385-86 'increpat illos / Iuppiter et sacro quid _uelit_ ore docet', _Tr_ II 294 '_sustulerit_ quare quaeret Ericthonium', _Tr_ II 297-98 'Isidis aede sedens cur hanc Saturnia quaeret / _egerit_ Ionio Bosphorioque mari', _Tr_ V xiv 1-2 'Quanta tibi _dederim_ nostris monumenta libellis ... uides', _EP_ I i 55-56 'talia caelestes fieri praeconia gaudent, / ut sua quid _ualeant_ numina teste probent' and _EP_ II vii 3 'subsequitur quid _agas_ audire uoluntas'. I have found two passages where metre demonstrates that Ovid used the indicative in an indirect question, _Met_ X 637 'quid _facit_ [_codd plerique_: quod facit _recc_ quidque agat _Heinsius_ quid factum _Merkel_ quid uelit _Nick_ quid facti _Rappold_ dissidet _Korn_ quid sciat _Slater_] ignorans amat et non sentit amorem' and _EP_ I viii 25-26 'sed memor unde _abii_ queror, o iucunde sodalis, / accedant nostris saeua quod arma malis'. But in the first passage _faciat_ would have an ambiguous meaning, since it could represent either _quid facio_ or _quid faciam_, and in the second _abierim_, with its short 'a', 'i', and 'e', would be metrically intractable. It is difficult to say whether the scribes were more prone to influence by the subjunctive normal in classical Latin prose, or by the indicative of the Romance languages and of ecclesiastical Latin. I print the subjunctive in view of Ovid's usual practice, and in particular because of _EP_ I ii 5 'forsitan haec a quo _mittatur_ epistula quaeras' and _EP_ III v 1 'Quam legis unde tibi _mittatur_ epistula quaeris?'. But Professor R. J. Tarrant notes that the need for a dependent subjunctive would be more strongly felt with _quaerere_ in these two passages than with the _index_ of the present passage. Not all poets were as strict as Ovid in using the subjunctive in indirect questions. Propertius at III v 26-46 has the following verbs in a series of indirect questions: _temperet_, _uenit_, _deficit_, _redit_, _superant_, _captet_, _sit uentura_, _bibit_, _tremuere_, _luxerit_ (from _lugere_), _coit_, _exeat_, _eat_, _sint_ (uar _sunt_), _furit_, _custodit_, _descendit_, _potest_. =3. COLOR HIC.= 'The style of this opening'. Ovid is presumably referring to its playful tone. Compare _Tr_ I i 61 (to his poem) 'ut titulo careas, ipso noscere _colore_', at which Luck cites Martial XII ii 17-18 'quid titulum poscis? uersus duo tresue legantur, / clamabunt omnes te, liber, esse meum'. _Color_ is not found in precisely this sense until Horace. For a discussion of its development, see Brink at Hor _AP_ 86 _operumque colores_. =4. STRVCTVRA.= This passage is the first instance cited by _OLD_ _structura_ 1b of _structura_ in this transferred sense, which becomes common in Silver prose, particularly Quintilian (I x 23, VIII vi 67, IX iv 45). Lewis and Short point out that Cicero uses the word in similar contexts only as a simile: compare _Brut_ 33 'ante hunc [_sc_ Isocratem] enim uerborum _quasi structura_ et quaedam ad numerum conclusio nulla erat', _Or_ 149 '_quasi structura quaedam_', and _Opt Gen_ 5 'et uerborum est _structura quaedam'_. There are two instances in Ovid of _struere_ with a similar meaning, both from the _Ex Ponto_. One is from line 20 of this poem ('_structa_ ... uerba'), while the other is at II v 19 '_structos_ inter fera proelia uersus'. =5. MIRIFICA= is a colloquialism. Common in the letters of Cicero, the word (according to _TLL_ VIII 1060 52) is not found in Livy, Vitruvius, Celsus, Curtius, or Tacitus. The only poets apart from Terence and Ovid cited as using the word are Accius, Ausonius, and the author of the _Ciris_ (although the passage where the word occurs, 12-13, is corrupt); see also Catullus LIII 2, LXXI 4, and LXXXIV 3. For a discussion of _mirificus_, see Axelson 61, and of the similarly colloquial _mirifice_ Hofmann 78. =5. PVBLICA= = 'usual, ordinary'. Compare _Am_ III vii 11-12 'et mihi blanditias dixit dominumque uocauit, / et quae praeterea _publica_ uerba iuuant', _AA_ III 479-80 'munda, sed e medio consuetaque uerba, puellae, / scribite: sermonis _publica_ forma placet', and Sen _Ben_ VI 34 3 (quoted at 2 _aue_). =6. QVALIS ENIM CVMQVE EST.= A common phrase in the poets when they speak of their own verse: compare Catullus I 8-9 'quare habe tibi quidquid hoc libelli / _qualecumque_', Hor _Sat_ I x 88-89 'quibus [_sc_ amicis] haec, sunt _qualiacumque_, / arridere uelim, doliturus, si placent spe / deterius nostra' (at which Bentley cited the present passage), Martial V lx 5 '_qualiscumque_ legaris ut per orbem', and Statius _Sil_ II praef 'haec _qualiacumque_ sunt, Melior carissime, si tibi non displicuerint, a te publicum accipiant; sin minus, ad me reuertantur' (both passages cited by Munro, _Criticisms_ 5). =7. VT TITVLVM CHARTAE DE FRONTE REVELLAS.= The same hypothetical case at _Tr_ I i 61-62 '_ut titulo careas_, ipso noscere _colore_; / dissimulare uelis, te liquet esse meum' and _EP_ II ix 49-52 (to King Cotys) 'nec regum quisquam magis est instructus ab illis [_sc_ the liberal arts] ... carmina testantur, quae _si tua nomina demas_ / Threicium iuuenem composuisse negem'. =7. CHARTAE.= See at xii 27 _chartis_ (p 380). =7. REVELLAS= 'tear away' is surprisingly strong in its overtones. It is found only here in the poems of exile, six times in the other elegies, and fifteen times in the _Metamorphoses_. =8. QVOD SIT OPVS VIDEOR DICERE POSSE TVVM.= 'I think I could say which work was yours'. Heinsius' QVID SIT OPVS VIDEAR is a strange error: the interrogative adjective is acceptable enough, while the notion of the subjunctive must of course be contained in _posse_, not in the verb that governs it. =11. PRODENT AVCTOREM VIRES.= 'His strength will reveal the poet's identity'. The same sense of _prodere_ at _Met_ II 433 'impedit amplexu nec se sine crimine _prodit_', _Met_ XIV 740-41 'adapertaque ianua factum / prodidit', and _Am_ I viii 109 'uox erat in cursu, cum me mea _prodidit_ umbra'. _Vires_ again used of poetic skill at _Tr_ I vi 29 'ei mihi non magnas quod habent mea carmina _uires_', _Tr_ IV ix 16 'Pierides _uires_ et sua tela dabunt', _EP_ III iii 34, and _EP_ III iv 79. =13. DEPRENSA.= _Deprendere_ 'recognize, detect' is also found at _Met_ II 93-94 'utinamque oculos in pectore posses / inserere et patrias intus _deprendere_ curas' and _Met_ VII 536-37 'strage canum primo uolucrumque ouiumque boumque / inque feris subiti _deprensa_ potentia morbi', as well as at Livy XLII 17 7 (_uenenum_) and Celsus III 18 3 '[phrenetici ...] summam ... speciem sanitatis in captandis malorum operum occasionibus praebent, sed exitu _deprenduntur_'. This seems to be a semi-medical sense; Professor R. J. Tarrant suggests that _colore_ may bear the secondary meaning 'complexion' in this passage. =15. TAM MALA THERSITEN PROHIBEBAT FORMA LATERE.= For Thersites' ugliness, see _Il_ II 216-19 '[Greek: aischistos de anêr hypo Ilion êlthe· / pholkos eên, chôlos d' heteron poda· tô de hoi ômô / kyrtô, epi stêthos synochôkote· autar hyperthe / phoxos eên kephalên, psednê d' epenênothe lachnê]'. For the modern reader, Thersites' ugliness is hardly his leading characteristic; but at _EP_ III ix 9-10 Ovid again refers to his appearance: 'auctor opus laudat: sic forsitan Agrius [his father] olim / Thersiten facie dixerit esse bona'. Other mentions of Thersites' ugliness at Lucian _Dial Mort_ XXV (Thersites argues that he is now as handsome as Nireus) and Epictetus _Diss_ II 23 32 (Thersites is contrasted with Achilles), to which Professor C. P. Jones adds from Greek epigram _Greek Inscr. Brit. Mus._ IV ii 1114; other citations from late Greek authors at PW V A,2 2457 18-38 & 2464 23-66 and Roscher V 670 23 ff. =16. NIREVS.= For the beauty of Nireus, see _Il_ II 671-74 '[Greek: Nireus au Symêthen age treis nêas eïsas, / Nireus Aglaïês hyios Charopoio t' anaktos, / Nireus, hos kallistos anêr hypo Ilion êlthe / tôn allôn Danaôn met' amymona Pêleïôna]'. This is the only mention of Nireus in the poem; but Demetrius (_Peri Hermeneias_ 62; cited by Cope at Aristotle _Rhet_ 1414a) remarks that because of Homer's use of epanaphora (the repetition of Nireus' name) and dialysis (asyndeton) '[Greek: schedon hapax tou Nireôs onomasthentos en tôi dramati memnêmetha ouden hêtton ê tou Achilleôs kai tou Odysseôs]'. Ovid mentions Nireus again at _AA_ II 109-12 'sis licet antiquo Nireus adamatus Homero ... ingenii dotes corporis adde bonis'; see also Hor _Epod_ XV 22 'forma ... uincas Nirea', Hor _Carm_ III xx 15 (where Nireus is paired with Ganymede) and Prop III xviii 27 'Nirea non facies, non uis exemit Achillem'; from Greek epigram Professor C. P. Jones cites Peek _Griech. Versinschr._ 1728 (Merkelbach _ZPE_ 25 [1977] 281). =16. CONSPICIENDVS.= The word is metrically suited to the second half of the pentameter, before the disyllable: compare Tib I ii 70 & II iii 52, _Fast_ V 118 & V 170, and _Tr_ II 114. =17. MIRARI SI= is a colloquialism: most of the passages from verse cited at _TLL_ VIII 1067 14 are from Plautus and the hexameter poems of Horace; from Propertius compare II iii 33 'haec ego nunc _mirer si_ flagret nostra iuuentus?' and from Ovid _Her_ X 105 'non equidem _miror si_ stat uictoria tecum' and _Tr_ I ix 21 'saeua neque _admiror_ metuunt _si_ fulmina'. =19. A PVDET, ET GETICO SCRIPSI SERMONE LIBELLVM.= The rest of the distich after _a pudet_ explains the exclamation ('I have even written ...'), and so the punctuation should mark the break. The idiom is different from the _et pudet et_ construction seen at xv 29 'et pudet et metuo ['I am both embarrassed and afraid'] semperque eademque precari' and _Tr_ V vii 57-58 'et pudet et fateor ['I confess with embarrassment'], iam desuetudine longa / uix subeunt ipsi uerba Latina mihi'. The only other instance of independent _a pudet_ in Ovid is _AA_ III 803-4 'quid iuuet et uoces et anhelitus arguat oris; / a pudet, arcanas pars habet ista notas', which, however, Professor R. J. Tarrant suspects is part of an interpolation. =19. GETICO ... SERMONE.= Ovid repeatedly claims to have learned Getic and Sarmatian: compare _Tr_ III xiv 47-48 'Threicio Scythicoque fere circumsonor ore, / et uideor Geticis scribere posse modis', _Tr_ V vii 55-56 'ille ego Romanus uates--ignoscite, Musae!-- / Sarmatico cogor plurima more loqui', _Tr_ V xii 58 'nam didici Getice Sarmaticeque loqui', and _EP_ III ii 40 (identical to _Tr_ V xii 58). It is of course not possible to prove that Ovid did or did not learn Getic and write poetry in that language. But in the absence of other evidence, it seems better to suppose that he did learn the language since (a) he claims to have do so, (b) Latin and Greek would hardly have been widely spoken in the region, and (c) a man with Ovid's linguistic facility would have had little difficulty in learning the languages of the region. =20. STRVCTAQVE ... VERBA.= Compare Cic _de Or_ III 171 'struere uerba', and see at 4 _structura_ (p 393). =20. NOSTRIS ... MODIS.= Ovid did not use native rhythms, but instead used Latin metres. =21. ET PLACVI.= Luck compares _EP_ I v 63-64 'forsitan audacter faciam, sed glorior Histrum / ingenio nullum maius habere meo', but it is clear enough from the context that Ovid was there speaking of his Latin poetry. =21. GRATARE.= _Gratari_ is extremely rare in Latin, being found only in the poets and historians; _grAtulAri_ was of course not available (except for _grAtulor_) for use in dactylic verse. Other instances of the word in Ovid at ix 13 _'gratatusque_ darem cum dulcibus oscula uerbis', _Her_ VI 119 'nunc etiam peperi; _gratare_ ambobus, Iason!', _Her_ XI 65, _Met_ I 578, VI 434, IX 244 & 312, and _Fast_ III 418. =22. INTER INHVMANOS ... GETAS.= The same phrase in the same metrical position at _EP_ I v 65-66 'hoc ubi uiuendum est satis est si consequor aruo / _inter inhumanos_ esse poeta _Getas_' and _EP_ III v 27-28 'quem ... fatum ... _inter inhumanos_ maluit esse _Getas_'. =23. LAVDES DE CAESARE DIXI.= In 1896 J. Gilbert ingeniously proposed the punctuation 'laudes [potential subjunctive]: de Caesare dixi'. But _laus de_ + ablative instead of the more usual objective genitive construction is supported by Tac _Ann_ I 12 'addidit laudem de Augusto'. Nipperdey there explains _de_ by equating _laus_ with _oratio_ and _sermo_, both of which take _de_ as a normal construction; but it appears from the present passage that _laus de_ may have been a special term for panegyric. Professor E. Fantham notes that Ovid may have been seeking a synonym for _laudAtiO_. =24. ADIVTA EST NOVITAS NVMINE NOSTRA DEI.= _Nouitas nostra_ could mean either 'my novel attempt' (Wheeler, Lewis and Short) or 'my inexperience'; if the latter, _adiuta_ would bear the uncommon but quite valid meaning 'compensated for'; _OLD adiuuo_ 7 cites passages from Cicero (_Fam_ V xiii 5 'ea quibus secundae res ornantur, aduersae adiuuantur'), Livy, and Ulpian. =25-32.= Similar catalogues of the imperial family occur at _Met_ XV 834-47, _Tr_ II 161-68, _Tr_ IV ii 7-12, _EP_ II ii 69-74, and _EP_ II viii 29-34; these passages are quoted from below. =25-26. NAM PATRIS AVGVSTI DOCVI MORTALE FVISSE / CORPUS, IN AETHERIAS NVMEN ABISSE DOMOS.= Other mentions of the deified Augustus at vi 15-16 'coeperat Augustus detectae ignoscere culpae; / spem nostram terras deseruitque simul' and viii 63-64 'et modo, Caesar, auum, quem uirtus addidit astris, / sacrarunt aliqua carmina parte tuum'. Ovid had predicted Augustus' apotheosis: see _Met_ XV 838-39 'nec nisi cum senior Pylios aequauerit annos, / aetherias sedes cognataque sidera tanget', _Tr_ II 57-58 'optaui peteres caelestia sidera tarde, / parsque fui turbae parua precantis idem', and _Tr_ V ii 51-52, V v 61-62, V viii 29-30 & V xi 25-26. Augustus' apotheosis was similar to those of Hercules, Aeneas, Romulus, and Julius Caesar: compare the descriptions at _Met_ IX 262-72 'interea quodcumque fuit populabile flammae / Mulciber abstulerat, nec ... quicquam ab imagine ductum / matris habet, tantumque Iouis uestigia seruat ... maiorque uideri / coepit et _augusta_ fieri grauitate uerendus. / quem pater omnipotens inter caua nubila raptum / quadriiugo curru radiantibus intulit astris', _Met_ XIV 603-4 'quicquid in Aenea fuerat mortale, repurgat [_sc_ Numicius] / et respersit aquis; pars optima restitit illi', _Met_ XIV 824-28 'abstulit [_sc_ Mars] Iliaden: corpus mortale per auras / dilapsum tenues ... pulchra subit facies et puluinaribus altis / dignior', and _Met_ XV 844-46 'Venus ... Caesaris eripuit membris neque in aera solui / passa recentem animam caelestibus intulit astris'. =25. PATRIS AVGVSTI.= _Patris_ to make it clear that Ovid is not speaking of Tiberius Caesar _Augustus_. =26. CORPVS ... NVMEN.= Precisely the same distinction is found in Velleius' description of Augustus' apotheosis and the start of Tiberius' reign: 'post redditum caelo patrem et _corpus_ eius humanis honoribus, _numen_ diuinis honoratum, primum principalium eius operum fuit ordinatio comitiorum' (II 124 3). =27. PAREM VIRTVTE PATRI.= Compare _EP_ II viii 31-32 (to Augustus, about Tiberius) 'perque tibi _similem uirtutis imagine_ natum, / moribus agnosci qui tuus esse potest'. =27-28. FRENA ... IMPERII.= The same metaphor at _Tr_ II 41-42 'nec te quisquam moderatius umquam / _imperii_ potuit _frena_ tenere sui', _EP_ II ix 33 'Caesar ut _imperii_ moderetur _frena_ precamur', and _EP_ II v 75 (of Germanicus) 'succedatque suis orbis moderator _habenis_'. At _Fast_ I 531-34 Ovid uses the same metaphor, as here, of Tiberius' accession to power: (Carmenta is prophesying Rome's future) 'et penes Augustos patriae tutela manebit: / hanc fas _imperii frena_ tenere domum. / inde nepos natusque dei [Tiberius was the adopted son of Augustus, and therefore the grandson of Julius Caesar], licet ipse _recuset_, / pondera caelesti mente paterna feret'. In all of these passages Ovid may have had in mind _Aen_ VII 600 (of Latinus) 'saepsit se tectis _rerumque_ reliquit _habenas_'. =27-28. FRENA ... SAEPE RECVSATI ... IMPERII.= At _Tr_ V iv 15-16 Ovid had used _frena recusare_ of a horse: 'fert tamen, ut debet, casus patienter amaros, / more nec indomiti _frena recusat_ equi'. This perhaps influenced his choice of words here. =27. COACTVS= _excerpta Scaligeri_ ROGATVS _codd_. Ovid is referring to the second meeting of the Senate after the death of Augustus (the first meeting had been devoted to funeral arrangements); at this meeting there had been some confusion over Tiberius' intentions. _Rogatus_ is awkward to construe, since Tiberius must already have been asked to accept power: otherwise he could not have refused the offer. The difficulty of _rogatus_ is clearly shown by the description of the scene in Tacitus: 'et ille [_sc_ Tiberius] uarie disserebat de magnitudine imperii sua modestia. solam diui Augusti mentem tantae molis capacem: se in partem curarum ab illo uocatum experiendo didicisse quam arduum, quam subiectum fortunae regendi cuncta onus, proinde in ciuitate tot inlustribus uiris subnixa non ad unum omnia deferrent: plures facilius munia rei publicae sociatis laboribus executuros ... senatu ad infimas obtestationes procumbente, dixit forte Tiberius se ut non toti rei publicae parem, ita quaecumque pars sibi mandaretur eius tutelam suscepturum ... fessus ... clamore omnium, expostulatione singulorum flexit paulatim, non ut fateretur suscipi a se imperium, sed ut negare et _rogari_ desineret' (_Ann_ I 11-13). Scaliger's conjecture is supported by (and is probably based on) the corresponding description at Suetonius _Tib_ 24 'principatum ... diu ... recusauit ... tandem quasi _coactus_ et querens miseram et onerosam iniungi sibi seruitutem, recepit imperium'. Professor A. Dalzell notes, however, that Suetonius' description is an imperfect parallel, since _coactus_ is there modified by _quasi_; he suggests to me that _rogatus_ could be accepted, if it is taken closely with _recusati_--Tiberius finally accepted what he had many times been offered and had many times refused. =29. VESTAM.= Ovid similarly equates Livia with Venus and Juno at _EP_ III i 117-18 'quae Veneris formam, mores Iunonis habendo / sola est caelesti digna reperta toro', and implicitly equates her with Juno at _Fast_ I 650 'sola toro magni digna reperta Iouis'. These appear to be instances of metaphor rather than true equations; but PW XIII,1 913-14 cites inscriptions indicating a cult of Livia-as-Juno. =29-30. LIVIA ... AMBIGVVM NATO DIGNIOR ANNE VIRO.= Tiberius is mentioned by Ovid in connection with Livia at _Fast_ I 649, a description of the rededication of the temple of Concordia in AD 10: 'hanc tua constituit genetrix et rebus et ara', but does not figure in Ovid's other mentions of Livia (_Fast_ V 157-58, _Tr_ II 161-62, _EP_ II viii 29-30, and _EP_ III i 117-18); these passages would have been written before Tiberius' assumption of power. For the coupling of both Augustus and Tiberius with Livia, Professor C. P. Jones cites '[Greek: hê doious skêptroisi theous auchousa Sebastê / Kaisaras]' from an epigram of Ovid's contemporary Honestus.[27] [Footnote 27: Honestus XXI 1-2 Gow-Page (_Garland of Philip_); discussed by Professor Jones at _HSCP_ 74 (1970) 249-55.] =30. AMBIGVVM.= The same use of _ambiguum_ (which may be an Ovidian peculiarity) at _Met_ I 765-66 '_ambiguum_ Clymene precibus Phaethontis an ira / mota magis' and _Met_ XI 235-36 'est specus in medio, natura factus an arte / _ambiguum_, magis arte tamen'. =30. ANNE.= The word is found at _Am_ III xi 49-50 'quicquid eris, mea semper eris; tu selige tantum, / me quoque uelle uelis, _anne_ coactus amem' and _Fast_ VI 27-28 (Juno speaking) 'est aliquid nupsisse Ioui, Iouis esse sororem / fratre magis dubito glorier _anne_ uiro'; the resemblances between this and the present passage are obvious. Bömer _ad loc_ cites instances of _anne_ from Plautus (_Amph_ 173), Terence (_Eun_ 556), Cicero (_Fin_ IV 23, _Att_ XII xiv 2), and Virgil (_G_ I 32 & II 159, _Aen_ VI 864). =31. DVOS IVVENES.= Germanicus and Drusus. For other mentions of them, see _Tr_ II 167 'tui, sidus iuuenale, nepotes', _Tr_ IV ii 9 'et qui Caesareo iuuenes sub nomine crescunt', _EP_ II ii 71-72 'praeterit ipse suos animo Germanicus annos, / nec uigor est Drusi nobilitate minor', and _EP_ II viii 33-34. =31. ADIVMENTA.= The word is rare in verse (but see Lucretius VI 1022 and Silius XI 605 & XVI 12), and Ovid here seems to be giving a version of the construction in which people are said to be _adiumento_, as at Cic _Att_ XII xxxi 2 'magno etiam adiumento nobis Hermogenes potest esse in repraesentando ['in making cash payment'--Shackleton Bailey]', Varro _LL_ V 90, and _Rhet Her_ III 29. _TLL_ I 704 1 cites "Caecil. _mort._ 18" for 'duo minores, qui sint adiumento', which resembles the present passage, but I do not understand the reference: "Caecil." does not appear in the table of authors. =33. NON PATRIA ... SCRIPTA CAMENA.= 'Written in a poem that was not in Latin'. This is the only instance in Ovid of this sense of _Camena_, which seems to have been a Horatian idiom: see _Carm_ II xvi 38 'spiritum Graiae tenuem Camenae', _Ep_ I i 1-3 'Prima dicte mihi, summa dicende Camena ... Maecenas', and _AP_ 275 'tragicae ... Camenae'. Professor R. J. Tarrant cites Martial XII xciv 5 'fila lyrae moui Calabris exculta Camenis', which possibly refers to Horace. =36. MVRMVR.= The hum caused by the exchange of approving comments. Compare _Met_ XIII 123-24 'finierat Telamone satus, uulgique secutum / ultima _murmur_ erat'. Livy (XXXII 22 1) has a _murmur_ of mingled praise and dissent following a speech: '_murmur_ ortum aliorum cum adsensu, aliorum inclementer adsentientes increpantium'. Other _murmura_ are disapproving or anxious, as at _Met_ I 206, VIII 431 & IX 421, and _Aen_ XII 238-39. The Latin _murmur_ could be quite loud: Martial uses the word of a lion's roar (VIII liii [lv] 1). =40. SEXTA ... BRVMA.= The poem must have been written in the winter of 14. =41. NOCVERVNT.= _Nocere_ again used of the _Ars Amatoria_ at xiv 20 'telaque adhuc demens quae _nocuere_ sequor?' and _Tr_ IV 1 35. =42. PRIMAQVE TAM MISERAE CAVSA FVERE FVGAE.= The second cause was of course Ovid's _error_ (_EP_ III iii 67-72). =43. STVDII COMMVNIA FOEDERA SACRI.= Similar references to shared poetic interests at viii 81 '_communia sacra_ tueri', _EP_ II v 60 (to Salanus, a famous orator) 'seruat _studii foedera_ quisque sui', _EP_ II ix 63-64 (to Cotys, king of Thrace, who was a writer of verse) 'haec quoque res aliquid tecum mihi _foederis_ adfert; / eiusdem _sacri_ cultor uterque sumus', _EP_ II x 17 'sunt tamen inter se _communia sacra_ poetis', and _EP_ III iv 67 'sunt mihi uobiscum _communia sacra_, poetae'. The _foedera_ would carry the obligation of mutual assistance. =44. PER NON VILE TIBI NOMEN AMICITIAE.= 'By the name of friendship which is not cheap in your eyes' (Wheeler). Professor R. J. Tarrant cites similar invocations at _Tr_ I viii 15 'illud _amicitiae_ sanctum et uenerabile nomen', and _EP_ II iii 19-20 'illud _amicitiae_ quondam uenerabile _nomen_ / prostat', III ii 43 & III ii 100. =44-46. AMICITIAE ... INGENIIS.= For Ovid's use of quadrisyllable endings for pentameters, see at ii 10 _Alcinoo_ (p 164). =45-46. SIC VINCTO LATIIS GERMANICVS HOSTE CATENIS / MATERIAM VESTRIS ADFERAT INGENIIS.= Compare _EP_ II viii 39-40 'sic fera quam primum pauido Germania uultu / ante triumphantes serua feratur equos'. Germanicus celebrated his triumph in 17: see Tac _Ann_ II 41. _Vestris_ is a true plural referring to Carus and other poets who might be inspired by Germanicus' exploits. For this use of _uester_ to address one member of a collectivity, see Austin on _Aen_ I 140 and Fordyce on Catullus XXIX 20. =45. VINCTO= is my restoration for the manuscripts' CAPTO, which I am unable to construe with _catenis_. _Vincto_ was first corrupted to _uicto_, which was then displaced by the gloss _capto_. For the picture compare _AA_ I 215 'ibunt ante duces onerati colla catenis'; for _uincto_ compare Livy VII 27 8 'eos _uinctos_ consul ante currum triumphans egit', and for _uincto ... catenis_ compare Caesar _BG_ I 53 'trinis catenis uinctus'. =47. PVERI.= The sons of Germanicus: Nero, Drusus III, and Gaius Caligula. =47. VOTVM COMMVNE DEORVM.= Wheeler translates 'the source of universal prayers to the gods'. But it seems difficult to take _uotum_ in this sense, and impossible to construe _deorum_. André translates 'c'est le voeu de tous les dieux', but it seems strange to have gods forming a _uotum_. Postgate placed a comma before _deorum_; but Germanicus and Agrippina were not gods. Heinsius conjectured SVORVM, but this seems rather forced. I suspect that _deorum_ is correct, the sense of the passage being close to that of _Fast_ II 63-64 'templorum positor, templorum sancte repostor, / sit superis opto mutua cura tui'; but what originally stood in place of _uotum_ is not clear. =48. QVOS LAVS FORMANDOS EST TIBI MAGNA DATOS.= 'Whose entrustment to you for education is an immense honour'. For the construction Ehwald (_KB_ 68) cites _Aen_ IX 92 (Cybebe asks that Aeneas' ships be rescued from fire) 'prosit nostris in montibus ortas', 'let it profit them that it was in my mountains that they had their origin' (Jackson Knight). =49. MOMENTA.= 'Influence'. Compare Caesar _BC_ III 70 2 'ita paruae res magnum in utramque partem _momentum_ habuerunt', Livy I 47 6, Hor _Ep_ I x 15-16 'ubi gratior aura / leniat et rabiem Canis et _momenta_ Leonis', and Manilius II 901 (of the fifth temple) 'hic _momenta_ manent nostrae plerumque salutis'. =49. MOMENTA= _Vaticanus 1595 (saec xv), sicut coni Scaliger et Gronouius_ MONIMENTA _BCMFHILT_. Similarly, most manuscripts have _monimenta_ at _Met_ XI 285-86 (Ceyx to Peleus) 'adicis huic animo ['my kindly nature'] _momenta_ potentia, clarum / nomen auumque Iouem'. =49-50. SALVTI, / QVAE NISI MVTATO NVLLA FVTVRA LOCO EST.= A similar qualification of _salus_ at _Met_ IX 530-31 'quam nisi tu dederis non est habitura salutem / hanc tibi mittit amans'; Bömer _ad loc_ cites other word-plays with _salus_ at _Her_ IV 1, XVI 1 & XVIII 1, and at _Tr_ III iii 87-88. =50. MVTATO ... LOCO.= See at viii 86 _qui minus ... distet_ (p 284). XIV. To Tuticanus In his first poem to Tuticanus, Ovid had promised that other poems would follow: 'teque canam quacumque nota, _tibi carmina mittam_' (xii 19). The present poem was written quite shortly after xii, perhaps in AD 16: 'Haec tibi mittuntur quem sum _modo_ carmine questus / non aptum numeris nomen habere meis'. The opening distich indicates that the poem is addressed to Tuticanus. The dedication is a perfunctory one, however, since he is not referred to at any other point of the letter: Ovid perhaps felt that he had fulfilled any obligations he had to Tuticanus with the highly personal earlier poem. In 3-14 Ovid expresses at length his wish to be sent anywhere, even the Syrtes, Charybdis, or the Styx, as long as he can escape Tomis. Such complaints as these have caused the Tomitans to be angry with him (15-22). But he has been misunderstood: he was complaining not of the people but of the land. Hesiod criticized Ascra, Ulysses Ithaca, and Metrodorus Rome, all with impunity, but Ovid's verse has once more caused him trouble (23-44). The Tomitans have been as kind to him as the Paeligni would have been: they have even granted him immunity from taxation, and publicly crowned him (45-56). After this lengthy account of the Tomitans, he moves to an unexpectedly quick summing-up: Tomis is as dear to him as Delos is to Latona (57-60). This conclusion is immediately undercut by the final distich: his only wish is that Tomis were not subject to attack, and that it had a better climate. This type of undercutting is paralleled elsewhere in Ovid's verse: I discuss these passages at 61-62. At ix 97-104 Ovid had mentioned the Tomitans' sympathy for him; but the present poem is unique for the praise Ovid bestows on them, and furnishes a striking contrast to the horrific picture of Tomis in, for instance, _Tr_ V x. A primary purpose of Ovid's poetry from exile was to secure recall, and so he no doubt intentionally emphasized his hardships; it is clear enough from this poem that at the same time he was in fact reaching an accommodation with his new conditions of life. =3. VTCVMQVE.= 'Somehow (in spite of my hardships)'. The word is used by Ovid only in the poetry of exile, and only in this sense: compare _Ibis_ 9-10 'quisquis is est (nam nomen adhuc _utcumque_ tacebo), / cogit inassuetas sumere tela manus' and _EP_ III ix 53 'postmodo collectas [_sc_ litteras] utcumque sine ordine iunxi'. This is a prose sense of _utcumque_, common in Livy; when the word is used in verse, it generally means 'whenever' (Hor _Epod_ XVII 52, _Carm_ I xvii 10, I xxxv 23, II xvii 11, III iv 29 & IV iv 35) or 'however' (_Aen_ VI 822; the only instance of the word in Virgil). =4. TE= _Berolinensis Diez. B. Sant. 1, saec xiii Bodleianus Rawlinson G 105ul_ ME _BCMFHILT_. _Me_ seems unlikely to be right, for the phrase 'nil me praeterea quod iuuet inuenies' would not only be awkward in itself, but would also be in apparent contradiction with the following 'ipsa quoque est inuisa salus', where _salus_ refers back to _utcumque ualemus_. =4. INVENIES.= See at ii 10 _Alcinoo_ (p 164). =5. VLTIMA VOTA.= 'My utmost wish'. For this sense of _ultimus_ compare Cic _Fin_ III 30 'summum bonum, quod _ultimum_ appello', Livy XXVII 10 11 'aurum ... quod ... ad _ultimos_ casus ['the greatest emergencies'] seruabatur promi placuit', Hor _Carm_ II vii 1-2 'O saepe mecum tempus in _ultimum_ / deducte Bruto militiae duce' (_tempus_ has the same meaning as _casus_ in the passage from Livy), and Petronius 24 'non tenui ego diutius lacrimas ... ad _ultimam_ perductus tristitiam'. =6. SCILICET= seems difficult to explain in this context, and the translators ignore its presence. ILICET ('at once') should possibly be read: the corruption of the rarer word to the more common would be easy enough in view of the final _s_ of the preceding _istis_. =7. MVTER= _F1_ _Bodleianus Canon. lat. 1, saec xiii Barberinus lat. 26, saec xiii_. _Muter_ is so much choicer than the better attested _mittar_ that I have followed editors from Ciofanus to Merkel in printing it. Gronovius (_Obseruationes_ III 1) made a strong case for _muter_, citing Virgil _G_ II 50 (where however the meaning of _mutata_ is disputed), Hor _Sat_ II vii 63-64 'illa tamen se / non habitu _mutatue_ loco peccatue superne', Claudian _Rap Pros_ I 62 'rursus corporeos animae _mutantur_ in artus' (where _mittuntur_ is a variant reading, which Hall prints), and from Ovid _Tr_ V ii 73-74 'hinc ego dum _muter_, uel me Zanclaea [_Politianus_: Panchea _codd_] Charybdis / deuoret aque [_Heinsius_: atque _codd_] suis ad Styga mittat aquis', and _EP_ I i 79 'inque locum Scythico uacuum _mutabor_ ab arcu'; compare as well Cic _Balb_ 31 'ne quis inuitus ciuitate _mutetur_' and Livy V 46 11 'quod nec iniussu populi _mutari_ finibus posset'. =11. SI QVID EA EST.= See at i 17 _si quid ea est_ (p 153). =11. BENE.= 'Profitably'. Compare Tac _Ann_ III 44 'miseram pacem uel bello _bene mutari_'. The word in this sense is generally used in describing good commercial investments: see Plautus _Cur_ 679-80 'argentariis _male credi_ qui aiunt, nugas praedicant, / nam et _bene_ et male _credi_ dico', Sen _Suas_ VII v 'si _bene_ illi pecunias _crediderunt_ faeneratores', Cic _II Verr_ V 56 'ut intellegerent Mamertini _bene_ se apud istum tam multa pretia ac munera _conlocasse_', and Livy II 42 8. =11. COMMVTABITVR.= _Commutare_ was a commercial term: it is used of selling at Cic _Clu_ 129 'ad perniciem innocentis fidem suam et religionem pecunia _commutarit_', Columella XII 26 2 'reliquum mustum ... aere _commutato_', _Dig_ II xv 8 24 'si uinum pro oleo uel oleum pro uino uel quid aliud _commutauit_', and _CIL_ I 585 27. =12. SI QVID ET INFERIVS QVAM STYGA MVNDVS HABET.= Professor R. J. Tarrant notes another instance of the same idea at Sen _Thy_ 1013-14 'si quid infra Tartara est / auosque nostros'. =13. GRAMINA.= 'Weeds'. Compare _Met_ V 485-86 'lolium tribulique fatigant / triticeas messes et inexpugnabile _gramen_' and _Tr_ V xii 24 'nil nisi cum spinis _gramen_ habebit ager'; _TLL_ VI.2 2165 65 notes as well Columella IV 4 5 'omnesque herbas et praecipue _gramina_ extirpare, quae nisi manu eleguntur ... reuiuiscunt'. CARMINA, the reading of _C_, is a frequent corruption of _gramina_, occurring as a variant at _Met_ II 841 & XIV 44 and _Fast_ VI 749; it gives no obvious sense in this passage. Bentley's FLAMINA is ingenious but unattractive. =14. MARTICOLIS= is possibly an Ovidian innovation, being found elsewhere only at _Tr_ V iii 21-22 'adusque niuosum / Strymona uenisti Marticolamque Geten'. =14. NASO.= The use of the third person adds to the emotive power of the tricolon 'ager ... hirundo ... Naso'. =15-16. TALIA SVSCENSENT PROPTER MIHI VERBA TOMITAE, / IRAQVE CARMINIBVS PVBLICA MOTA MEIS.= For the similar omission of the _est_ of a perfect passive, even in the presence of a parallel finite verb, see _Met_ VII 517-18 'Aeacus ingemuit tristique ita uoce _locutus_: / "flebile principium melior fortuna secuta est"'. =15. SVSCENSENT.= The word is foreign to high poetry. It occurs in Ovid only here and at _EP_ III i 89-90 'nec mihi _suscense_, totiens si carmine nostro / quod facis ut facias teque imitere rogo'; the only instances from other poetry cited at _OLD suscenseo_ are from _Her_ XVI-XXI and Martial. SVSCENSENT is the spelling of _C_; the other manuscripts have SVCCENSENT. I print _susc-_ because that is the spelling given by the ninth-century Hamburg manuscript at _EP_ III i 89 (cited above), where most manuscripts offer _succ-_. _Succ-_ is, however, quite possibly correct, for although _susc-_ is the spelling of the ancient manuscripts of Plautus and Terence (and of the older manuscripts of the _Heroides_), _succ-_ is found at Livy XLII 46 8 in the fifth-century Vienna codex. =18. PLECTAR.= Similar uses at _Tr_ III v 49 'inscia quod crimen uiderunt lumina, _plector_' and _EP_ III iii 64 (Ovid to Amor) 'meque loco _plecti_ commodiore uelit'. =18. AB INGENIO= is parallel to _per carmina_ in the preceding line; for the idiom, see at x 46 _ab amne_ (p 346). =20. TELAQVE ... QVAE NOCVERE SEQVOR.= See at xiii 41 _nocuerunt_ (p 406). =23. SED NIHIL ADMISI.= 'But I have committed no crime'--Wheeler. Compare _EP_ III vi 13 'nec scelus _admittas_ si consoleris amicum'. _Admittere_ in this sense belonged to daily speech: _TLL_ I 752 77 cites Plaut _Trin_ 81, Ter _HT_ 956 'quid ego tantum sceleris _admisi_ miser', Lucilius 690 Marx, and Hor _Ep_ I xvi 53. =25. EXCVTIAT.= See at viii 17 _excutias_ (p 263). =25. NOSTRI MONIMENTA LABORIS= is rather grand, perhaps because Ovid intended the poem to come near the end of the collection. At _Tr_ III iii 78 Ovid's _libelli_ are called his most lasting _monimenta_, and at _EP_ III v 35 Ovid flatteringly refers to Maximus Cotta's _monimenta laboris_. =26. LITTERA DE VOBIS EST MEA QVESTA NIHIL.= This, of course, is manifestly untrue. See _Tr_ V x entire, and compare for instance _Tr_ V vii 45-46 'siue homines [_sc_ specto], uix sunt homines hoc nomine digni, / quamque lupi saeuae plus feritatis habent'. =28. ET QVOD PVLSETVR MVRVS AB HOSTE QVEROR.= Compare _EP_ III i 25 'adde metus _et quod murus pulsatur ab hoste_'. =30. SOLVM= _BCFILT_ LOCVM _MH_. The interchange is very common (examples at _Met_ I 345 & VII 57); the reverse corruption in some manuscripts at _EP_ II ii 96 'sit tua mutando gratia blanda _loco_'. =31-40.= The argument Ovid here employs ("other have done what I have done, and not suffered for it") is that used at _Tr_ II 361-538 to excuse the _Ars Amatoria_. =31-40. VITABILIS.= A. G. Lee has ingeniously conjectured VITIABILIS (_PCPhS_ 181 [1950-51] 3). It would have the sense _uitiosa_; Lee compares such words as _aerumnabilis_, _perniciabilis_, and _lacrimabilis_. He argued that Hesiod nowhere said that Ascra was 'always to be avoided' (although this is a natural inference from _Op_ 639-40) and that the variants _miserabilis_, _mirabilis_, and _mutabilis_ 'point to the conclusion that the archetype was here difficult to make out'. For _uitium_ used of localities he cited _EP_ III ix 37 'quid nisi de _uitio_ scribam regionis amarae', and for the word _uitiabilis_ (in the sense 'corruptible') Prudentius _Apoth_ 1045 and _Ham_ 215 (there is a variant _uitabilis_ in a ninth-century manuscript of the _Hamartigenia_). Lee's argument is a good one, but _uitabilis_ does not seem in itself objectionable enough to be removed from the text. The variant readings he cites are from unnamed manuscripts of Burman, and are not safe evidence for the condition of the archetype. It can be said in Lee's favour that Heinsius and Bentley before him clearly found _uitabilis_ somewhat strange: Heinsius considered the verse suspect, while Bentley conjectured VT ILLAVDABILIS. =31. ASCRA= _MFILT_. I take ASCRE (_BCH_) to be a hypercorrect formation by the scribes; _Ascra_ is metrically guaranteed at 34 'Ascra suo' and _AA_ I 28 'Ascra tuis'. It is possible that _Ascre_ is correct, although its use would be strange so close to _Ascra_ in 34: Ovid certainly used both _nympha_ and _nymphe_ (_Her_ IX 103; _Met_ III 357). =32. AGRICOLAE ... SENIS.= For Hesiod as an old man compare _AA_ II 3-4 'laetus amans donat uiridi mea carmina palma, / praelata Ascraeo Maeonioque _seni_', Prop II xxxiv 77 'tu canis Ascraei _ueteris_ praecepta poetae', and _Ecl_ VI 69-70 'hos tibi dant calamos, en accipe, Musae, / Ascraeo quos ante _seni_'. =35. SOLLERTE ... VLIXE.= _Sollerte_ could represent either [Greek: polymêchanos] (_Il_ II 173) or [Greek: polytropos] (_Od_ I 1). I believe that Ovid was translating [Greek: polytropos], since Livius Andronicus in translating _Od_ I 1 had used _uersutus_ to represent the adjective: 'Virum mihi, Camena, insece _uersutum_'. It is clear from Cic _Brut_ 236 'genus ... acuminis ... quod erat in reprehendendis uerbis _uersutum et sollers_' that the Romans regarded the two adjectives as having much the same force. At Hor _Sat_ II v 3-5 [Greek: polymêchanos] is translated by _dolosus_: (Tiresias to Ulysses) 'iamne doloso / non satis est Ithacam reuehi patriosque penates / aspicere?'. =36. HOC TAMEN ASPERITAS INDICE DOCTA LOCI EST.= At _Od_ IX 27 Ulysses describes Ithaca to Alcinous as '[Greek: trêchei'] [=_aspera_] [Greek: all' agathê kourotrophos]'. =36. DOCTA= (_B_; _C_ has DOCTVS) seems clearly preferable to DICTA, offered by most of the manuscripts, which cannot be construed with _hoc ... indice_. The difficulty with _docta_ is that the passive of _docere_ seems in general to have been used of the person taught, not the thing; this is no doubt what induced Riese to print NOTA, found in certain of Heinsius' manuscripts. Still, the construction seems logical enough in view of the double accusative construction of the verb in the active. =38. SCEPSIVS.= Metrodorus[28] of Scepsis (a town on the Scamander, about 60 kilometres upstream from Troy) was famous for his hatred of Rome; see Pliny _NH_ XXXIV 34 'signa quoque Tuscanica per terras dispersa quin [_Detlefsen_: quae _codd_] in Etruria factitata sint non est dubium. deorum tantum putarem ea fuisse, ni Metrodorus Scepsius, cui cognomen [Professor R. J. Tarrant suggests that '[Greek: Misorômaios]' has fallen out of the text around this point] a Romani nominis odio inditum est, propter MM statuarum Volsinios expugnatos obiceret'. According to Plutarch (_Lucullus_ 22) and Strabo (_Geog_ XIII 1 55), he was a close confidant of Mithridates; apparently, when on a mission to Tigranes, he privately advised him not to give Mithridates the requested assistance against Rome. Tigranes reported this to Mithridates; Metrodorus was either executed by Mithridates, or died of natural causes while being sent back to him. Cicero mentions Metrodorus and his phenomenal memory at _de Or_ II 360. [Footnote 28: PW XV,2 1481 3; Jacoby _FGrH_ no. 184.] The present passage is more specific than any other surviving reference to Metrodorus' anti-Roman sentiments; Ovid had perhaps read the _scripta_ in question. As both Cicero and Pliny use the epithet 'Scepsius', Ovid's reference would have been immediately understood: _MEtrodOrus_ could not be used in elegiac verse. =38. ACTAQVE ROMA REA EST.= Similar verse-endings at _RA_ 387-88 'si mea materiae respondet Musa iocosae, / uicimus, et falsi criminis _acta rea est_', _Fast_ IV 307-8 'casta quidem, sed non et credita: rumor iniquus / laeserat, et falsi criminis _acta rea est_', and _Tr_ IV i 26 'cum mecum iuncti criminis acta [_sc_ Musa] rea est'; other instances of _reus agi_ at _Her_ XIV 120, _Met_ XV 36, _Tr_ I i 24, _Tr_ I viii 46, and _Her_ XX 91. See at xv 12 _nil opus est legum uiribus, ipse loquor_ (p 434) for a full discussion of Ovid's use of legal terminology. =39. FALSA ... CONVICIA= has a place in the rhetoric of Ovid's argument, balancing _uerissima crimina_ at 29. =40. OBFVIT AVCTORI NEC FERA LINGVA SVO.= _Obesse_ is used of Ovid's own situation at _Tr_ I i 55-56 'carmina nunc si non studiumque quod _obfuit_ odi, / sit satis', IV i 25 'scilicet hoc ipso nunc aequa [_sc_ Musa], quod _obfuit_ ante', IV iv 39 'aut timor aut error nobis, prius _obfuit_ error' & V i 65-68. Compare as well _Tr_ II 443-44 'uertit Aristiden Sisenna, nec _obfuit_ illi / historiae turpis inseruisse iocos'. =41. MALVS= = _malignus_. =41. INTERPRES.= The word probably combines the senses of 'translator' and 'interpreter'; that is, the person intentionally misconstrued the meaning of certain passages. As André points out, Ovid's statement here that his Latin poems have caused him difficulty in Tomis indicates that Latin was not as completely unknown in the city as Ovid claims at, for example, _Tr_ III xiv 47-48, V vii 53-54 'unus in hoc nemo est populo qui forte Latine / quamlibet [_Heinsius_: quaelibet _codd_] e medio reddere uerba queat' & V xii 53-54 'non liber hic ullus, non qui mihi commodet aurem, / uerbaque significent quid mea norit, adest'; compare as well _Tr_ III xiv 39-40. =42. INQVE NOVVM CRIMEN CARMINA NOSTRA VOCAT.= _In crimen uocare_ was a normal idiom: compare Cic _Scaur_ (e) 'custos ille rei publicae proditionis est _in crimen uocatus_' and _Fam_ V xvii 2 'ego te, P. Sitti, et primis temporibus illis quibus in inuidiam absens et _in crimen uocabare_ defendi'. =42. NOVVM CRIMEN.= The _uetus crimen_ was of course the accusation that the _Ars Amatoria_ was immoral. Professor E. Fantham suggests to me that _nouum_ could have the meaning 'unprecedented', as at Cic _Lig_ 1 '_Nouum crimen_, C. Caesar, et ante hunc diem non auditum propinquus meus ad te Q. Tubero detulit'. Ovid would therefore be saying that the kind of geographical _maiestas_ the Tomitans were accusing him of did not constitute a proper charge. =43. PECTORE CANDIDVS.= 'Kind of heart'. This sense of _candidus_ is constantly misunderstood by modern commentators. The basic transferred sense of the word is 'kind' or 'generous towards others'. This can be clearly seen in such passages as _Tr_ III vi 5-8 'isque erat usque adeo populo testatus, ut esset / paene magis quam tu quamque ego notus, amor; / quique est in caris animi [_codd_: animo _fort legendum_] tibi _candor_ amicis-- / cognita sunt ipsi quem colis ipse uiro', _Tr_ IV x 130-32 'protinus ut moriar non ero, terra, tuus. / siue fauore tuli siue hanc ego carmine famam, / iure tibi grates, _candide_ lector, ago', _Tr_ V iii 53-54 'si uestrum merui _candore_ fauorem, / nullaque iudicio littera laesa meo est', _EP_ II v 5, _EP_ III ii 21-22 'aut meus excusat caros ita _candor_ amicos, / utque habeant de me crimina nulla fauet', and _EP_ III iv 13 'uiribus infirmi uestro _candore_ ualemus'. For _pectore candidus_ compare from other authors Hor _Epod_ XI 11-12 'candidum / pauperis ingenium', Val Max VIII xiv praef 'candidis ... animis' and Scribonius Largus praef 5 26 'candidissimo animo'. =44. EXTAT ADHVC NEMO SAVCIVS ORE MEO.= Ovid makes similar claims at _Tr_ II 563-65 'non ego mordaci destrinxi carmine quemquam ... _candidus_ a salibus suffusis felle refugi' and _Ibis_ 1-8 'Tempus ad hoc, lustris bis iam mihi quinque peractis, / omne fuit Musae carmen inerme meae ... nec quemquam nostri nisi me laesere libelli ... unus ... perennem / _candoris_ titulum non sinit esse mei'. André says of the present passage, 'C'est oublier le poème _Contre Ibis_', but Housman wrote 'Who was Ibis? Nobody. He was much too good to be true. If one's enemies are of flesh and blood, they do not carry complaisance so far as to chose the dies Alliensis for their birthday and the most ineligible spot in Africa for their birthplace. Such order and harmony exist only in worlds of our own creation, not in the jerry-built edifice of the demiurge ... And when I say that Ibis was nobody, I am repeating Ovid's own words. In the last book that he wrote, several years after the Ibis, he said, ex Pont. IV 14 44, "extat adhuc nemo saucius ore meo"' (1040). Housman is wrong to adduce this line as though it were a statement made under oath (compare the claim made in 26 'littera de uobis est mea questa nihil'). It is nonetheless true that in the extant poems of reproach Ovid does not identify the person he is addressing. =45. ADDE QVOD.= See at xi 21 _adde quod_ (p 368). =45. ILLYRICA ... PICE NIGRIOR.= For the formula, Otto (_pix_) cites this passage and _Il_ IV 275-77 '[Greek: nephos ... melanteron êute pissa]' and from Latin poetry _AA_ II 657-58 'nominibus mollire licet mala: fusca uocetur / _nigrior Illyrica_ cui _pice_ sanguis erit', _Met_ XII 402-3 'totus _pice nigrior_ atra, / candida cauda tamen', _EP_ III iii 97 'sed neque mutatur [_uar_ fuscatur] _nigra pice_ lacteus umor', _Her_ XVIII 7 'ipsa uides caelum _pice nigrius_', and Martial I cxv 4-5 'sed quandam uolo nocte _nigriorem_, / formica, _pice_, graculo, cicada'. =45. ILLYRICA ... PICE.= A famous mineral pitch was produced near Apollonia; André cites Pliny _NH_ XVI 59 'Theopompus scripsit in Apolloniatarum agro picem fossilem non deteriorem Macedonica inueniri', _NH_ XXXV 178, and Dioscorides I 73. =45. NIGRIOR.= The man who was _niger_ had qualities opposite to those of the man who was _candidus_; that is, he habitually thought and spoke evil of others. This is illustrated by Hor _Sat_ I iv 81-85 'absentem qui rodit amicum, / qui non defendit alio culpante, solutos / qui captat risus hominum famamque dicacis, / fingere qui non uisa potest, commissa tacere / qui nequit--hic _niger_ est, hunc tu, Romane, caueto'. The same sense is seen at _Sat_ I iv 91 & 100, and at Cic _Caec_ 28 'argentarius Sex. Clodius cui cognomen est Phormio, nec minus _niger_ nec minus confidens quam ille Terentianus est Phormio'. A similar sense of _ater_ is seen at Hor _Epod_ VI 15-16 'an si quis _atro_ dente me petiuerit, / inultus ut flebo puer'; Lindsay Watson _ad loc_ (in an unpublished University of Toronto dissertation) cites Hor _Ep_ I xix 30 'nec socerum quaerit quem uersibus oblinat _atris_' for the same meaning. A specific connection is often made between blackness and envy: compare _Met_ II 760 (the home of _Inuidia_ is _nigro squalentia tabo_) and Statius _Sil_ IV viii 16-17 (_atra Inuidia_). Catullus XCIII 2 'nec scire utrum sis albus an _ater_ homo' and similar passages at Cic _Phil_ II 41 and Apuleius _Apol_ 16 are examples of an unrelated idiom meaning 'I know absolutely nothing about you'. =46. MORDENDA.= For biting as an image of malice, Watson at Hor _Epod_ VI 15 'atro dente' cites Cic _Balb_ 57 'in conuiuiis rodunt, in circulis uellicant; non illo inimico, sed hoc malo dente carpunt', and Val Max IV 7 ext 2 'malignitatis dentes'; Professor R. J. Tarrant cites Hor _Sat_ II i 77 and Martial V xxviii 7 'robiginosis cuncta dentibus rodit'. The image is of course used at times specifically of jealousy; Watson cites _Tr_ IV x 123-24 'nec, qui detrectat praesentia Liuor iniquo / ullum de nostris dente momordit opus' and _EP_ III iv 73-74 'scripta placent a morte fere, quia laedere uiuos / liuor et iniusto carpere dente solet', and Professor Tarrant cites Hor _Carm_ IV iii 16 'et iam dente minus mordeor inuido' and Pindar _P_ II 52-53 '[Greek: eme de chreôn / pheugein dakos adinon kakagorian]'. =47. MEA SORS= = _ego sortem grauem passus_. =48. GRAIOS.= The more poetic _Graius_ is more than four times as common in Ovid as _Graecus_, which, apart from _Her_ III 2, is only found in the _Fasti_ (I 330, IV 63 & V 196) and the _Tristia_ (III xii 41, V ii 68 & V vii 11). =49. GENS MEA PAELIGNI REGIOQVE DOMESTICA SVLMO.= This line is a type of hendiadys, the first half of the line being redefined by the second. The other cities of the Paeligni were Corfinium and Superaequum. =51-52. INCOLVMI ... SALVOQVE.= The two words, equivalent in meaning, were used together as a common Latin phrase; see Caesar _BC_ I 72 3 'mouebatur etiam misericordia ciuium ... quibus _saluis atque incolumibus_ rem obtinere malebat' & II 32 12 '_saluum atque incolumem_ exercitum', Cic _Fin_ IV 19, _Diuin in Q Caec_ 72, _Inuen_ II 169, and Livy XXIII 42 4 '_saluo atque incolumi_ amico', XXIX 27 3 & XLI 28 9. =53. IMMVNIS= is also used without a qualifying word or phrase at Plautus _Tr_ 354, Sall _Iug_ 89 4 'eius [_sc_ oppidi] apud Iugurtham immunes', Cic _Off_ III 49 'piratas _immunes_, socios uectigales habemus', Cic _Font_ 17, Livy XXXIV 57 10 'urbes ... liberas et _immunes_' & XXXVII 55 7, and _CIL_ XIV 4012 4. For a recent discussion of _immunitas_, see V. Nutton, "Two Notes on Immunitas: _Digest_ 27,1,6,10 and 11", _JRS_ 1971, 52-63. =54. EXCEPTIS SI QVI MVNERA LEGIS HABENT.= The phrase is difficult. Perhaps legal magistrates enjoyed immunity from taxation; if this is what Ovid is saying, _munera legis_ is related to such expressions as _consulatus munus_ (Cic _Pis_ 23) and _legationis munus_ (_Phil_ IX 3). _Munus_ by itself of magistrates' duties is quite common. Professor E. Fantham suggests to me, however, that _munera legis_ is a reference to civic duties, or liturgies, that Greek cities imposed on certain of their citizens, and Ovid may be saying that citizens performing such liturgies at Tomis procured exemption from regular taxation. Wheeler translates 'those only excepted who have the boon by law'. This seems difficult; but Professor A. Dalzell notes that the strangeness of the phrasing may be the results of Ovid's striving for a play on _munera_/_immunis_. =55. CORONA.= Professor C. P. Jones notes that the _corona_ indicates that Ovid was probably invested with a local priesthood. =57-58. DELIA TELLVS, / ERRANTI TVTVM QVAE DEDIT VNA LOCVM.= Accounts of this at _Met_ VI 186-91 (Niobe speaking) 'Latonam ... cui maxima quondam / exiguam sedem pariturae terra negauit! / nec caelo nec humo nec aquis dea uestra recepta est: / exul erat mundo, donec miserata uagantem / "hospita tu terris erras, ego" dixit "in undis" / instabilemque locum Delos dedit' and in the passages cited by Williams at _Aen_ III 76 and Tarrant at Sen _Ag_ 384f. =61-62. DI MODO FECISSENT PLACIDAE SPEM POSSET HABERE / PACIS, ET A GELIDO LONGIVS AXE FORET.= In this final distich Ovid unexpectedly reverts from his gratitude to the Tomitans to the subject of the first part of the poem, the inhospitality of the region. This passage provides an example of the technique pointed out in the _Amores_ by Douglass Parker ("The Ovidian Coda", _Arion_ 8 [1969]) whereby Ovid unexpectedly modifies a poem's tone in the concluding distich. In _Am_ I x Ovid rails against his girl because she has asked him for a present: 'nec dare, sed pretium posci dedignor et odi; / quod nego poscenti, desine uelle, dabo!' (63-64). In _Am_ II xiv Ovid scolds his girl for having an abortion: 'di faciles, peccasse semel concedite tuto, / et satis est; poenam culpa secunda ferat!' (43-44). In II xv, Ovid imagines that he becomes the ring he is giving his girl: 'inrita quid uoueo? paruum proficiscere munus; / illa data tecum sentiat esse fide!' (27-28). _Am_ I vii, I xiii, I xiv, and II xiii are other examples of the device. =62. A GELIDO ... AXE.= Compare XV 36 'dura iubet _gelido_ Parca _sub axe_ mori' and _Her_ VI 105-6 (Hypsipyle to Jason) 'non probat Alcimede mater tua--consule matrem-- / non pater, _a gelido_ cui uenit _axe_ nurus'. XV. To Sextus Pompeius The poem, the fourth and last in the book to be addressed to Pompeius, is an elaborate appeal to him to continue his assistance. It starts with the assertion that Pompeius, after the Caesars, is principally responsible for Ovid's well-being (1-4). The favours Pompeius has done for Ovid are innumerable and extend throughout his life (5-10). Ovid will of his own volition declare that he is as much Pompeius' property as Pompeius' estates in Sicily and Macedonia, his house in Rome, or his country retreat in Campania; because of Ovid, Pompeius now has property in the Pontus (11-20). Ovid asks him to continue working on his behalf (21-24). He knows that he does not have to urge Pompeius, but he cannot help himself (27-34). No matter whether he is recalled or not, he will always remember Pompeius; all lands will hear that it is he who saved Ovid, and that Ovid belongs to him (35-42). The poem effectively combines a number of commonplaces of the works of exile, subordinating them to the central theme of Ovid's indebtedness to Pompeius. The topic of Ovid as Pompeius' property is to a certain extent foreshadowed in _EP_ I vii, throughout which Ovid refers to himself as a client of Messalinus' family: 'ecquis in extremo positus iacet orbe tuorum, / me tamen excepto, qui precor esse tuus?' (5-6); it is found explicitly at i 35-36 'sic ego sum rerum non ultima, Sexte, tuarum / tutelaeque feror munus opusque tuae'. Syme (_HO_ 156) believes that the addressing of the first and penultimate letters to Pompeius constitutes a dedication of the book to Pompeius. However, as Syme recognizes, the abnormal length of the book indicates that it may be a posthumous collection (see page 4 of the introduction); if so, the arrangement of the poems is presumably by Ovid's literary executor. The poem is remarkable for the cluster of legal terms at 11-12. The passage is evidence for Ovid's expertise and interest in law. For other indications of this in his works, see at 12 (p 434). =1. SI QVIS ... EXTAT.= Pompeius is kept in the third person through line 10; Ovid thereby indicates that he is making a public declaration. =1. EXTAT.= As Riese pointed out, the choice in 1-2 is between _extat ... requirit_ and _extet ... requirat_; the problem is that the manuscripts give _extat ... requirat_, _requirit_ being found only in a few manuscripts of Heinsius, while _extet_ is a conjecture of Guethling. Owen (1894) thought that the ending of _extat_ caused _requirit_ to be corrupted to _requirat_; on the other hand, the alteration of _extet_ to _extat_ would be all but automatic. There is a similar difficulty at _Tr_ I i 17-18 'si quis ut in populo nostri non immemor illi [=_illic_], / si quis qui quid agam forte _requirat_ erit', where most manuscripts have _requiret_. Both passages seem to involve the assimilation of _requirere_ to the mood of the verb immediately following. I print _extat ... requirit_ in consideration of _Tr_ III x 1-2 'Si quis adhuc istic _meminit_ Nasonis adempti, / et _superest_ sine me nomen in urbe meum' (cited by Lenz), _Tr_ III v 23-24 'si tamen interea quid in his ego perditus oris-- / quod te credibile est quaerere--_quaeris_, agam' and _Tr_ V vii 5 'scilicet ut semper quid agam, carissime, _quaeris_'. =3. CAESARIBVS= = _Augusto et Tiberio_. Augustus is similarly given primary credit for Ovid's survival at v 31-32 'uiuit adhuc uitamque tibi debere fatetur, / quam prius a miti Caesare [=_Augusto_] munus habet'. =4. A SVPERIS ... PRIMVS.= The same idiomatic use of _ab_ 'after' at v 25-26 'tempus ab his uacuum Caesar Germanicus omne / auferet; _a magnis_ hunc colit ille _deis_' and _Fast_ III 93-94 (of the month of March) 'quintum Laurentes, bis quintum Aequiculus acer, / _a tribus_ hunc _primum_ turba Curensis habet'. =5. TEMPORA ... OMNIA.= Compare i 23 '_numquam_ pigra fuit nostris tua gratia rebus'. =5. COMPLECTAR.= _Complecti_ in the weak sense 'include, take in' is found in Ovid only here and at _Tr_ I v 55 'non tamen idcirco _complecterer_ omnia uerbis'. The usage is common in prose (_OLD complector_ 8). =6. MERITIS.= Compare i 21-22 'et leuis haec _meritis_ referatur gratia tantis; / si minus, inuito te quoque gratus ero'. =7-10. QVAE NVMERO TOT SVNT.= Ovid is very fond of using this type of catalogue to indicate great number. Compare _AA_ I 57-59 ('tot habet tua Roma puellas'), _AA_ II 517-19 ('tot sunt in amore dolores'), _AA_ III 149-50 (the many ways women can ornament themselves), _Tr_ V vi 37-40 (the number of Ovid's ills), and _EP_ II vii 25-28 ('nostrorum ... summa laborum'). =8. LENTO CORTICE.= 'Tough skin'. =8. GRANA.= Ovid does not use pomegranates in his similar catalogues elsewhere. Professor R. J. Tarrant points out to me how Ovid elaborates the novel item of comparison in a full distich with several picturesque details (_Punica_, _lento cortice_, _rubent_), then reviews familiar elements rather more quickly in 9-10, with geography the ordering principle. =9. AFRICA QVOT SEGETES.= Compare _EP_ II vii 25 'Cinyphiae segetis citius numerabis aristas' (the Cinyps was a river in Libya). =9. SEGETES ... RACEMOS.= Compare _AA_ I 57 'Gargara quot _segetes_, quot habet Methymna _racemos_'. =9. TMOLIA TERRA= = _Lydia_. The adjective _Tmolius_ (from _Tmolus_, a mountain in Lydia famous for its wines) occurs only here. =10. QVOT SICYON BACAS.= Compare _AA_ II 518 'caerula quot bacas Palladis arbor habet'. For Sicyonian _bacae_ compare Virgil _G_ II 519 'Sicyonia baca' and _Ibis_ 317 'oliuifera ... Sicyone'. =10. QVOT PARIT HYBLA FAVOS.= _Fauos_ stands by a type of metonymy for _apes_; compare _AA_ II 517 'quot apes pascuntur in Hybla', _AA_ III 150 'nec quot apes Hybla nec quot in Alpe ferae', and _Tr_ V vi 38 'florida quam multas Hybla tuetur apes'. For a similar metonymy, see _EP_ II vii 26 'altaque quam multis floreat Hybla thymis'. =11. CONFITEOR; TESTERE LICET.= 'I make a public deposition; you, Pompeius, may be a witness'. The deposition is to the effect that Ovid is now Pompeius' property by virtue of the many gifts Pompeius has made to him. =11. TESTERE ... SIGNATE.= André cites _Dig_ XXII v 22 'curent magistratus cuiusque loci _testari_ uolentibus et se ipsos et alios testes uel _signatores_ praebere'. =11. SIGNATE, QVIRITES.= After addressing Pompeius directly (_testere licet_), Ovid addresses those witnessing the _mancipatio_. As Professor A. Dalzell points out, this was achieved _ex iure Quiritium_; there is a similar direct address to the witnessing _Quirites_ in the formula for establishing a will (Gaius II 104). Professor Dalzell also notes the abrupt change of audience; typical of Propertius, this is a very unusual procedure in Ovid. For _signare_ used without an object, compare Suet _Cl_ 9 2 'etiam cognitio falsi testamenti recepta est, in quo et ipse _signauerat_' & _Nero_ 17 'cautum ut testamentis primae duae cerae testatorum modo nomine inscripto uacuae _signaturis_ ostenderentur'. Ovid uses _testis_ and _signare_ in a similarly metaphorical sense at _EP_ III ii 23-24 (he forgives those friends who deserted him in his disaster) 'sint hac [_M (Heinsius)_: hi _codd_] contenti uenia, _signentque_ [_uarr_ sientque; fugiantque] licebit / purgari factum me quoque _teste_ suum' =12. NIL OPVS EST LEGVM VIRIBVS, IPSE LOQVOR.= Ehwald (_KB_ 52) aptly cites Quintilian V vii 9 'duo genera sunt testium, aut uoluntariorum aut eorum quibus in [in _add editio Aldina_] iudiciis publicis lege denuntiari solet ['or those who are summoned _sub poena_ in trials']'. The reference in this passage to a legal procedure is rather curious, as is the connected reference in 41-42. But it is clear from Ovid's verse that he had a solid practical expertise and interest in law. In his youth he had been one of the _tresuiri monetales_ or _capitales_ (_Tr_ IV x 33-34), and had also served in the centumviral court (_Tr_ II 93-94; _EP_ III v 23-24). He must have been known for his knowledge of law as well as for his fairness in order to be selected as arbitrator in private cases: 'res quoque priuatas statui sine crimine iudex, / deque mea fassa est pars quoque uicta fide' (_Tr_ II 95-96). E. J. Kenney has presented some interesting statistics concerning the frequent occurrence of legal terms in Ovid's poetry ("Ovid and the Law", _Yale Classical Studies_ XXI [1969] 241-63) comparing the number of occurrences of certain legal terms in Ovid and in Lucretius, Catullus, Virgil, Propertius, Tibullus, and the _Odes_ of Horace. _Ius_ and _lex_ are not much more common in Ovid than in the other poets (the proportions being 134:59 and 74:60 respectively for Ovid and the other poets combined); this is not surprising, since these common words could hardly be considered technical terms. _Arbiter_ (7:4) and _lis_ (23:10) are not much more common in Ovid than in the other poets. But it will be seen from the following list how fond Ovid was of legal terminology: _legitimus_ (16:0), _iudex_ (47:12), _iudicium_ (39:7), _index_ (26:1), _indicium_ (36:8), _arbitrium_ (23:6), _reus_ (23:5), _uindex_ (26:5), _uindicare_ (16:6), _uindicta_ (11:0), _asserere_ (3:0), _assertor_ (1:0). Compare as well the play on legal terminology at _AA_ I 83-86 (with Hollis's notes), and the use of such terms as _addicere_ (_Met_ I 617), _fallere depositum_ (_Met_ V 480 & IX 120), _usus communis_ (_Met_ VI 349), _transcribere_ (_Met_ VII 173), _primus heres_ (_Met_ XIII 154), _rescindere_ (_Met_ XIV 784), _accensere_ (_Met_ XV 546), _subscribere_ (_Tr_ I ii 3), _sub condicione_ (_Tr_ I ii 109), and _acceptum referre_ (_Tr_ II 10). =13. OPES ... PATERNAS.= Pompeius appears to have been very wealthy. Seneca speaks of the wealth of a Pompeius (presumably the son of Ovid's patron--so Syme _Ten Studies_ 82, _HO_ 162), who was murdered by Gaius Caligula (_Tranq_ 11 10). =13. REM PARVAM= _MHIT_ PARVAM REM _BCFL_. Either reading is possible enough. On balance, I believe _paruam rem_ to be an intentional scribal alteration to avoid the incidence of a spondaic word in the fourth foot of the hexameter; for a discussion of the phenomenon, see at i 11 _uellem cum_ (p 150). In an older poet, the alliteration of _paruam pone paternas_ would be a strong argument for the reading (see page 15 of Munro's introduction to his commentary on Lucretius), but Ovid did not use the device in his poetry. =15. TRINACRIA= = _Sicilia_, unusable because it begins with three consecutive short vowels; compare _Met_ V 474-76 (of Ceres) 'terras tamen increpat omnes / ingratasque uocat nec frugum munere dignas, / _Trinacriam_ ante alias'. André avoids the literal meaning of the passage, joining _terra_ with _Trinacria_ as well as with _regnataque ... Philippo_ and taking it to mean 'estate': 'ta terre de Trinacrie et celle où régna Philippe'. But this sense of _terra_ is rare in Latin (Martial IX xx 2, Apuleius _Met_ IX 35), it is difficult to see how _regnataque ... Philippo_ could stand as an epithet in such a case, and it is clear enough that Ovid is imitating _Aen_ III 13-14 '_terra_ ... acri quondam _regnata Lycurgo'_, as he does at _Her_ X 69 'tellus iusto regnata parenti', _Met_ VIII 623 'arua suo quondam regnata parenti', and _Met_ XIII 720-21 'regnataque uati / Buthrotos Phrygio'. In these lines Ovid states that Pompeius owns Sicily, Macedonia, and Campania, and by the hyperbole indicates the size of Pompeius' holdings. Seneca similarly mentions how the Pompeius murdered by Gaius Caligula possessed 'tot flumina ... in suo orientia, in suo cadentia'. =16. QVAM DOMVS AVGVSTO CONTINVATA FORO.= Compare v 9-10 'protinus inde domus uobis Pompeia petetur: / _non est Augusto iunctior ulla foro'_. =18. QVAEQVE RELICTA TIBI, SEXTE, VEL EMPTA TENES.= The line seems rather prosaic. For the thought, compare Cic _Off_ II 81 'multa _hereditatibus_, multa _emptionibus_, multa dotibus tenebantur sine iniuria'; for this sense of _relicta_, compare Nepos _Att_ 13 2 'domum habuit ... ab auunculo hereditate _relictam_', Livy XXII 26 1 'pecunia a patre _relicta_', and Martial X xlvii 3 'res non parta labore, sed _relicta_'. =19. TAM TVVS EN EGO SVM.= Professor A. Dalzell notes the play on the dual sense of _tuus_ (devoted/belonging to you) which is probably the basis of the entire poem. For _tuus_ 'devoted' compare _Tr_ II 55-56 '[iuro ...] hunc animum fauisse tibi, uir maxime, meque, / qua sola potui, mente fuisse _tuum_' and the other passages cited at _OLD tuus_ 6. =19. MVNERE.= The word is difficult. 'Gift' seems strange in view of the stress placed on Pompeius' ownership of Ovid. Professor E. Fantham suggests to me that the phrase could mean 'by virtue of whose sad _service_ you cannot say you own nothing in the Pontus', while Professor R. J. Tarrant suggests that _munere_ could mean 'responsibility, charge', with _cuius_ (=_mei_) as an objective genitive. =21. ATQVE VTINAM POSSIS, ET DETVR AMICIVS ARVVM.= This elliptical use of _posse_ seems to be colloquial. The only instance cited by _OLD_ _possum_ 2a from verse is Prop IV vii 74 'potuit [_uar_ patuit], nec tibi auara fuit'; there as well the tone is that of lively speech. =21. AMICIVS ARVVM.= The same phrase at _Met_ XV 442-43 (Helenus to Aeneas) 'Pergama rapta feres, donec Troiaeque tibique / externum patrio contingat _amicius aruum_'. The use of the adjective _amicus_ of things rather than person is in the main a poetic usage, but compare Cic _Quinct_ 34 'breuitas postulatur, quae mihimet ipsi _amicissima_ est', _ND_ II 43 'fortunam, quae _amica_ uarietati constantiam respuit', and _Att_ XII xv 'nihil est mihi _amicius_ solitudine'; other instances in the elder Pliny and Columella. =22. REMQVE TVAM PONAS IN MELIORE LOCO.= Compare _EP_ I iii 77-78 'liquit Agenorides Sidonia moenia Cadmus / poneret ut muros _in meliore loco_'. =24. NVMINA PERPETVA QVAE PIETATE COLIS.= Tiberius and Germanicus are meant. For Pompeius' devotion to Germanicus, compare v 25-26 'tempus ab his uacuum Caesar Germanicus omne / auferet; a magnis hunc colit ille deis'. =25-26. ERRORIS NAM TV VIX EST DISCERNERE NOSTRI / SIS ARGVMENTVM MAIVS AN AVXILIVM.= This distich does not belong in the text: it is in itself unintelligible, and interrupts a natural progression from 24 to 27. I am not certain that the distich is a simple interpolation, since there is nothing in the context to which it is an obvious gloss. Possibly it has been inserted from another letter from exile, in which its meaning would have been clear from context. _Argumentum_ is difficult. Wheeler translates, 'For 'tis hard to distinguish whether you are more the proof of my mistake or the relief', and notes 'Apparently Pompey could prove (_argumentum_) that "error" which Ovid regarded as the beginning of his woes'. But this seems a strange thing to say, for Ovid's _error_ was hardly in need of demonstration. _Auxilium_ is used in its medical sense, _erroris_ being equivalent to _morbi_ or _uulneris_; compare _RA_ 48 'uulneris auxilium' and the passages collected at _OLD remedium_ 1. =25. DISCERNERE.= Gronovius argued (_Obseruationes_ III xiii) that DECERNERE (_MI1_) should be read here, since _decernere_ has the required sense 'uel decertare uel iudicare et certum statuere', whereas _discernere_ means 'separare, dirimere, distinguere, diuidere'. On the evidence of the lexica, however, Gronovius' distinction breaks down, since _discernere_ meaning 'decide, determine, make out' is common enough: compare Sallust _Cat_ 25 3 'pecuniae an famae minus parceret haud facile _discerneres_', Cic _Rep_ 2 6 'ne nota quidem ulla pacatus an hostis sit _discerni_ ac iudicari potest', Varro _LL_ VII 17 'quo _discernitur_ homo mas an femina sit', and Livy XXII 61 10 'quid ueri sit _discernere_'. I therefore let _discernere_ stand. =29-30. ET PVDET ET METVO SEMPERQVE EADEMQVE PRECARI / NE SVBEANT ANIMO TAEDIA IVSTA TVO.= Compare _EP_ III vii entire (an apology to his friends for the monotony of his verse), and especially the opening lines: 'Verba mihi desunt eadem tam saepe roganti, / iamque pudet uanas fine carere preces. / taedia consimili fieri de carmine uobis, / quidque petam cunctos edidicisse reor'. =30. SVBEANT ANIMO.= _Subire animo_ occurs also at _Tr_ I v 13. Ovid uses _subire_ with the dative several times in the poetry of exile (_Tr_ I vii 9, II 147, III iii 14 & V vii 58; _EP_ I ix 11, II x 43 & IV iv 47), but not beforehand; earlier he has the accusative (_Met_ XII 472) or the simple verb (_Met_ XV 307). The dative construction is taken up by the author of the later _Heroides_ (XVI 99, XVIII 62). =31. RES IMMODERATA CVPIDO EST.= _Cupido_ similarly called _immoderata_ at Apuleius _Plat_ II 21; elsewhere qualified as _immodica_ (Livy VI 35 6) and _immensa_ (_Aen_ VI 823, Tac _Ann_ XII 7). =33. DELABOR.= Cicero uses the word for moving from one subject to another (_OLD delabor_ 5b); here the metaphorical sense 'fall' is still active. =34. IPSA LOCVM PER SE LITTERA NOSTRA ROGAT.= This line as it stands is clearly corrupt. I do not understand Wheeler's 'my very letters of their own accord seek the opportunity'; André's 'c'est la lettre qui, d'elle-meme, demande le sujet' seems equally difficult, although _locus_ can certainly have the meaning 'subject, topic of discussion' (_OLD_ _locus_ 24b). The only parallel I have found is _Fast_ II 861 'iure uenis, Gradiue: _locum tua tempora poscunt_'. If _littera_ is retained in the present passage, this parallel is of little assistance, since _locum_ there means 'a place within a larger work', and Ovid's poetry cannot ask for a _locus_ in that sense. Taking the passage from the _Fasti_ as a parallel, I once thought that Ovid wrote _ipsa locum pro se tristia nostra rogant_ (or _petunt_); for the noun _triste_ compare _Fast_ VI 463 'scilicet interdum miscentur _tristia_ laetis', _Ecl_ III 80-81 '_triste_ lupus stabulis, maturis frugibus imbres, / arboribus uenti, nobis Amaryllidis irae', and Hor _Carm_ I xvi 25-26 'nunc ego mitibus / mutare quaero _tristia_'. I now consider this unlikely, since the personal adjective _nostra_ with _tristia_ seems unidiomatic; but I still believe that _littera_ is the key to the corruption. Professor R. J. Tarrant has tentatively suggested something like _inque locum ... redit_, but questions whether _in locum_, even just after _eodem_, can have the sense _in eundem locum_. Professor Tarrant also points out to me the possible relevance of _locus_ in the sense _locus communis_ (compare Sen _Suas_ I 9 'dixit ... _locum_ de uarietate fortunae'); Ovid might be saying that his poetry had made rather frequent use of the _locus de exilio_. In this case, _rogat_ would require emendation. One of Heinsius' manuscripts read _per se ... facit_, which is just possibly correct. Heinsius proposed _pro se ... facit_, which I do not understand. =35. HABITVRA= is a good instance of the future participle used to express what is inevitably destined to happen (with _Parca_ balancing in the pentameter); for the sense, see Tarrant on Sen _Ag_ 43 'daturus coniugi iugulum suae'. =37. INOBLITA= = _memori_. Apparently the only instance of the word in classical Latin. =39. CAELO ... SVB VLLO.= Bentley oddly conjectured ILLO, the reading of _Mac_, which gives the sense 'under the Tomitan sky'. This obviously contradicts the following _transit nostra feros si modo Musa Getas_. =41. SERVATOREM= occurs in Ovid only here and at _Met_ IV 737-38 (of Perseus) 'auxiliumque domus _seruatoremque_ fatentur / Cassiope Cepheusque pater'. In prose it is several times used in a civic context (Cic _Pis_ 34, _Planc_ 102, Livy VI 20 16 & XLV 44 20; _CIL_ IX 4852 in a dedication to _Ioui optimo maximo seruatori conseruatori ... ex uoto suscepto_). The solemn overtones of _seruatorem_ must be part of what Ovid means for his own land and for the rest of the world to hear and know; the poem thus ends with an implied pronouncement to balance the public statement of the opening. =42. MEQVE TVVM LIBRA NORIT ET AERE MAGIS.= This line clearly refers to _mancipatio_, the receiving of property (including slaves), which is described by Gaius as follows: 'adhibitis non minus quam [_Boeth._: quod _cod_] quinque testibus ciuibus Romanis puberibus, et praeterea alio eiusdem condicionis qui libram aeneam teneat, qui appellatur libripens ['scale-holder'--de Zulueta], is qui mancipio accipit, aes [aes _add Boeth._] tenens, ita dicit: "hunc ego hominem ex iure [_Boeth._: iUst _cod_] Quiritium meum esse aio isque mihi emptus esto hoc aere aeneaque libra", deinde aere percutit libram, idque aes dat ei a quo mancipio accipit quasi pretii loco' (I 119). MAGIS is found as a secondary reading in _F_ and in the thirteenth-century _Barberinus lat. 26_; the reading of most manuscripts is MINVS, which seems to me impossible. Several explanations of _minus_ have been advanced: (i) Gronovius took the line to mean 'tuus sum, immo mancipium tuum, nisi quod sola libra et aes mea mancipatione abfuerunt'. This retention of _minus_, however, involves Ovid in a qualifying retraction just when he seems to be aiming for a ringing conclusion. As well, the instances of _minus_ cited by Gronovius do not in fact illustrate this passage: among them are _EP_ I vii 25-26 'uno / nempe salutaris quam prius ore minus', _Met_ XII 554-55 'bis sex Herculeis ceciderunt me minus uno ['except for me alone'] / uiribus', and Manilius I 778 'Tarquinio ... minus reges', 'the kings, except for Tarquin'. Gronovius seems to have realized that difficulties remained, and proposed to read NOVIT in 42 and make 41-42 a relative clause dependent on _tellus_ in 38, so that the concluding lines of the poem would mean 'mea tellus, Sulmo, Roma, Italia, me tuum esse audiet. sed audiet idem etiam, quaecumque sub alia quauis caeli parte terra posita est, et te, meum seruatorem, meque, libra et aere tuum, minus nouit'. Once again, _minus_ seems to weaken the poem fatally. (ii) Ehwald (_KB_ 71) followed Gronovius' second explanation, retaining the manuscripts' _norit_, and glossing 'tellus, quae sub ullo caelo posita est et te, meae salutis seruatorem, meque, libra et aere tuum, minus norit'. (iii) Némethy followed Gronovius' first explanation, adding as an illustration _AA_ I 643-44 'ludite, si sapitis, solas impune puellas: / hac _minus_ [_Burman_: magis _codd_] est una fraude tuenda [_Naugerius ex codd suis_: pudenda _codd_] fides'. The citation does not strengthen the case for _minus_. (iv) André wrote '_Minus_ me paraît avoir le sens de _citra_ "sans aller jusqu'à", i.e. "sans même avoir recours à la mancipation": "tu es mon maître de ma propre volonté, et non, comme tu l'es de tes autres propriétés, par achat."' But the meaning seems to weaken the force of the poem. I have with reluctance adopted _libra ... et aere magis_, taking it in the sense _magis quam libra et aere_ ('I am yours even more than I would be if I had been acquired through _mancipatio_'). The closest parallel I have found for this compressed use of the ablative is the idiom at v 7 'luce minus decima', 'before the tenth day'. Of the other readings, _F1_'s _tuum ... datum_ cannot itself be correct, although it may offer a clue to the truth. Heinsius' _tuum ... tuum_ is grammatical enough, but (as Professor R. J. Tarrant points out to me) makes Ovid say that he is Pompeius' literally through _mancipatio_. As well, the repetition seems odd. Rappold's _tuae ... manus_ cannot be right, since _manus_ did not have the sense of _mancipium_, except for the limited meaning of a husband's authority over his wife. Still, Rappold's conjecture may be a step in the right direction, particularly in view of v 39-40 'pro quibus ut meritis referatur gratia, iurat / se fore _mancipii_ tempus in omne _tui_'. XVI. To a Detractor The anonymous detractor to whom Ovid apparently addresses this poem is probably fictional; at 47 he substitutes _Liuor_, dropping the pretence of speaking to a single enemy. Ovid begins the poem by asking his detractor why he criticizes Ovid's verse. A poet's fame increases after his death; Ovid's fame was great even while he was still alive (1-4). There were many poets contemporary with Ovid (5-38). There were also younger poets, not yet published, whom he will not name, with the necessary exception of Cotta Maximus (39-44). Even among such poets, he had a reputation. Envy should therefore cease to torment him; he has lost everything but life, which is left only so that he can continue to experience pain (45-50). The poem is of particular interest because of the catalogue of the poets of the earlier part of the reign of Tiberius. It is a reminder of how much Latin verse has been lost, for of the poets listed only Grattius survives. Similar catalogues of poets are found at Prop II xxxiv 61-92 and _Am_ I xv 9-30, the poets listed being however not contemporaries but illustrious predecessors. _Tr_ IV x 41-54 is complementary to the present poem, being a list of the leading Roman poets at the beginning of Ovid's career. All of these poems come last in their book, and it seems clear enough that the present poem was meant to close a published collection. Other links exist with the earlier poems: mention is similarly made in them of the poet's fame after his death (Prop II xxxiv 94, _Am_ I xi 41-42, _Tr_ IV x 129-30), and _Am_ I xv (which Professor R. J. Tarrant suggests may have ended the original edition in five books of the _Amores_) is, like the present poem, addressed to _Liuor_. =1. INVIDE, QVID LACERAS NASONIS CARMINA RAPTI.= Compare the question that opens _Am_ I xv 'Quid mihi, Liuor edax, ignauos obicis annos, / ingeniique uocas carmen inertis opus'. For _inuide ... laceras_ compare Cic _Brutus_ 156 '_inuidia_, quae solet _lacerare_ plerosque'. =1. LACERAS.= _Lacerare_ 'attack verbally' is a prose usage, found in Cicero, the historians, and the elder Seneca (_OLD lacero_ 5; _TLL_ VII.2 827 50). The primary meaning of _lacerare_ behind this usage is _mordere_; _lacerare_ is found in this literal sense at Cic _De or_ II 240 '_lacerat_ lacertum Largi _mordax_ Memmius', Phaedrus I xii 11 '_lacerari_ coepit _morsibus_ saeuis canum', and Sen _Clem_ I 25 1. For _mordere_ in the same transferred sense, see at xiv 46 _mordenda_ (p 424). =1. NASONIS ... RAPTI.= 'Of Ovid, who is now dead'. For _rapti_, see at xi 5 _rapti_ (p 362). =2. NON SOLET INGENIIS SVMMA NOCERE DIES.= The same thought at _Am_ I xv 39-40 'pascitur in uiuis Liuor; post fata quiescit, / cum suus ex merito quemque tuetur honos' and _EP_ III iv 73-74 'scripta placent a morte fere, quia laedere uiuos / Liuor et iniusto carpere dente solet'. =3. CINERES= = _mortem_. Bömer at _Met_ VIII 539 _post cinerem_ (where _cinerem_, as Bömer saw, means 'cremation'), cites among other passages Prop III i 35-36 'meque inter seros laudabit Roma nepotes: / illum _post cineres_ auguror esse diem', Martial I i 2-6 'Martialis ... cui, lector studiose, quod dedisti / uiuenti decus atque sentienti, / rari _post cineres_ habent poetae' and Martial VIII xxxviii 16 'hoc et _post cineres_ erit tributum'. =3. AT= is my correction for the manuscripts' ET. The point that Ovid was famous _even_ while alive is made by _tum quoque_ later in the verse; the only meaning that could therefore be given to _et mihi nomen_ is 'even I had a name, even when I was alive', which is inappropriate, since in this poem Ovid is not belittling his poetic talent. _At_ seems to be the obvious solution, giving the sense 'poets usually become famous after they die; I, _however_, was famous even while alive'. Compare _Tr_ IV x 121-22 (to his Muse) 'tu mihi, quod rarum est, uiuo sublime dedisti / nomen, ab exequiis quod dare fama solet' and Martial I i 2-6 (cited in the previous note). The more usual situation of obscurity during the poet's lifetime followed by posthumous fame is described at Prop III i 21-24. Professor C. P. Jones points out to me that _et_ can have an adversative sense (_OLD et_ 14a). But the two instances there cited from Augustan verse are examples of _nec ... et_ (_Fast_ V 530; _Tr_ V xii 63 'nec possum _et_ cupio non nullos ducere uersus'). Where _et_ alone carries the adversative sense, it is generally used to join two opposing verbs or verbal phrases: compare Cic _Tusc_ I 6 'fieri ... potest ut recte quis sentiat _et_ id quod sentit polite eloqui non possit' and Sen _NQ_ II 18 'quare aliquando non fulgurat _et_ tonat?'. =4. CVM VIVIS ADNVMERARER.= For Ovid's considering himself already dead, compare _EP_ I ix 56 'et nos extinctis adnumerare potest' and _EP_ I vii 9-10 'nos satis est inter glaciem Scythicasque sagittas / uiuere, si uita est mortis habenda genus'. Ovid is the first poet to use _adnumerare_ in this sense ('reckon in with'), and only in his poems of exile; it is afterwards found at _Her_ XVI 330 and Manilius V 438. =5-36.= It is possible to discern a rough order in the catalogue of names; first come the writers of epic and Pindaric verse (5-28), then the dramatists (29-31), and finally the writers of lighter verse (32-36). =5. CVM FORET ET= _FHT_ CVMQVE FORET _BCMIL_. Clearly either _et_ or _-que_ was lost, and one or both inserted to restore the metre. _Cumque_ would be a continuation of _at mihi nomen ..._, which seems an inelegant construction. _Cum foret et_, introducing a sentence of forty-two lines ending in 'dicere si fas est, claro mea nomine Musa / atque inter tantos quae legeretur erat' seems preferable; this very long sentence serves not as a continuation of the statement in 3-4, but as evidence for it. =5. MARSVS.= Domitius Marsus[29] is often mentioned by Martial as a writer of epigram, sometimes being coupled with Catullus and Albinovanus Pedo (I praef, II lxxi 3 & lxxvii 5, V v 6, VII xcix 7). A friend of Maecenas, he wrote an epic poem on the Amazons (Martial IV xxix 8), and at least nine books of _fabellae_ (Charisius I 72 Keil). Quintilian quotes from his treatise on _urbanitas_ (VI iii 102 ff.); and he is cited as an authority by the elder Pliny (_NH_ I 34). [Footnote 29: _PIR_1 D 131; _PIR_2 D 153; Schanz-Hosius 174-76 (§ 275-76); Bardon 52-57.] The scholiasts and grammarians preserve seven fragments (Morel 110-11), the most interesting being the four lines on the death of Tibullus: 'Te quoque Vergilio comitem non aequa, Tibulle, / Mors iuuenem campos misit ad Elysios, / ne foret aut elegis molles qui fleret amores / aut caneret forti regia bella pede'. =5. MAGNIQVE RABIRIVS ORIS.= Similar phrasing at Virgil _G_ III 294 'magno nunc ore sonandum', Prop II x 12 'magni nunc erit oris opus', and _AA_ I 206 (to Gaius) 'et magno nobis ore sonandus eris'. In the last two passages, as here, there is a specific reference to epic verse. =5. RABIRIVS.= Velleius Paterculus (II 36 3) mentions Rabirius (Schanz-Hosius 267-68 [§ 316]; Bardon 73-74) alongside Virgil: 'paene stulta est inhaerentium oculis ingeniorum enumeratio, inter quae maxima nostri aeui eminent princeps carminum Vergilius Rabiriusque'. Quintilian speaks of him with rather less admiration: 'Rabirius ac Pedo non indigni cognitione, si uacet' (X i 90). Seneca (_Ben_ VI 3 1) quotes a passage of his with Mark Antony speaking; presumably one of his poems dealt with the civil war. Five short fragments of Rabirius survive (Morel 120-21). =6. ILIACVSQVE MACER.= Pompeius Macer[30] was one of Ovid's closest friends; he is the addressee of _Am_ II xviii and _EP_ II x. The son of Theophanes of Mytilene, Pompey's confidant, he was intimate with Tiberius (Strabo XIII 2 3); under Augustus he had served as procurator of Asia and had been placed in charge of the libraries at Rome (Suet _Iul_ 56 7). Two poems in the Greek Anthology are generally attributed to him (VII ccxix; IX xxviii). [Footnote 30: _PIR_1 P 473; Syme _HO_ 73-74; Bardon 65-66; J. Schwartz, "Pompeius Macer et la jeunesse d'Ovide", _RPh_ XXV (1951) 182-94. Macer is discussed in the section of Schanz-Hosius dealing with Ovid's catalogue of poets (269-72; § 318); I give references to Schanz-Hosius below only for poets dealt with outside this section.] _Iliacus_ is explained by _Am_ II xviii 1-3 'Carmen ad iratum dum tu perducis Achillem ['while you are writing a poem about the Trojan war up to the starting-point of the _Iliad_'] / primaque iuratis induis arma uiris, / nos, Macer, ignaua Veneris cessamus in umbra' and _EP_ II x 13-14 'tu canis aeterno quicquid restabat Homero, / ne careant summa Troica bella manu'; Macer had written poems narrating those parts of the Trojan war not covered by the _Iliad_. The Macer mentioned at Tr IV x 43-44 must be a different person, for he is described as already being _grandior aeuo_ in Ovid's youth. =6. SIDEREVSQVE PEDO.= On Albinovanus Pedo, see at x 4 _Albinouane_ (p 327). For _sidereus_ ('divine' or 'resplendent'), Bardon aptly cited Columella X 434 (written in hexameters) '_siderei_ uatis ... praecepta Maronis'. =7. ET, QVI IVNONEM LAESISSET IN HERCVLE, CARVS.= This is the Carus to whom xiii is addressed: compare xiii 11-12 'prodent auctorem uires, quas Hercule dignas / nouimus atque illi quem canis ipse pares'. As Jupiter's son by Alcmene, Hercules suffered from Juno's enmity until his deification. =8. IVNONIS SI IAM NON GENER ILLE FORET.= Perhaps Carus' poem included Hercules' marriage to Hebe. =9. SEVERVS.= On Severus, the addressee of poem ii, see the introduction to that poem; for _quique dedit Latio carmen regale_, see at ii 1 _uates magnorum maxime regum_ (p 162). =10. SVBTILI ... NVMA.= Numa is otherwise unknown. _Subtilis_ means 'clean and elegant in style'; compare Cic _De or_ I 180 'oratione maxime limatus atque _subtilis_' and _Brutus_ 35 'tum fuit Lysias ... egregie _subtilis_ scriptor atque elegans, quem iam prope audeas oratorem perfectum dicere'. =10. PRISCVS VTERQVE.= Only one poet of this name is known, Clutorius (Tac _Ann_ III 49-51) or C. Lutorius (Dio LVII 20 3) Priscus. All that is known of him is the manner of his death: in AD 21 he was put to death for composing and reciting a premature poem on the death of Drusus. =11. IMPARIBVS NVMERIS ... VEL AEQVIS.= Like Ovid, Montanus wrote both elegiac and hexameter verse. For _impar_ used of elegiac verse, compare Hor _AP_ 75 (the earliest instance) 'uersibus _impariter_ iunctis', _Am_ II xvii 21, _Am_ III i 37, _AA_ I 264, _Tr_ II 220, _EP_ II v 1 (_disparibus_), _EP_ III iv 86 (_disparibus_), _EP_ IV v 3 (_nec ... aequis_), and line 36 of the present poem. =11. MONTANE.= Iulius Montanus is mentioned in passing at Sen _Cont_ VII 1 27, where he is called _egregius poeta_; in Donatus' life of Virgil (29) his admiration of Virgil's manner of reciting is mentioned, on the authority of the elder Seneca. The younger Seneca, calling him 'tolerabilis poeta et amicitia Tiberi notus et frigore', tells some amusing anecdotes about the length of his recitations and his fondness for describing sunrises and sunsets (_Ep_ CXXII 11-13). He quotes from him twice (Morel 120). =13-14. ET QVI PENELOPAE RESCRIBERE IVSSIT VLIXEM / ERRANTEM SAEVO PER DVO LUSTRA MARI.= All that is known of Sabinus is what Ovid says here and in his list of Sabinus' poems at _Am_ II xviii 27-34 'quam cito de toto rediit meus orbe Sabinus / scriptaque diuersis rettulit ille locis! / candida Penelope signum cognouit Vlixis; / legit ab Hippolyto scripta nouerca suo. / iam pius Aeneas miserae rescripsit Elissae, / quodque legat Phyllis, si modo uiuit, adest. / tristis ad Hypsipylen ab Iasone littera uenit; / det uotam Phoebo Lesbis amata lyram' (this line, like the letter of Sappho, has been considered suspect; see R. J. Tarrant, "The Authenticity of the Letter of Sappho to Phaon (_Heroides XV_)", _HSPh_ 85 [1981] 133-53). Since the letter of Ulysses is the first one mentioned in the list at _Am_ II xviii 29, it was presumably the first poem in Sabinus' collection of epistles; hence Ovid's use of it here to indicate the entire collection. Line 14 may be an echo of one of Sabinus' poems. =15. TRISOMEN= _C_ TRISOMEM _B1_. For the many other variants, see the apparatus. The word is clearly corrupt; correction is difficult in the absence of further information on Sabinus. TROEZENA (a conjecture reported by Micyllus) seems unattractive. Heinsius had difficulty with the passage: 'an _Tymelen_? opinor certe nomen puellae a Sabino decantatae hic latere'. TROESMIN, suggested by Ehwald (_JAW_ CIX [1901] 187), is unlikely--why would Sabinus have wished to recount Vestalis' capture of the city?--but not, as claimed by Vollmer (PW I A,2 1598 34), unmetrical: lengthening is common enough before the main caesura (although I have found no example of lengthened _-in_). Bardon (61) wished to read TROEZEN (which is in fact the reading of _T_), apparently not realizing that an accusative form is required. =15-16. DIERVM ... OPVS.= Sabinus apparently started work on a calendar-poem, which may have resembled the _Fasti_; compare _Fast_ I 101 'uates operose _dierum_'. =16. CELERI= = 'premature'. =17. INGENIIQVE SVI DICTVS COGNOMINE LARGVS.= For the play on the name compare xiii 2 'qui quod es, id uere, Care, uocaris, aue'. Nothing is known of Largus beyond what Ovid here tells us. =18. GALLICA QVI PHRYGIVM DVXIT IN ARVA SENEM.= Largus described Antenor's migration to Venetia and founding of Patavium, for which see _Aen_ I 242-49 and Livy I 1. =18. GALLICA ... ARVA.= Patavium was in Cisalpine Gaul. =18. PHRYGIVM ... SENEM.= At _Il_ III 149-50 Antenor is listed among the '[Greek: dêmogerontes ... gêraï dê polemoio pepaumenoi]' sitting on the Trojan wall who see Helen approach. =19. DOMITO ... AB HECTORE TROIAM.= 'The story of Troy after the death of Hector'. _Gothanus II 121_ has the interpolation DOMITAM ... AB HECTORE, which Korn printed. =19. CAMERINVS.= Nothing is known of this poet. =20. SVA PHYLLIDE.= Presumably Tuscus' equivalent of Gallus' Lycoris. However, as Professor A. Dalzell points out, the reference to love poetry is odd in a sequence of epic and didactic writers. =20. TVSCVS= is not otherwise certainly known. Kiessling (_Coniectanea Propertiana_, Greifswald, 1875) proposed that he was the "Demophoon" addressed in Prop II xxii; this suggestion has won support from Birt [_RhM_ XXXII [1877] 414), Bardon (61; I owe these references to him), and André, but does not seem extremely convincing, especially since Propertius had been writing some three decades earlier. Merkel, in his edition of the _Tristia_ (p. 373), identifies him with the grammarian Clodius Tuscus, without offering a reason. =21. VELIVOLIQVE MARIS VATES.= It is not known who this was, or what the precise subject of the poem might have been; perhaps it resembled the _Halieutica_. André mentions that Varro Atacinus has been proposed, but does not name the author of the suggestion, which seems rather fanciful; as he points out, Varro had died some fifty years previously. Luck in his edition has proposed Abronius Silo, of whom two hexameters survive (Sen _Suas_ II 19 = Morel 120), but, as André remarks, the fact that he, like Ovid, was a follower of the rhetor Porcius Latro is hardly sufficient evidence for the identification. For _ueliuolique_ see at v 42 _ueliuolas_ (p 224). =22. CAERVLEOS ... DEOS= = 'the gods of the sea'. Compare _Met_ II 8 '_caeruleos_ habet unda deos'. =23. ACIES LIBYCAS ROMANAQVE PROELIA.= The poem may have concerned the Jugurthine war, or Caesar's African campaign; compare _Fast_ IV 379-80 'illa dies Libycis qua Caesar in oris / perfida magnanimi contudit arma Iubae'. For the juxtaposition of opposing proper adjectives (_Libycas Romana_), see Tarrant on Sen _Ag_ 613-13a _Dardana tecto / Dorici ... ignes_. =24. ET MARIVS SCRIPTI DEXTER IN OMNE GENVS.= For the phrasing compare _Tr_ II 381-82 '_omne genus scripti_ grauitate tragoedia uincit: / haec quoque materiam semper amoris habet' and _Tr_ II 517-18 'an _genus hoc scripti_ faciunt sua pulpita ['stage'] tutum, / quodque licet, mimis scaena licere dedit?'. _C_'s MARIVS SCRIPTOR and _B_'s SCRIPTOR MARIVS were no doubt induced by the hyperbaton of _scripti ... genus_. Marius is not otherwise known. =25. TRINACRIVSQVE ... AVCTOR.= In view of the following _auctor ... Lupus_, _Trinacrius_ should be taken as a proper name, and not as an adjective. The adjectival form of the name is, however, suspicious, and may be a corruption far removed from what Ovid wrote. =25. SVAE= seems strange, and is probably corrupt. Wheeler translated 'Trinacrius who wrote of the _Perseid_ he knew so well', while André ignored _suae_ altogether: 'l'auteur trinacrien de la "Perséide"'. =25-26. AVCTOR / TANTALIDAE REDVCIS TYNDARIDOSQVE LVPVS.= Lupus (otherwise unknown) apparently wrote of the return of Menelaus and Helen to Sparta. _Tantalides_ is used only here of Menelaus. Elsewhere in Latin verse it is used of Agamemnon, Atreus, and Pelops: see _OLD Tantalides_. Ovid is here using the diction of high poetry. =27. ET QVI MAEONIAM PHAEACIDA VERTIT.= Tuticanus; his translation of the Phaeacian episode of the Odyssey is mentioned at xii 27-28. As that poem explains, his name could not be used in elegiac verse: hence the periphrasis in this passage. =27. ET VNE= _HLB2_ ET VNe _M2c_ ET VNA _IT_ ET VNI _B1C_ IN ANGVEM _F_. _Vne_ was liable to corruption because of the hyperbaton with _Rufe_ in the next line, and because of the rarity of the vocative of _unus_. For _unus_ in the sense 'unique, outstanding', compare Catullus XXXVII 17 'tu praeter omnes _une_ de capillatis' ('you outstanding member of the long-haired set'--Quinn) and Prop II iii 29 'gloria Romanis _una_ es tu nata puellis'. =27-28. VNE / PINDARICAE FIDICEN TV QVOQVE, RVFE, LYRAE.= An imitation of Hor _Carm_ IV iii 21-23 'totum muneris hoc tui est / quod monstror digito praetereuntium / _Romanae fidicen lyrae_'. =28. RVFE.= Otherwise unknown. André correctly points out that he is unlikely to be the Rufus addressed in _EP_ II xi, 'dont Ovid n'aurait pas manqué alors de vanter le talent poétique'. Bardon (59) mentions that A. Reifferscheid ("Coniect. noua", _Ind. lect. Bresl._, 1880/81, p. 7) identified this Rufus with the Pindaric poet Titius of Hor _Ep_ I iii 9-10, thereby creating 'le très synthétique Titius Rufus'. But there is nothing very compelling about the identification. =29. MVSAVE TVRRANI.= The poet is not otherwise certainly known. Bardon (48) reports the conjectures of Hirschfeld ("Annona", _Philologus_, 1870, p. 27) identifying him with C. Turranius, _praefectus annonae_ at the time of Augustus' death (Tac _Ann_ I 7) and of Munzer (_Beitr. zur Quellenkritik_ 387-89), identifying him with the geographical writer Turranius Gracilis mentioned by the elder Pliny (_NH_ III 3, IX 11). =29. INNIXA COTVRNIS.= The _coturnus_ was distinguished by its high sole; hence _innixa_ ('supported by'). Compare _Am_ III i 31 (of Tragedy) 'pictis _innixa coturnis_' and Hor _AP_ 279-80 'Aeschylus ... docuit magnumque loqui _nitique coturno_'. =29. COTVRNIS.= As Brink at Hor _AP_ 80 points out, _coturnus_ (not _cothurnus_) is the spelling favoured by the best manuscripts of Virgil and Horace. =30. ET TVA CVM SOCCO MVSA, MELISSE, LEVIS.= _H_ offers LEVI, also conjectured by Heinsius, which may be right: the epithet with _socco_ would provide a pleasing balance with the preceding _tragicis ... coturnis_. On the other hand, Professor R. J. Tarrant in support of _leuis_ cites _RA_ 375-76 'grande sonant tragici, tragicos decet ira coturnos: / usibus e mediis _soccus_ habendus erit' and Hor _AP_ 80 '_socci_ ... grandesque coturni'; in both passages _soccus_ has no adjective. Propertius uses _Musa leuis_ of his verse (II xii 22); compare as well _Tr_ II 354 'Musa iocosa' (Ovid's amatory verse), _EP_ I v 69 'infelix Musa', Lucretius IV 589 & _Ecl_ I 2 'siluestrem ... Musam', and Quintilian X i 55 'Musa ... rustica et pastoralis' (the poetry of Theocritus). _Leuis_ is used of comedy at _Fast_ V 347-48 'scaena _leuis_ decet hanc [_sc_ Floram]: non est, mihi credite, non est / illa coturnatas inter habenda deas' and Hor _AP_ 231 'effutire _leues_ indigna Tragoedia uersus'. =30. MELISSE.= Thanks principally to Suetonius _Gram_ 21, we are comparatively well informed about Melissus (Schanz-Hosius 176-77 [§ 277]; Bardon 49-52). Brought up a slave (his father had disowned him at birth), he was given a good education by the man who accepted him, and was given to Maecenas, who manumitted him. He wrote one hundred and fifty books of _Ineptiae_. 'Fecit et nouum genus togatarum inscripsitque trabeatas'; it is no doubt these plays that Ovid is here referring to. =31. VARIVS.= Possibly the famous author of the _Thyestes_ and editor of the _Aeneid_ (Schanz-Hosius 162-64 [§ 267]; Bardon 28-34; fragments at Morel 100-1 and Ribbeck 265). Riese objected to the identification on chronological grounds (the _Thyestes_ was produced in 29 BC), but the date of his death is unknown, and he may have survived to the time of Ovid's exile. =31. GRACCHVSQVE.= The manuscripts omit the aspirate, and Ehwald cites _CIL_ VI 1 1505 for a mention of _Ti. Sempronius Graccus_, but in his discussion of the aspirate Quintilian makes it clear that _Graccus_ was an obsolete spelling (I v 20). Gracchus (Bardon 48-49) is mentioned by Priscian, Nonius, and the author of the _De dubiis nominibus_, who among them preserve four fragments and three titles (Ribbeck 266). One of the titles is a _Thyestes_; Professor R. J. Tarrant plausibly suggests that Ovid may here be alluding to the plays by Varius and Gracchus on the theme with his words _cum ... darent fera uerba tyrannis_, Atreus being the archetype of the tyrant in tragedy. Nipperdey proposed that Ovid's Gracchus was the Sempronius Gracchus implicated in the disgrace of Julia (Vel Pat II 100 5); see Syme _HO_ 196 and Furneaux on Tac _Ann_ I 53 4. The identification is however far from certain. =32. CALLIMACHI PROCVLVS MOLLE TENERET ITER.= Proculus is otherwise unknown. Ehwald suggested (_JAW_ 43 [1885] 141) that he was a dramatic poet like Varius and Gracchus, citing a mention of the '[Greek: satyrika dramata, tragôidiai, kômôidiai]' of Callimachus in the _Souda_. But Callimachus' primary reputation was hardly that of a tragedian; and _molle ... iter_ must be a reference to _Aetia_ 25-28: '[Greek: kai tod' anôga, ta mê pateousin hamaxai / ta steiben, heterôn d' ichnia mê kath homa / [_Hunt: _diphron el]ain mêd' hoimon ana platyn, alla keleuthous / [_Pfeiffer: _atripto]us, ei kai steinoterên elaseis]'. For _mollis_ used specifically of elegy (the _Aetia_ were in elegiac verse), see _EP_ III iv 85 and Prop I vii 19 (cited by André); for the word in an overtly Callimachean context, see Prop III i 19 '_mollia_, Pegasides, date uestro serta poetae'. _Tenere_ here has the sense 'keep to', as at _Met_ II 79 'ut ... uiam _teneas_' and Q Cic (?) _Pet_ 55 'perge _tenere_ istam uiam quam institisti [_Gruterus_: instituisti _codd_]'; Professor R. J. Tarrant rightly sees a suggestion of conscious artistic preference, and a faint allusion to the places where Augustan poets renounce the attractions of higher poetry. =33. TITYRON ANTIQVAS PASSERQVE REDIRET AD HERBAS= _B1C_. For the many variants and emendations proposed, see the apparatus. Housman has offered a defence of _B_ and _C_'s version of this line (937-39). He accepted Riese's printing of _Passer_ as a proper name ('M. Petronius Passer' is mentioned at Varro _RR_ III 2 2), and took the passage to mean 'He wrote bucolics, or, as Ovid puts it, he went back to Tityrus and the pastures of old': the construction is 'cum Passer rediret ad Tityron antiquasque herbas'. In writing the line, Ovid resorted to three devices, 'each of them legitimate, but not perhaps elsewhere assembled in a single verse'. The first is the delay of the preposition _ad_ after _Tityron_, which it governs; the second is the delay of _-que_, which properly belongs with _antiquas_; and the third is the placing of the verb between its two objects. For each of these devices Housman furnishes convincing parallels. Housman's argument is ingenious and informative, but I do not believe that he is right in defending the line: the accumulation of difficulties is suspicious, and the divergence of the manuscripts is greater here than at any other point in the book. Heinsius wrote of the line, 'haec nec Latina sunt, nec satis intelligo quid sibi uelint'. Like Heinsius, I believe the line to be deeply corrupted and, in the absence of further evidence, impossible to correct. =34. APTAQVE VENANTI GRATTIVS ARMA DARET.= Compare Grattius 23 'carmine et arma dabo et uenandi [_cod_: uenanti et _Vlitius_] persequar artis'. =34. GRATTIVS.= The manuscripts have GRATIVS (_CFLT_) or GRACIVS (_BMHI_); and _Gratius_ is what editors both of Ovid and Grattius printed until Buecheler pointed out (_RhM_ 35 [1880] 407) that _Grattius_ is the only form found in inscriptions, and is what is given in the oldest manuscript of Grattius, _Vindobonensis 277_ (saec viii/ix), which predates the manuscripts of _EP_ IV by at least four hundred years. =35. NAIADAS= _C. P. Jones_ NAIADAS A _HLI2_ NAYADES A _MT_ NAIDAS A _BCFI2_. Ovid elsewhere invariably uses the dative of agent with _amatus_ (_Am_ I v 12, II viii 12, III ix 55-56, _AA_ II 80, _Tr_ I vi 2, II 400, III i 42, IV x 40). As Professor Jones notes, following the interpolation of _a_, the shorter form _Naidas_ was introduced in _BCFI1_ to restore metre. =35-36. FONTANVS ... CAPELLA.= Neither poet is otherwise known. =36. IMPARIBVS ... MODIS.= See at 11 _imparibus numeris ... uel aequis_ (p 453). =37-38. QVORVM MIHI CVNCTA REFERRE / NOMINA LONGA MORA EST.= Similar phrasing at _Met_ XIII 205-6 '_longa referre mora est_ quae consilioque manuque / utiliter feci spatiosi tempore belli' and _Fast_ V 311-12 (Flora speaking) '_longa referre mora est_ correcta obliuia damnis; / me quoque Romani praeteriere patres'. =39-40. ESSENT ET IVVENES QVORVM, QVOD INEDITA CVRA EST, / APPELLANDORVM NIL MIHI IVRIS ADEST.= All editors, misled no doubt by 37, mispunctuate this passage, placing a comma before _quorum_ instead of after: this destroys the gerundive _quorum ... appellandorum_, leaving the pentameter without a construction. Williams proposed excising this distich, the reasons being (1) the sudden change from _forent_ to _essent_, (2) the use of _inedita_, which is not found elsewhere, (3) the use of _cura_ in a sense, 'written work', that is found only in late Latin, and (4) the prose turn of _quorum ... appellandorum_. To which it can be replied that (1) _forent_ and _essent_ are equivalent, and metrical convenience alone could justify the change, (2) the use of negatived perfect participles such as _inedita_, _indeclinatus_ (x 83), and _inoblita_ (xv 37) is a hallmark of Ovid's style, (3) _cura_ is used in this sense by Tacitus (_Dial_ 3 3 & 6 5; _Ann_ III 24 4 & IV 11 5); its earlier use in verse is not surprising, and (4) gerundives were allowed in Latin verse; here, as at ix 12 '_salutandi_ munere functa _tui_', the hyperbaton compensates for any awkwardness. =39. CVRA= _unus Thuaneus Heinsii_ CAVSA _BCMFHILT_. The same error in some manuscripts at _Her_ I 20 'Tlepolemi leto _cura_ nouata mea est', and _Fast_ I 55 'uindicat Ausonias Iunonis _cura_ Kalendas'; the inverse corruption at _Am_ II xii 17 and _Fast_ IV 368. In 1894 Owen printed _causa_. The word can certainly have the meaning he attributed to it ('[Greek: hypothesis]', 'theme'), as at Prop II i 12 'inuenio _causas_ mille poeta nouas', but this does not seem appropriate to the context here. In his later edition Owen returned to the usual reading. =41. APPELLANDORVM.= _Appellare_ used with the same sense (_OLD appello2_ 11) at III vi 6 '_appellent_ ne te carmina nostra rogas'; _nOminAre_ was not available for Ovid's use. =41-44. COTTA ... MAXIME.= M. Aurelius Cotta Maximus Messalinus[31] (_Forschungen in Ephesos_ III 112 no. 22; cited by Syme _HO_ 117) was the younger son of Messalla, the patron of Tibullus; he was the recipient of six of the _Epistulae ex Ponto_ (I v, I ix, II iii, II viii, III ii & III v). He is undoubtedly the M. Aurelius or Aurelius Cotta recorded by Tacitus as consul for 20 (_Ann_ III 2 3 & 17 4). He was born much later than his brother Messalinus (the addressee of _EP_ I vii and II ii), who was consul in 3 BC; the chronology is confirmed by a mention of him as praetor in 17 (_Inscriptiones Italiae_ XIII i p. 298; see Syme _Ten Studies_ 52), and by Ovid's testimony that Cotta was born after Ovid had become acquainted with his family (_EP_ II iii 69-80). Cotta was clearly a very close friend of Ovid; this can be seen particularly from _EP_ II iii, in which Ovid recounts how Cotta sent the first letter of comfort after his catastrophe (67-68) and tells how he confessed his _error_ to Cotta. [Footnote 31: _PIR_1 A 1236; _PIR_2 A 1488; PW 11,2 2490 13]] Tacitus gives some information on Cotta's public career. In AD 16, in the aftermath of the discovery of Libo's plot against Tiberius, Cotta proposed that Libo's image not be in his descendants' funeral processions (_Ann_ II 32 1). In 20, as consul, he similarly proposed penalties against Piso's family (_Ann_ III 17), and in 27 he is mentioned as attacking Agrippina so as to please Tiberius (_Ann_ V 3). The most interesting mention of him is at _Ann_ VI 5 (AD 32), where Tacitus tells of how Tiberius himself intervened in favour of Cotta after he had been charged with _maiestas_; the eventual result was that charges were laid against Cotta's chief accuser. =42. PIERIDVM LVMEN.= At _EP_ III v 29-36 Ovid asked Cotta to send him some of his poetry. For the sense of _lumen_ here ('ornament'), _OLD lumen_ 11 cites among other passages Cic _Sul_ 5 'haec ornamenta ac _lumina_ rei publicae' and _Phil II_ 54 (of Pompey) 'imperi populi Romani decus ac _lumen_ fuit'. =42. PRAESIDIVMQVE FORI= = 'defender of the law'. Compare vi 33-34 'cum tibi suscepta est _legis uindicta seuerae_, / uerba uelut taetrum singula uirus habent'. =43. MATERNOS COTTAS.= This passage should be taken in conjunction with _EP_ III ii 103-8 (to Cotta) 'adde quod est animus semper tibi mitis, et altae / indicium mores nobilitatis habent, / quos Volesus patrii cognoscat nominis auctor, / quos Numa maternus non neget esse suos, / adiectique probent genetiua ad nomina Cottae, / si tu non esses, interitura domus'. The simplest explanation of these two passages is that Cotta had been adopted by a maternal uncle, the last surviving Aurelius Cotta. The question of Cotta's maternal ancestry is a vexed one; for a full discussion see Syme _HO_ 119-21. The present passage was written with Prop IV xi 31-32 in mind: 'altera _maternos_ exaequat turba _Libones_, / et domus est titulis utraque fulta suis'. =44. NOBILITAS INGEMINATA.= In a famous study (_Kleine Schriften_ I 1 ff.; trans. _The Roman Nobility_ [1969]), Matthias Gelzer demonstrated that the usual meaning of _nobilis_ was 'descended from a consul'. Cotta was descended from a consul on both sides. At _Met_ XIII 144-47 Ovid uses _nobilitas_ to mean 'descent from a god': (Ulysses speaking) 'mihi Laertes pater est, Arcesius illi, / Iuppiter huic ... est quoque _per matrem_ Cyllenius _addita_ nobis / _altera nobilitas_: deus est in utroque parente!'. =44. INGEMINATA.= A verbal echo of _EP_ I ii 1-2 (to Fabius Maximus) 'Maxime, qui tanti mensuram nominis imples, / et _geminas_ animi _nobilitate_ genus'. =46. ATQVE INTER TANTOS QVAE LEGERETVR ERAT.= This is the end of the sentence that began at 5. =46. INTER TANTOS.= Compare _EP_ III i 55-56 (Ovid has just compared himself to Capaneus, Amphiaraus, Ulysses, and Philoctetes) 'si locus est aliquis _tanta inter nomina_ paruis, / nos quoque conspicuos nostra ruina facit'. =47. SVMMOTVM= _codd_ SVBMOTVM _edd_. The assimilated _summ-_ is standard in the manuscripts of Virgil and Lucretius, and should not be altered. =47. PROSCINDERE= = 'revile, defame'. This seems to be the first instance of the word in this sense; the other examples cited by _OLD_ _proscindo_ 3 are Val Max V iii 3, Val Max VIII 5 2 'C. Flauium eadem lege accusatum testis _proscidit_', Pliny _NH_ XXXIII 6, and Suet _Cal_ 30 2 'equestrem ordinem ut scaenae harenaeque deuotum assidue _proscidit_'. The word connects with _laceras_ in the first line of the poem, and with _neu cineres sparge, cruente, meos_ in 48. =49. OMNIA PERDIDIMVS.= The same phrase at _Met_ XIII 527-28 (Hecuba speaking) '_omnia perdidimus_: superest cur uiuere tempus / in breue sustineam proles gratissima matri'. =49. TANTVMMODO= is a prose word. It occurs elsewhere in Ovid only at _Fast_ III 361 'ortus erat summo _tantummodo_ margine Phoebus' and at _Tr_ III vii 29-30 'pone, Perilla, metum; _tantummodo_ femina nulla / neue uir a scriptis discat amare tuis'. Being a colloquial term, it is found in satire (Hor _Sat_ I ix 54) and comedy (Ter _Ph_ 109). =50. SENSVM MATERIAMQVE MALI.= 'An occasion for pain, and the ability to feel it'. For _sensum_ compare _EP_ I ii 29-30 'felicem Nioben ... quae posuit _sensum_ saxea facta _mali_ [_uar_ malis]' and _EP_ I ii 37 'uiuimus ut numquam _sensu_ careamus amaro'. For _materiam_ compare _Her_ VII 34 'materiam curae praebeat ille meae!', _Met_ X 133-34 'ut leuiter pro materiaque doleret / admonuit' and _EP_ I x 23-24 'dolores, / quorum materiam dat locus ipse mihi'. =51-52. QVID IVVAT EXTINCTOS FERRVM DEMITTERE IN ARTVS? / NON HABET IN NOBIS IAM NOVA PLAGA LOCVM.= I believe this distich is an interpolation for the following reasons: (1) Lines 49-50 form an effective ending, which 51-52 weaken. In 49-50 Ovid says that life is all that is left to him; and in 52 it is stated that he is already wounded in every place possible. These statements are contradictory. (2) The use of a weapon in 51 is at odds with the rending metaphor of _laceras_ (1) and _proscindere_ (47). 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Syme, R., _History in Ovid_. Oxford, 1978. Syme, R., _Tacitus_. 2 vols. Oxford, 1958. Syme, R., _Ten Studies in Tacitus_. Oxford, 1970. Tarrant, R. J., ed. _Seneca. Agamemnon_. Cambridge, 1976. Tarrant, R. J., "The Authenticity of the Letter of Sappho to Phaon (_Heroides_ XV)", _HSPh_ 85 (1981) 133-53. Tarrant, R. J., article on "Ovid", section on the _Ex Ponto_, _Texts and Transmission_, ed. L. D. Reynolds, Oxford, 1983, pp. 262-65. Thibault, J. C., _The Mystery of Ovid's Exile_. Berkeley, 1964. Wickham, E. C., ed. _Quinti Horati Flacci opera omnia_. 2 vols. Oxford, 1891. Willis, J. _Latin Textual Criticism_. Urbana, 1972. Woodcock, E. C., _A New Latin Syntax_. London, 1959; reprinted 1971. INDEX OF TOPICS DISCUSSED _The scope of this index is described at pages vii-viii of the Preface._ _ad summam_ = 'in short', 152 addressees in _Ex Ponto IV_, 6-9 advantages offered by digital editions (ebooks), vi-vii Albinovanus Pedo, 7-8, 327-328 André, J. text and translation of 1977, 51-53 apotheoses of Hercules, Aeneas, Romulus, Julius Caesar, and Augustus as described by Ovid, 401 articles arising from this edition, iv-vi _aut_ = 'otherwise', 184, 373 Black Sea, freezing of, 339 accuracy of Ovid's account, 341 source for Ovid's account of its freezing, 340-42 Ammianus Marcellinus' explanation, 342 Aulus Gellius' explanation, 342 Lucan's description, 342 Macrobius' explanation, 341 Valerius Flaccus' explanation, 341 Brutus, 7, 16, 226 Burman, Peter folio edition of the works of Ovid (1727), 37-38 _Calypso_ accusative, 332 _candidus_ = 'kind of heart', 421-22 Carus, 8, 20 _certus eras_ = 'you had made up your mind', 228 conative imperfect tense, 185 conative present tense, 148 Cornelius Severus, 7 Cotta Maximus, 8-9, 465-66 Cottius, 244, 253 _coturnus_ vs. _cothurnus_, 459 cretics, impossibility of using in elegiac verse, 371-73 critical apparatus, conventions used in creating, 34-37 _decipere_: _Me decipit error_ = 'I am making a mistake', 231 _deductum_ = (1) 'composed', (2) 'finely spun, delicate', 147 Della Corte, F. translation and commentary of _Ex Ponto_ (1977), 51 deponent verbs, perfect participle of, 290 differences between _Ex Ponto IV_ and Ovid's earlier poems from exile, 9-11 Donnus, ancestor of Vestalis, 253 editions of the _Ex Ponto_ before Heinsius, 37 Ehwald, Rudolf _Kritische Beiträge zu Ovids Epistulae ex Ponto_ (1896), 45-46 _ensis_ vs. _gladius_, 309-310 _eques_: Ovid's status as a member of the equestrian order, 263 _Ex Ponto_ IV a work entirely separate from _EP_ I-III; its structure, 4-5 _Ex Ponto_ vs. _De Ponto_: correct title of the collection, 145 _excidit_ = 'I forgot', 205 _excutere_ = 'examine', 263 Fabius Maximus, 7 _facie_ dative singular of _facies_, 343 _fueram_ equivalent to imperfect, 230 Gallio, 7, 19-20 _Gete_ ablative singular of _Getes_, 195-196 Giants' rebellion, Ovid's unfinished poem about, 272-273 _Gracchus_ vs. _Graccus_, 461 Graecinus, 6-7, 16, 286 _Graius_ vs. _Graecus_, 425 _gratari_ used by the poets in place of the metrically difficult _gratulari_, 399 Harles, Theophilus edition of 1772; his discovery of manuscript _B_ of the _Ex Ponto_, 39 Heinsius, Nicolaus central role in the history of Ovid's text, 37-38 controversial emendations, 41 difficulty in determining preferred readings of, 42-43 Herodotus, Ovid's knowledge of, 190, 271 hexameter endings, monosyllabic, 175-176, 323 hexameter, fourth foot use of spondees, 150-151 _hiemps_, spelling of, 339-40 history of this edition, iv-vii Iazyges Sarmatae (Pontic tribe), 246-47 indices, rationale for the two, vii-viii indirect questions Ovid's preference for subjunctive vs. indicative, 391-92 Propertius' indifference to subjunctive vs. indicative, 392-93 _ingenium loci_ = 'difficulty of its terrain', 251 intended audience of this edition, ii _is_ vs. _hic_, _ille_, and _iste_, 319 Junius Gallio, 359-60 Korn, Otto discovery of manuscript _C_, 45 edition of 1868: use of manuscript _B_; attitude towards Heinsius, 40-42 _lapsus_ and _lassus_ common variant readings, 383-84 law, Ovid's expertise in, 434-35 Lenz (Levy), F. edition of 1922, 48-49 edition of 1938, 49-50 levels of diction within _Ex Ponto_ IV, 11-12 Luck, G. edition of 1963, 50-51 manuscripts of _Ex Ponto_ IV, 23-34 Antuerpiensis Musei Plantiniani Denucé 68 (_M_), 28-30 fragmentum Guelferbytanum, Cod. Guelf. 13.11 Aug. 4° (_G_), 23-24 Francofurtanus Barth 110 (_F_), 30-31 Hamburgensis scrin. 52 F (_A_), 23 Holkhamicus 322 (_H_), 31 Laurentianus 36 32 (_I_), 32 Lipsiensis bibl. ciu. Rep. I 2° 7 (_L_), 32 Monacensis latinus 384 (_B_), 25-28 Monacensis latinus 19476 (_C_), 25-28 Parisinus lat. 7993 (_P_), 33 Turonensis 879 (_T_), 32-33 vulgate manuscripts (_MFHILT_), 28-29 _mare_ (ablative singular), 242 Merkel, Rudolf edition of 1853, 40 edition of 1884, 45 Morrow, Rob, x _munus opusque_ = 'creation', 160 _murmur_, 406 nature of this edition, vii Némethy, Geza commentary of 1915, 48 _neque_ = _sed ... non_, 203 _neque_ before vowel, vs. _nec_, 203 _niger_ as a moral quality, 423-24 _nihil_ vs. _nil_, 262 Nireus' handsomeness as a commonplace, 397 numbers higher than _novem_, Roman poets' avoidance of usual names for, 288 _Numida_ masculine substantive and adjective, 294-95 _obliquus_ = 'swirling', 335 opportunity presented by the _Ex Ponto_ to future editors and commentators, iii Ovid's attitude towards his wife, 9 Ovid's life and literary production in exile, 1-4 Owen, S. G. edition of 1894, 45 edition of 1915, 46-47 _penna_ vs. _pinna_, 28, 203 pentameter endings trisyllabic, 294 quadrisyllabic, 164-166 pentasyllabic, 181-182 perfect subjunctive vs. future perfect indicative forms, 215 polyptoton, Ovid's use of, 278, 378 _potior_ = 'more important', 301 _principes viri_, 268 prose words in _EP_ IV, 12 _qui_ used for _quis_ ("_qui sit_"), 178-179 _quod_ = 'granted that', 337-338 _quoque magis_, 293 reasons why the text in this edition differs from that of earlier editors, iii _res lassae (fessae)_, 383-84 Riese, Alexander independence of judgment in 1874 edition, 44 Severus, 18-19 Sextus Pompeius, 6, 146 poems addressed to, 12-14 simple verbs used for compound ones, 281 Suillius (P. Suillius Rufus), 260 poem addressed to (viii), 14-15 _summotum_ vs. _submotum_, 468 _suscensere_ vs. _succensere_, 415 syllepsis, Ovid's use of, 234 _ter quarter_ = 'infinitely', 296 Thersites' ugliness as a commonplace, 396 third declension accusative plural endings: _-es_ vs. _-is_, 27-28 titles of the individual poems, 34 Tuticanus, 8, 17-18 Ulysses' voyage a favourite topic of the Roman poets, 330-31 _ut in populo_ = 'in the crowd', 216 Vestalis, 8, 21, 244 _viderit_ = 'let him look to himself', 151-152 Virgil, _Aen_ I 608, Ovid's interpretation of, 321 Weber, W. E. _Corpus Poetarum Latinorum_ (1833); attitude towards Heinsius, 39-40 Wheeler, A. L. text and translation (1924), 49 Williams, W. H. commentary (1881): focus on Indo-European philology, 44 INDEX OF TEXTUAL EMENDATIONS _This is an index to those textual emendations first appearing in this edition. Where a critic's name is not supplied, the emendation was proposed by the Editor._ Germanicus _Aratea_ 26: 343 Horace _Carm_ III xiv 19: 306 Mela II 7: 349 Ovid, _Heroides_ IX 101: 233 Ovid, _Ars Amatoria_ III 803-04 (R. J. Tarrant): 398 Ovid, _Metamorphoses_ VI 233: 306 IX 711: 233 XI 493: 386 XIV 233: 335 Ovid, _Fasti_ V 580: 196 Ovid, _Tristia_ III vi 7: 303, 421 III x 38: 246 Ovid, _Ex Ponto_ II v 15-16: 293 III iv 58: 284-85 IV i 16 (J. N. Grant): 57 IV i 21: 57, 154 IV ii 17 (A. Dalzell): 60, 168 IV ii 17 (R. J. Tarrant): 60, 168 IV iii 32: 65, 187-188 IV iii 50 (R. J. Tarrant): 67, 195 IV iv 34: 70 IV vi 15: 77, 231-32 IV vi 15 (J. N. Grant): 77, 232 IV vi 34 (R. J. Tarrant): 78, 239 IV vi 38: 78, 240-241 IV vi 38 (D. R. Shackleton Bailey): 78, 241 IV viii 16: 87, 263 IV viii 60: 90, 275 IV viii 71 (R. J. Tarrant): 91, 279 IV ix 41: 96, 298 IV ix 59-60: 97, 303 IV ix 73: 98, 306 IV ix 103 (R. J. Tarrant): 101, 315-16 IV ix 113: 102, 318 IV ix 115-16 (R. J. Tarrant): 102, 318 IV ix 133-34: 104, 322-23 IV ix 134 (C. P. Jones): 104, 323 IV x 76: 112, 355-56 IV xi 15: 114, 365 IV xii 13 (R. J. Tarrant): 116, 375 IV xii 50: 119, 387-88 IV xiii 31-32 (punctuation): 122 IV xiii 45: 123, 408 IV xiv 6: 125, 412 IV xiv 23: 127 IV xiv 33: 128 IV xv 2: 131 IV xv 25-26: 133, 438 IV xv 34 (R. J. Tarrant): 134, 440-41 IV xv 34: 134, 440-41 IV xv 42: 135 IV xvi 3: 136, 448-49 IV xvi 35 (C. P. Jones): 141, 463-64 IV xvi 39 (punctuation): 141, 464 IV xvi 51-52: 142, 469-70 Pliny the Elder _NH_ XXXIV 34 (R. J. Tarrant): 419 Porphyrion on Hor. _Sat_ I v 87: 372 Propertius III xiv 14: 350 Suetonius _Tiberius_ 18: 299 Tacitus _Ann_ II 66: 308 
9303	----	POST-AUGUSTAN POETRY From Seneca to Juvenal By H.E. BUTLER, Fellow of New College PREFACE I have attempted in this book to provide something of an introduction to the poetical literature of the post-Augustan age. Although few of the writers dealt with have any claim to be called poets of the first order, and some stand very low in the scale of poetry, as a whole the poets of this period have suffered greater neglect than they deserve. Their undeniable weaknesses tend in many cases to obscure their real merits, with the result that they are at times either ignored or subjected to unduly sweeping condemnation. I have attempted in these pages to detach and illustrate their excellences without in any way passing over their defects. Manilius and Phaedrus have been omitted on the ground that as regards the general character of their writings they belong rather to the Augustan period than to the subsequent age of decadence. Manilius indeed composed a considerable portion of his work during the lifetime of Augustus, while Phaedrus, though somewhat later in date, showed a sobriety of thought and an antique simplicity of style that place him at least a generation away from his contemporaries. The authorities to whose works I am indebted are duly acknowledged in the course of the work. I owe a special debt, however, to those great works of reference, the Histories of Roman Literature by Schanz and Teuffel, to Friedländer's _Sittengeschichte_, and, for the chapters on Lucan and Statius, to Heitland's _Introduction to Haskin's edition of Lucan_ and Legras' _Thébaïde de Stace_. I wish particularly to express my indebtedness to Professor Gilbert Murray and Mr. Nowell Smith, who read the book in manuscript and made many valuable suggestions and corrections. I also have to thank Mr. A.S. Owen for much assistance in the corrections of the proofs. My thanks are owing to Professor Goldwin Smith for permission to print translations from 'Bay Leaves', and to Mr. A.E. Street and Mr. F.J. Miller and their publishers, for permission to quote from their translations of Martial (Messrs. Spottiswoode) and Seneca (Chicago University Press) respectively. H.E. BUTLER. _November_, 1908. CONTENTS CHAPTER I THE DECLINE OF POST-AUGUSTAN POETRY Main characteristics, p. 1. The influence of the principate, p. 1. Tiberius, p. 2. Caligula, p. 4. Claudius, p. 5. Nero, p. 6. Decay of Roman character, p. 9. Peculiar nature of Roman literature, p. 10. Greatness of Augustan poets a bar to farther advance, p. 11. Roman education: literary, p. 12; rhetorical, p. 14. Absence of true educational spirit, p. 16. Recitations, p. 18. Results of these influences, p. 19. CHAPTER II DRAMA i. THE STAGE. Drama never really flourishing at Rome, p. 23. Comedy, represented by Mime and Atellan farce, p. 24. Legitimate comedy nearly extinct, p. 25. Tragedy replaced by _salticae fabulae_, p. 26; or musical recitations, p. 28. Pomponius Secundus, p. 29. Curiatius Maternus, p. 30. ii. SENECA: his life and character, p. 31. His position in literature, p. 35. His epigrams, p. 36. His plays, p. 39. Their genuineness, p. 40. The _Octavia, Oedipus, Agamemnon,_ and _Hercules Oetaeus,_ p. 41. Date of the plays, p. 43. Their dramatic value, p. 44. Plot, p. 45. Descriptions, p. 48. Declamation, p. 49; at its best in _Troades_ and _Phaedra_, p. 51. Dialogue, p. 55. Stoicism, p. 58. Poetry (confined mainly to lyrics), p. 63. Cleverness of the rhetoric, p. 65. _Sententiae_, p. 68. Hyperbole, p. 69. Diction and metre; iambics, p. 70; lyrics, p. 71. Plays not written for the stage, p. 72. Influence on later drama, p. 74. iii. THE OCTAVIA. Sole example of _fabula praetexta_, p. 74. Plot, p. 75. Characteristics, p. 76. Date and authorship, p. 77. CHAPTER III PERSIUS Life, p. 79. Works, p. 81. Influence of Lucilius, p. 83; of Horace, p. 84. Obscurity, p. 85. Qualifications necessary for a satirist; Persius' weakness through lack of them, p. 87. Success in purely literary satire, p. 88. Lack of close observation of life, p. 90. Persius' nobility of character, p. 91. His Stoicism, p. 93. His capacity for friendship, p. 95. CHAPTER IV LUCAN Life, p. 97. Minor works, p. 99. His choice of a subject, p. 101, Choice of epic methods, p. 102. Petronius' criticism of historical epic, p. 103. Difficulties of the subject, p. 104. Design of the poem, p. 106. Characters: Pompey, p. 106. Caesar, p. 108. Cato, p. 109. Descriptive passages, p. 112. Hyperbole, p. 115. Irrelevance, p. 116. Lack of poetic vocabulary, p. 116. Tendency to political satire, p. 117. Speeches, p. 120. _Sententiae,_ p. 122. Metre, p. 123. Summary, p. 123. CHAPTER V PETRONIUS Authorship of _Satyricon:_ character of Titus Petronius, p. 125. Literary criticism, p. 127. Attack on contemporary rhetoric, p. 128. Eumolpus the poet, p. 129; laments the decay of art, p. 130. Poem on the Sack of Troy, p. 130. Criticism of historical epic, p. 131. The poetic fragments, p. 133. Epigrams, p. 134. Question of genuineness, p. 135. Their high poetic level, p. 136. CHAPTER VI MINOR POETRY, 14-69 A.D. I. DIDACTIC POETRY i. THE AETNA. Its design, p. 140. Characteristics of the poem, p. 141. Authorship, p. 143. Date, p. 145. ii. COLUMELLA. Life and works, p. 146. His tenth book, a fifth Georgic on gardening, p. 147. His enthusiasm and descriptive power, p. 148. II. CALPURNIUS SICULUS, THE EINSIEDELN FRAGMENTS, AND THE PANEGYRICUS IN PISONEM Pastoral poetry, p. 150. Calpurnius Siculus; date, p. 151. Who was he? p. 152. Debt to Vergil, p. 152. Elaboration of style, p. 153. Obscurity, affectation and insignificance, p. 154. Einsiedeln fragments; was the author Calpurnius Piso? p. 156. _Panegyricus in Pisonem,_ p. 157. Graceful elaboration, p. 158. Was the author Calpurnius Siculus? p. 159. III. ILIAS LATINA Early translations of _Iliad,_ p. 160. Attius Labeo, p. 160. Polybius p. 161. _Ilias Latina,_ a summary in verse, p. 161. Date, p. 162. Authorship: the question of the acrostic, p. 162. Wrongly attributed to Silius Italicus. p. 163. IV. MINOR POETS Gaetulicus, p. 163. Caesius Bassua, p. 164. CHAPTER VII EMPERORS AND MINOR POETS, 70-117 A.D. I. EMPERORS AND POETS WHOSE WORKS ARE LOST Vespasian and Titus, p. 166. Domitian. The Agon Capitolinus and Agon Albanus, p. 167. Literary characteristics of the Flavian age, p. 168. Saleius Bassus, Serranus, and others, p. 169. Nerva, p. 169. Trajan, p. 170. Passennus Paulus, p. 170. Sentius Augurinus, p. 171. Pliny the Younger, p. 172. Almost entire disappearance of poetry after Hadrian. p. 174. II. SULPICIA Sulpicia, a lyric poetess, p. 174. Martial's admiration for her, p. 175. Characteristics of her work, p. 176. Her Satire, p. 176. Is it genuine? p. 177. CHAPTER VIII VALERIUS FLACCUS Epic in the Flavian age, p. 179. Who was Valerius? His date, p. 180. The _Argonautica_, unfinished, p. 181. Its general design, p. 182. Merits and defects of the Argonaut-saga as a subject for epic, p. 183. Valerius' debt to Apollonius Rhodius, p. 183. Novelties introduced in treatment; Jason, p. 184; Medea, p. 185. Valerius has a better general conception as to how the story should be told, but is far inferior as a poet, p. 186. Obscure learning; lack of humour, p. 187. Involved language, p. 188. Preciosity; compression, p. 189. Real poetic merit: compared with Statius and Lucan, p. 191. Debt to Vergil, p. 191. Metre, p. 192. Brilliant descriptive power, p. 193. Suggestion of mystery, p. 193. Sense of colour, p. 195. Similes, p. 195. Speeches, p. 197. The loves of Jason and Medea, p. 198. General estimate, p. 200. CHAPTER IX STATIUS Life, p. 202. Character, p. 205. The _Thebais_; its high average level, p. 206. Statius a miniature painter, p, 207. Weakness of the Theban-saga as a subject for epic, p. 208. Consequent lack of proportion and unity in _Thebais_, p. 210. Vergil too closely imitated, p. 211. Digressions, p. 212. Character-drawing superficial, p. 213. Tydeus, p. 214. Amphiaraus, p. 216. Parthenopaeus and other characters, p. 218. Atmosphere that of literature rather than life, p. 220. Fine descriptive passages, p. 221. Dexterity, often degenerating into preciosity, p. 224. Similes, p. 225. Metre, p. 226. The _Achilleis_, p. 227. The _Silvae_, p. 227. Flattery of Domitian, p. 228. Extraordinary preciosity, p. 229. Prettiness and insincerity, p. 230. Brilliant miniature-painting, p. 232. The _Genethliacon Lucani_, p. 233. Invocation to Sleep, p. 234. Conclusion, p. 235. CHAPTER X SILIUS ITALlCUS Life, p. 236. Weakness of historical epic, p. 238. Disastrous intrusion of mythology, p. 239. Plagiarism from Vergil, p. 240. Skill in composition of early books, p. 240. Inadequate treatment of closing scenes of the war, p. 241. The characters, p. 241. Total absence of any real poetic gifts, p. 242. Regulus, p. 244. The death of Paulus, p. 246. Fabius Cunctator, p. 247. Conclusion, p. 249. CHAPTER XI MARTIAL Life, p. 251. The epigram, p. 258. Martial's temperament, p. 259. Gift of style, p. 260. Satirical tone, good-humoured and non-moral, p. 261. Obscenity, p. 263. Capacity for friendship, p. 264. His dislike of Rome, p. 267. His love of the country, p. 268. Comparison with Silvae of Statius, p. 271. Flattery of Domitian, p. 271. Laments for the dead, p. 272. Emotion as a rule sacrificed to point, p. 275. The laureate of triviality, p. 276. Martial as a client, p. 277. His snobbery, p. 279. Redeeming features; polish and wit, p. 281. The one perfect post-Augustan stylist, p. 284. Vivid picture of contemporary society, p. 285. CHAPTER XII JUVENAL Life, p. 287. Date of satires, p. 289. Motives (Sat, i), p. 291. Themes of the various satires; third satire, p. 293; fourth, fifth, and sixth satires, p. 294; seventh and eighth satires; signs of waning power, p. 295; tenth satire, p. 296; eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth satires, p. 297; fifteenth and sixteenth satires, showing further decline of power, p. 298. Juvenal's narrow Roman ideals; hatred of the foreigner, p. 299. Exaggeration, p. 301. Coarseness, p. 303. Vividness of description, p. 304. Mordant epigram and rhetoric, p. 308. Moral and religious ideals, p. 311. _Sententiae_, p. 315. Poetry, p. 316. Metre, p. 317. The one great poet of the Silver Age, p. 317. INDEX OF NAMES, p. 321 FOOTNOTES CHAPTER I THE DECLINE OF POST-AUGUSTAN POETRY During the latter years of the principate of Augustus a remarkable change in literary methods and style begins to make itself felt. The gradual extinction of the great luminaries is followed by a gradual disappearance of originality and of the natural and easy-flowing style whose phrases and felicities adorn, without overloading or obscuring the sense. In their place comes a straining after effect, a love of startling colour, produced now by over-gorgeous or over-minute imagery, now by a surfeit of brilliant epigram, while controlling good sense and observance of due proportion are often absent and imitative preciosity too frequently masquerades as originality. Further, in too many cases there is a complete absence of moral enthusiasm, close observation, and genuine insight. What were the causes of this change? Was it due mainly to the evil influence of the principate or to more subtle and deep-rooted causes? The principate had been denounced as the _fons et origo mali_.[1] That its influence was for evil can hardly be denied. But it was rather a symptom, an outward and visible sign of a deep-engrained decay, which it accentuated and brought to the surface, but in no way originated. We are told that the principate 'created around itself the quiet of the graveyard, since all independence was compelled under threat of death to hypocritical silence or subterfuge; servility alone was allowed to speak; the rest submitted to what was inevitable, nay, even endeavoured to accommodate their minds to it as much as possible.' Even if this highly coloured statement were true, the influence of such tyrannical suppression of free thinking and free speaking could only have _directly_ affected certain forms of literature, such as satire, recent history,[2] and political oratory, while even in these branches of literature a wide field was left over which an intending author might safely range. The _direct_ influence on poetry must have been exceedingly small. If we review the great poets of the Augustan and republican periods, we shall find little save certain epigrams of Catullus that could not safely have been produced in post-Augustan times. Moreover, when we turn to what is actually known of the attitude of the early emperors towards literature, the balance does not seriously incline against them. It may be said without hesitation of the four emperors succeeding Augustus that they had a genuine taste and some capacity for literature. Of two only is it true that their influence was in any way repressive. The principate of Tiberius is notorious for the silence of literature; whether the fact is due as much to the character of Tiberius as to the temporary exhaustion of genius following naturally on the brilliance of the Augustan period, is more than doubtful. But Tiberius cannot be acquitted of all blame. The cynical humour with which it pleased him to mark the steady advance of autocracy, the _lentae maxillae_ which Augustus attributed to his adopted son,[3] the icy and ironic cruelty which was--on the most favourable estimate--a not inconsiderable element in his character, no doubt all exercised a chilling influence, not only on politics but on all spontaneous expression of human character. Further, we find a few instances of active and cruel repression. Lampoons against the emperor were punished with death.[4] Cremutius Cordus was driven to suicide for styling 'Brutus and Cassius the last of all the Romans'.[5] Mamercus Scaurus had the misfortune to write a tragedy on the subject of Atreus in which he advised submission to Atreus in a version of the Euripidean [Greek: tas t_on turann_on amathias pherein chre_on][6] He too fell a victim to the Emperor's displeasure, though the chief charges actually brought against him were of adultery with the Princess Livilla and practice of the black art. We hear also of another case in which _obiectum est poetae quod in tragoedia Agamemnonem probris lacessisset_ (Suet. _Tib_. 61). It is worthy of notice that actors also came under Tiberius's displeasure.[7] The mime and the Atellan farce afforded too free an opportunity for improvisation against the emperor. Even the harmless Phaedrus seems to have incurred the anger of Sejanus, and to have suffered thereby.[8] Nor do the few instances in which Tiberius appears as a patron of literature fill us with great respect for his taste. He is said to have given one Asellius Sabinus 100,000 sesterces for a dialogue between a mushroom, a finch, an oyster, and a thrush,[9] and to have rewarded a worthless writer,[10] Clutorius Priscus, for a poem composed on the death of Germanicus. On the other hand, he seems to have had a sincere love of literature,[11] though he wrote in a crabbed and affected style. He was a purist in language with a taste for archaism,[12] left a brief autobiography[13] and dabbled in poetry, writing epigrams,[14] a lyric _conquestio de morte Lucii Caesaris_[15] and Greek imitations of Euphorion, Rhianus, and Parthenius, the learned poets of Alexandria. His taste was bad: he went even farther than his beloved Alexandrians, awaking the laughter of his contemporaries even in an age when obscure mythological learning was at a premium. The questions which delighted him were--'Who was the mother of Hecuba?' 'What was the name of Achilles when disguised as a girl?' 'What did the sirens sing?'[16] Literature had little to learn from Tiberius, but it should have had something to gain from the fact that he was not blind to its charms: at the worst it cannot have required abnormal skill to avoid incurring a charge of _lèse-majesté_. The reign of the lunatic Caligula is of small importance, thanks to its extreme brevity. For all his madness he had considerable ability; he was ready of speech to a remarkable degree, though his oratory suffered from extravagant ornament[17] and lack of restraint. He had, however, some literary insight: in his description of Seneca's rhetoric as _merae commissiones_, 'prize declamations,' and 'sand without lime' he gave an admirable summary of that writer's chief weaknesses.[18] But he would in all probability have proved a greater danger to literature than Tiberius. It is true that in his desire to compare favourably with his predecessors he allowed the writings of T. Labienus, Cremutius Cordus, and Cassius Severus, which had fallen under the senate's ban in the two preceding reigns, to be freely circulated once more.[19] But he by no means abandoned trials for _lèse-majesté_. The rhetorician Carinas Secundus was banished on account of an imprudent phrase in a _suasoria_ on the hackneyed theme of tyrannicide.[20] A writer of an Atellan farce was burned to death in the amphitheatre[21] for a treasonable jest, and Seneca narrowly escaped death for having made a brilliant display of oratory in the senate.[22] He also seriously meditated the destruction of the works of Homer. Plato had banished Homer from his ideal state. Why should not Caligula? He was with difficulty restrained from doing the like for Vergil and Livy. The former, he said, was a man of little learning and less wit;[23] the latter was verbose and careless. Even when he attempted to encourage literature, his eccentricity carried him to such extremes that the competitors shrank in horror from entering the lists. He instituted a contest at Lugudunum in which prizes were offered for declamations in Greek and Latin. The prizes were presented to the victors by the vanquished, who were ordered to write panegyrics in honour of their successful rivals, while in cases where the declamations were decided to be unusually poor, the unhappy authors were ordered to obliterate their writings with a sponge or even with their own tongues, under penalty of being caned or ducked in the Rhone.[24] Literature had some reason to be thankful for his early assassination. The lunatic was succeeded by a fool, but a learned fool. Claudius was historian, antiquary, and philologist. He wrote two books on the civil war, forty-one on the principate of Augustus, a defence of Cicero, eight books of autobiography,[25] an official diary,[26] a treatise on dicing.[27] To this must be added his writings in Greek, twenty books of Etruscan history, eight of Carthaginian,[28] together with a comedy performed and crowned at Naples in honour of the memory of Germanicus.[29] His style, according to Suetonius, was _magis ineptus quam inelegans_.[30] He did more than write: he attempted a reform of spelling, by introducing three new letters into the Latin alphabet. His enthusiasm and industry were exemplary. Such indeed was his activity that a special office,[31] _a studiis_, was established, which was filled for the first time by the influential freedman Polybius. Claudius lacked the saving grace of good sense, but in happier days might have been a useful professor: at any rate his interest in literature was whole-hearted and disinterested. His own writing was too feeble to influence contemporaries for ill and he had the merit of having given literature room to move. Seneca might mock at him after his death,[32] but he had done good service. Nero, Claudius' successor, was also a liberal, if embarrassing, patron of literature. His tastes were more purely literary. He had received an elaborate and diversified education. He had even enjoyed the privilege of having Seneca--the head of the literary profession--for his tutor. These influences were not wholly for the good: Agrippina dissuaded him from the study of philosophy as being unsuited for a future emperor, Seneca from the study of earlier and saner orators that he might himself have a longer lease of Nero's admiration.[33] The result was that a temperament, perhaps falsely styled artistic,[34] was deprived of the solid nutriment required to give it stability. Nero's great ambition was to be supreme in poetry and art as he was supreme in empire. He composed rapidly and with some technical skill,[35] but his work lacked distinction, connexion of thought, and unity of style.[36] Satirical[37] and erotic[38] epigrams, learned mythological poems on Attis and the Bacchae,[39] all flowed from his pen. But his most famous works were his _Troica_,[40] an epic on the Trojan legend, which he recited before the people in the theatre,[41] and his [Greek: Iion al_osis], which may perhaps have been included in the _Troica_, and is famous as having--so scandal ran--been declaimed over burning Rome.[42] But his ambition soared higher. He contemplated an epic on the whole of Roman history. It was estimated that 400 books would be required. The Stoic Annaeus Cornutus justly remarked that no one would read so many. It was pointed out that the Stoic's master, Chrysippus, had written even more. 'Yes,' said Cornutus, 'but they were of some use to humanity.' Cornutus was banished, but he saved Rome from the epic. Nero was also prolific in speeches and, proud of his voice, often appeared on the stage. He impersonated Orestes matricida, Canace parturiens, Oedipus blind, and Hercules mad.[43] It is not improbable that the words declaimed or sung in these scenes were composed by Nero himself.[44] For the encouragement of music and poetry he had established quinquennial games known as the Neronia. How far his motives for so doing were interested it is hard to say. But there is no doubt that he had a passionate ambition to win the prize at the contest instituted by himself. In A.D. 60, on the first occasion of the celebration of these games, the prize was won by Lucan with a poem in praise of Nero.[45] Vacca, in his life of Lucan, states that this lost him Nero's favour, the emperor being jealous of his success. The story is demonstrably false,[46] but that Nero subsequently became jealous of Lucan is undoubted. Till Lucan's fame was assured, Nero extended his favour to him: then partly through Lucan's extreme vanity and want of tact, partly through Nero's jealousy of Lucan's pre-eminence that favour was wholly withdrawn.[47] Nevertheless, though Nero may have shown jealousy of successful rivals, he seems to have had sufficient respect for literature to refrain from persecution. He did not go out of his way to punish personal attacks on himself. If names were delated to the senate on such a charge, he inclined to mercy. Even the introduction into an Atellan farce of jests on the deaths of Claudius and Agrippina was only punished with exile.[48] Only after the detection of Piso's conspiracy in 65 did his anger vent itself on writers: towards the end of his reign the distinguished authors, Virginius Flavus and the Stoic Musonius Rufus, were both driven into exile. As for the deaths of Seneca and Lucan, the two most distinguished writers of the day, though both perished at Nero's hands, it was their conduct, not their writings, that brought them to destruction. Both were implicated in the Pisonian conspiracy. If, then, Nero's direct influence on literature was for the bad, it was not because he was adverse: it suffered rather from his favour: the extravagant tastes of the princeps and the many eccentricities of his life and character may perhaps find a reflection in some of the more grotesque extravagances of Lucan, such for instance as the absurdly servile dedication of the _Pharsalia_. But even in this direction his influence was probably comparatively small. In view, then, of what is known of the attitude of the four emperors of the period most critical for Silver Latin literature, the period of its birth, it may be said that, on the worst estimate, their direct influence is not an important factor in the decline.[49] On the other hand, the indirect influence of the principate was beyond doubt evil. Society was corrupt enough and public life sufficiently uninspiring under Augustus. After the first glow of enthusiasm over the restoration of peace and order, and over the vindication of the Roman power on the frontiers of empire had passed away, men felt how thinly veiled was their slavery. Liberty was gradually restricted, autocracy cast off its mask: the sense of power that goes with freedom dwindled; little was left to waken man's enthusiasm, and the servility exacted by the emperors became more and more degrading. Unpleasing as are the flatteries addressed to Augustus by Vergil and Horace, they fade into insignificance compared with Lucan's apotheosis of Nero; or to take later and yet more revolting examples, the poems of the Silvae addressed by Statius to Domitian or his favourites. Further, these four emperors of the Julio-Claudian dynasty set a low standard of private life: they might command flattery, they could hardly exact respect. Two clever lunatics, a learned fool, and a morose cynic are not inspiring. Nevertheless, however unhealthy its influence may have been--and there has been much exaggeration on this point--it must be remembered that the principate found ready to its hand a society with all the seeds of decay implanted deep within it. Even a succession of sane and virtuous Caesars might well have failed, with the machinery and material at their disposal, to put new and vigorous life into the aristocracy and people of Rome. Even the encroachments of despotism on popular liberty must be attributed in no small degree to the incapacity of what should have been the ruling class at Rome. Despotism was in a sense forced upon the emperors: they were not reluctant, but, had they been so, they would still have had little choice. The primary causes of the decline of literature, as of the decay of life and morals, lie much deeper. The influence of princeps and principate, though not negligible, is _comparatively_ small. The really important causes are to be found first in the general decay of Roman character--far-advanced before the coming of Caesarism, secondly in the peculiar nature of Roman literature, and thirdly in the vicious system of Roman education. It was the first of these factors that produced the lubricity that defiles and the lack of moral earnestness that weakens such a large proportion of the literature of this age. It is not necessary to illustrate this point in any detail.[50] The record of Rome, alike in home and foreign politics, during the hundred and twenty years preceding the foundation of the principate forms one of the most fascinating, but in many respects one of the most profoundly melancholy pages in history. The poems of Catullus and the speeches of Cicero serve equally to illustrate the wholesale corruption alike of public and private morality. The Roman character had broken down before the gradual inroads of an alien luxury and the opening of wide fields of empire to plunder. It is an age of incredible scandal, of mob law, of _coups d'état_ and proscriptions, saved only from utter gloom by the illusory light shed from the figures of a few great men and by the never absent sense of freedom and expansion. There still remained a republican liberty of action, an inspiring possibility of reform, an outlet for personal ambition, which facilitated the rise of great leaders and writers. And Rome was now bringing to ripeness fruit sprung from the seed of Hellenism, a decadent and meretricious Hellenism, but even in its decay the greatest intellectual force of the world. Wonderful as was the fruit produced by the graft of Hellenism, it too contained the seeds of decay. For Rome owed too little to early Greek epic and to the golden literature of Athens, too much to the later age when rhetoric had become a knack, and the love of letters overdone Had swamped the sacred poets with themselves.[51] Roman literature came too late: that it reached such heights is a remarkable tribute to the greatness of Roman genius, even in its decline. With the exception of the satires of Lucilius and Horace there was practically no branch of literature that did not owe its inspiration and form to Greek models. Even the primitive national metre had died out. Roman literature--more especially poetry--was therefore bound to be unduly self-conscious and was always in danger of a lack of spontaneity. That Rome produced great prose writers is not surprising; they had copious and untouched material to deal with, and prose structure was naturally less rapidly and less radically affected by Greek influence. That she should have produced a Catullus, a Lucretius, a Vergil, a Horace, and--most wonderful of all--an Ovid was an amazing achievement, rendered not the less astonishing when it is remembered that the stern bent of the practical Roman mind did not in earlier days give high promise of poetry. The marvel is not wholly to be explained by the circumstances of the age. The new sense of power, the revival of the national spirit under the warming influence of peace and hope, that characterize the brilliant interval between the fall of the republic and the turbid stagnation of the empire, are not enough to account for it. Their influence would have been in vain had they not found remarkable genius ready for the kindling. The whole field of literature had been so thoroughly covered by the great writers of Hellas, that it was hard for the imitative Roman to be original. As far as epic poetry was concerned, Rome had poor material with which to deal: neither her mythology--the most prosaic and business-like of all mythologies--nor her history seemed to give any real scope for the epic writer. The Greek mythology was ready to hand, but it was hard for a Roman to treat it with high enthusiasm, and still harder to handle it with freshness and individuality. The purely historical epic is from its very nature doomed to failure. Treated with accuracy it becomes prosy, treated with fancy it becomes ridiculous. Vergil saw the one possible avenue to epic greatness. He went back into the legendary past where imagination could have free play, linked together the great heroic sagas of Greece with the scanty materials presented by the prehistoric legends of Rome, and kindled the whole work to life by his rich historical imagination and his sense of the grandeur of the Rome that was to be. His unerring choice of subject and his brilliant execution seemed to close to his successors all paths to epic fame. They had but well-worn and inferior themes wherefrom to choose, and the supremacy of Vergil's genius dominated their minds, becoming an obsession and a clog rather than an assistance to such poetic genius as they possessed. The same is true of Horace. As complete a master in lyric verse as Vergil in heroic, he left the after-comer no possibility of advance. As for Ovid, there could be only one Ovid: the cleverest and most heartless of poets, he at once challenged and defied imitation. Satire alone was left with real chance of success: while the human race exists, there will always be fresh material for satire, and the imperial age was destined to give it peculiar force and scope. Further, satire and its nearest kin, the epigram, were the only forms of literature that were not seriously impaired by the artificial system of education that had struck root in Rome. Otherwise the tendency to artificiality on the one hand and inadequacy of thought on the other, to which the conditions of its birth and growth exposed Roman literature, were aggravated to an almost incredible extent by the absurd system of education to which the unformed mind of the young Roman was subjected. It will be seen that what Greece gave with the right hand she took away with the left. There were three stages in Roman education, the elementary, the literary, the rhetorical. The first, in which the _litterator_ taught the three R's, does not concern us here. In the second stage the _grammaticus_ gave instruction in Greek and Latin literature, together with the elements of grammar and style. The profound influence of Greece is shown by Quintilian's recommendation[52] that a boy should start on Greek literature, and by the fact that boys began with Homer.[53] Greek authors, particularly studied, were Aesop, Hesiod, the tragedians, and Menander.[54] Among Roman authors Naevius, Ennius, Pacuvius, Accius, Afranius, Plautus, Caecilius, and Terence were much read, though there was a reaction against these early authors under the empire, and they were partly replaced by Vergil, Horace, and Ovid.[55] These authors were made vehicles for the teaching of grammar and of style. The latter point alone concerns us here. The Roman boy was taught to read aloud intelligently and artistically with the proper modulation of the voice. For this purpose he was carefully taught the laws of metre, with special reference to the peculiarities of particular poets. After the reading aloud (_lectio_) came the _enarratio_ or explanation of the text. The educational value of this was doubtless considerable, though it was impaired by the importance assigned to obscure mythological knowledge and unscientific archaeology.[56] The pupil would be further instructed by exercises in paraphrase and by the treatment in simple essay form of themes (_sententiae_). 'Great store was set both in speaking and writing on a command of an abundance of general truths or commonplaces, and even at school boys were trained to commit them to memory, to expand them, and illustrate them from history.'[57] Finally they were taught to write verse. Such at least is a legitimate inference from the extraordinary precocity shown by many Roman authors.[58] This literary training contained much that was of great value, but it also had grave disadvantages. There seems in the first place to have been too much 'spoon-feeding', and too little genuine brain exercise for the pupil.[59] Secondly, the fact that at this stage boys were nurtured almost entirely on poetry requires serious consideration. The quality of the food supplied to the mind, though pre-eminently palatable, must have tended to be somewhat thin. The elaborate instruction in mythological erudition was devoid of religious value; and indeed of any value, save the training of a purely mechanical memory. Attention was called too much to the form, too little to the substance. Style has its value, but it is after all only a secondary consideration in education. The effect upon literature of this poetical training was twofold. It caused an undue demand for poetical colour in prose, and produced a horrible precocity and _cacoethes scribendi_[60] in verse, together with an abnormal tendency to imitation of the great writers of previous generations.[61] But the rhetorical training which succeeded was responsible for far worse evils. The importance of rhetoric in ancient education is easily explained. The Greek or Roman gentleman was destined to play a part in the public life of the city state. For this purpose the art of speaking was of enormous value alike in politics and in the law courts. Hence the universal predominance of rhetoric in higher education both in Rome and Greece.[62] The main instrument of instruction was the writing of themes for declamation. These exercises were divided into _suasoriae_-- deliberative speeches in which some course of action was discussed-- and _controversiae_--where some proposition was maintained or denied. Pupils began with _suasoriae_ and went on to _controversiae_. Regarded as a mental gymnastic, these themes may have possessed some value. But they were hackneyed and absurdly remote from real life, as can be judged from the examples collected by the elder Seneca. Typical subjects of the _suasoria_ are--'Agamemnon deliberates whether to slay Iphigenia';[63] 'Cicero deliberates whether to burn his writings, Antony having promised to spare him on that condition';[64] 'Three hundred Spartans sent against Xerxes after the flight of troops sent from the rest of Greece deliberate whether to stand or fly.'[65] The _controversia_ requires further explanation. A general law is stated, e.g. _incesta saxo deiciatur_. A special case follows, e.g. _incesti damnata antequam deiceretur invocavit Vestam: deiecta vixit_. The special case had to be brought under the general rule; _repetitur ad poenam_.[66] Other examples are equally absurd:[67] one and all are ridiculously remote from real life. It was bad enough that boys' time should be wasted thus, but the evil was further emphasized by the practice of recitation. These exercises, duly corrected and elaborated, were often recited by their youthful authors to an audience of complaisant friends and relations. Of such training there could be but one possible result. 'Less and less attention was paid to the substance of the speech, more and more to the language; justness and appropriateness of thought came to be less esteemed than brilliance and novelty of expression.'[68] These formal defects of education were accompanied by a widespread neglect of the true educational spirit. The development on healthy lines of the _morale_, and intellect of the young became in too many instances a matter of indifference. Throughout the great work of Quintilian we have continued evidence of the lack of moral and intellectual enthusiasm that characterized the schools of his day. Even more passionate are the denunciations levelled against contemporary education by Messala in the _Dialogus_ of Tacitus.[69] Parents neglect their children from their earliest years: they place them in the charge of foreign slaves, often of the most degraded character; or if they do pay any personal attention to their upbringing, it is to teach them not honesty, purity, and respect for themselves and their elders, but pertness, luxurious habits, and neglect alike of themselves and of others. The schools moreover, apart from their faulty methods and ideals of instruction, encourage other faults. The boys' interests lie not in their work, but in the theatres, the gladiatorial games, the races in the circus--those ancient equivalents of twentieth-century athleticism. Their minds are utterly absorbed by these pursuits, and there is little room left for nobler studies. 'How few boys will talk of anything else at home? What topic of conversation is so frequent in the lecture-room; what other subject so frequently on the lips of the masters, who collect pupils not by the thoroughness of their teaching or by giving proof of their powers of instruction, but by interested visits and all the tricks of toadyism?'[70] Messala goes on[71] to denounce the unreality of the exercises in the schools, whose deleterious effect is aggravated by the low standard exacted. 'Boys and young men are the speakers, boys and young men the audience, and their efforts are received with undiscriminating praise.' The same faults that were generated in the schools were intensified in after-life. In the law courts the same smart epigrams, the same meretricious style were required. No true method had been taught, with the result that 'frivolity of style, shallow thoughts, and disorderly structure' prevailed; orators imitated the rhythms of the stage and actually made it their boast that their speeches would form fitting accompaniments to song and dance. It became a common saying that 'our orators speak voluptuously, while our actors dance eloquently'.[72] Poetical colour was demanded of the orator, rhetorical colour of the poet. The literary and rhetorical stages of education reacted on one another.[73] Further, just as the young poet had to his great detriment been encouraged to recite at school, so he had to recite if he was to win fame for his verse in the larger world. Even in a saner society poetry written primarily for recitation must have run to rhetoric; in a rhetorical age the result was disastrous. In an enormous proportion of cases the poet of the Silver Age wrote literally for an audience. Great as were the facilities for publication the poet primarily made his name, not by the gradual distribution of his works among a reading public, but by declaiming before public or private audiences. The practice of gathering a circle of acquaintances together to listen to the recitations of a poet is said first to have been instituted by Asinius Pollio, the patron of Vergil. There is evidence to show that all the poets of the Augustan age gave recitations.[74] But the practice gradually increased and became a nuisance to all save the few who had the courage to stand aloof from these mutual admiration societies. Indiscriminate praise was lavished on good and bad work alike. Even Pliny the younger, whose cultivation and literary taste place him high above the average literary level of his day, approves of the increase of this melancholy harvest of minor poetry declaimed by uninspired bards.[75] The effect was lamentable. All the faults of the _suasoria_ and _controversia_ made their appearance in poetry.[76] The poet had continually to be performing acrobatic feats, now of rhetoric or epigram, now of learning, or again in the description of blood-curdling horrors, monstrous deaths and prodigious sorceries. Each work was overloaded with _sententiae_ and purple patches.[77] So only could the author keep the attention of his audience. The results were disastrous for literature and not too satisfactory[78] for the authors themselves, as the following curious passage from Tacitus (_Dial._ 9) shows: Bassus is a genuine poet, and his verse possesses both beauty and charm: but the only result is that, when after a whole year, working every day and often well into the night, he has hammered out one book of poems, he must needs go about requesting people to be good enough to give him a hearing: and what is more he has to pay for it: for he borrows a house, constructs an auditorium, hires benches and distributes programmes. And then--admitting his recitations to be highly successful--yet all that honour and glory falls within one or two days, prematurely gathered like grass in the blade or flowers in their earliest bloom: it has no sure or solid reward, wins no friendship or following or lasting gratitude, naught save a transient applause, empty words of praise and a fleeting enthusiasm. The less fortunate poet had to betake himself to the forum or the public baths or some temple, there to inflict his tawdry wares upon the ears of a chance audience.[79] Others more fortunate would be lent a room by some rich patron.[80] Under Nero and Domitian we get the apotheosis of recitation. Nero, we have seen, established the Neronia in 60 and himself competed. Domitian established a quinquennial competition in honour of Jupiter Capitolinus in 86 and an annual competition held every Quinquatria Minervae at his palace on the Alban mount.[81] From that time forward it became the ambition of every poet to be crowned at these grotesque competitions. The result of all these co-operating influences will be evident as we deal with the individual poets. Here we can only give a brief summary of the general characteristics of this fantastic literature. We have a striving after originality that ends in eccentricity: writers were steeped in the great poets of the Augustan age: men of comparatively small creative imagination, but, thanks to their education, possessed of great technical skill, they ran into violent extremes to avoid the charge of imitating the great predecessors whom they could not help but imitate; hence the obscurity of Persius--the disciple of Horace--and of Statins and Valerius Flaccus--the followers of Vergil. Hence Lucan's bold attempt to strike out a new type of epic, an attempt that ended in a wild orgy of brilliant yet turbid rhetoric. The simple and natural was at a discount: brilliance of point, bombastic description, gorgeous colour were preferred to quiet power. Alexandrian learning, already too much in evidence in the Augustan age, becomes more prominent and more oppressive. For men of second-rate talent it served to give their work a spurious air of depth and originality to which it was not entitled. The necessity of patronage engendered a fulsome flattery, while the false tone of the schools of rhetoric,[82] aided perhaps by the influence of the Stoical training so fashionable at Rome, led to a marvellous conceit and self-complacency, of which a lack of humour was a necessary corollary. These symptoms are seen at their worst during the extravagant reign of Nero, though the blame attaches as much to Seneca as to his pupil and emperor. Traces of a reaction against this wild unreality are perhaps to be found in the literary criticism scattered tip and down the pages of Petronius,[83] but it was not till the extinction of Nero and Seneca that any strong revolt in the direction of sanity can be traced. Even then it is rather in the sphere of prose than of poetry that it is manifest. Quintilian headed a Ciceronian reaction and was followed by Pliny the younger and for a time by Tacitus. But we may perhaps trace a similar Vergilian reaction in the verse of Silius, Statius, and Valerius.[84] Their faults do not nauseate to the same extent of those of their predecessors. But the mischief was done, and in point of extravagance and meretricious taste the differense is only one of degree. Satire alone attains to real eminence: rhetoric and epigram are its most mordant weapons, and the schools of rhetoric, if they did nothing else, kept those weapons well sharpened: the gross evils of the age opened an ample field for the satirist. Hence it is that all or almost all that is best in the literature of the Silver Age is satirical or strongly tinged with satire. Tacitus, who had many of the noblest qualifications of a poet, almost deserves the title of Rome's greatest satirist; the works of Persius and Juvenal speak openly for themselves while many of the finest passages in Lucans are most near akin to satire. It is true that under the principate satire had to be employed with caution; under the first two dynasties it was compelled to be general in tone: it was not until after the fall of Domitian, under the enlightened rule of Nerva and Trajan, that it found a freer scope and was at least allowed to lash the vices of the present under the names of the past. It is in satire alone that we find any trace of genuine moral earnestness and enthusiasm; and the reason for this is primarily that the satirists wrote under the influence of the one force that definitely and steadily made for righteousness. It is the Stoic philosophy that kindles Persius and Lucan, while Tacitus and Juvenal, even if they make no profession of Stoicism, have yet been profoundly influenced by its teaching. Their morality takes its colour, if not its form, from the philosophy oh the 'Porch'. The only non-satirical poetry primarily inspired by Stoicism is the dramatic verse of Seneca. That its influence here is not wholly for the best is due only in part to the intrinsic qualities of its teaching. It is rather in its application that the fault lies; it dominates and crushes the drama instead of suffusing it and lending it wings; it insists on preaching instead of suggesting. It is too insistent and aggressive a creed to harmonize with poetry, unless that poetry be definitely didactic in type and aim. But it is admirably suited to be the inspiration of satire, and it is therefore that the satire makes a far stronger moral appeal than any other form of post-Augustan literature. Satire apart, the period is in the main an age of _belles lettres_, of 'the literary _gourmet_, the connoisseur, the _blasé_ and disillusioned man of society, passionately appreciative of detail, difficulties overcome, and petty felicities of expression.'[85] It is the fashion to despise its works, and the fashion cannot be described as unhealthy or unjust. Yet it produced a few men of genius, while even in the works of those who were far removed from genius, the very fact that there is much refinement of wit, much triumphing over technical difficulties, much elaborate felicity of expression, makes them always a curious and at times a remunerative study. But perhaps its greatest claim upon us lies in the unexpected service that it rendered to the cause of culture. In the darkness of the Middle Ages when Greek was a hidden mystery to the western world, Lucan and Statius, Juvenal and Persius, and even the humble and unknown author of the _Ilias Latina_, did their part in keeping the lamp alive and illumining the midnight in which lay hidden the 'budding morrow' of the Renaissance. CHAPTER II DRAMA I THE STAGE The drama proper had never flourished at Rome. The causes are not far to seek. Tragic drama was dead in Greece by the time Greek influence made itself felt, while the New Comedy which then held the stage was of too quietly realistic a type and of too refined a wit and humour to be attractive to the coarser and less intelligent audiences of Rome. Terence, the _dimidiatus Menander_, as Caesar called him, though he won himself a great name with the cultured classes by the purity and elegance of his Latin and the fine drawing of his characters, was a failure with popular audiences owing to his lack of broad farcical humour. Plautus with his coarse geniality and lumbering wit made a greater success. He had grafted the festive spirit of Roman farce on to the more artistic comedy of Athens. Tragedy obtained but a passing vogue. Ennius, Accius, and Pacuvius were read and enjoyed by not a few educated readers, but for the Augustan age, as far as the stage was concerned, they were practically dead and buried. The Roman populace had by that period lost all taste for the highest and most refined forms of art. The races in the circus, the variety entertainments and bloodshed of the amphitheatre had captured the favour of the polyglot, pampered multitude that must have formed such a large proportion of a Roman audience. Still, dramatic entertainments had by no means wholly disappeared by the time of the Empire. But what remained was of a degraded type. The New Comedy of Athens, as transferred to the Roman stage, had given ground before the advance of the mime and the _fabula Atellana_. The history of both these forms of comedy belongs to an earlier period. For the post-Augustan age our evidence as to their development is very scanty. Little is known save that they were exceedingly popular. Both were characterized by the broadest farce and great looseness of construction; both were brief one-act pieces and served as interludes or conclusions to other forms of spectacle. The Atellan was of Italian origin and contained four stock characters, Pappus the old man or pantaloon, Dossennus the wise man, corresponding to the _dottore_ of modern Italian popular comedy, Bucco the clown, and Maccus the fool. It dealt with every kind of theme, parodied the legends of the gods, laughed at the provincial's manners or at the inhabitants of Italian country towns, or depicted in broad comic style incidents in the life of farmer and artisan. Maccus appeared as a young girl, as a soldier, as an innkeeper; Pappus became engaged to be married; Bucco turned gladiator; and in the rough and tumble of these old friends the Roman mob found rich food for laughter.[86] The mime was of a very similar character, but freer in point of form. It renounced the use of masks and reached, it would seem, an even greater pitch of indecency than the Atellan. The subjects of a few mimes are known to us. Among the most popular were the _Phasma_ or _Ghost_[87] and the _Laureolus_[888] of Catullus, a writer of the reign of Caligula. In the latter play was represented the death by crucifixion of the famous brigand 'Laureolus'; so degraded was popular taste that on one occasion it is recorded that a criminal was made to take the part of Laureolus and was crucified in grim earnest upon the stage.[89] In another mime of the principate of Vespasian the chief attraction was a performing dog,[90] which, on being given a pretended opiate, went to sleep and later feigned a gradual revival in such a realistic manner as to rouse the wildest applause on the part of the audience. Both Atellan and mime abounded in topical allusions and spared not even the emperors. Allusion was made to the unnatural vices attributed to Tiberius,[91] to the deaths of Claudius and Agrippina,[92] to the avarice of Galba,[93] to the divorce of Domitian,[94] and on more than one occasion heavy punishment was meted out to authors and actors alike.[95] Legitimate comedy led a struggling existence. An inscription at Aeclanum[96] records the memory of a certain Pomponius Bassulus, who not only translated certain comedies of Menander but himself wrote original comedies; while in the letters of Pliny[97] we meet with Vergilius Romanus, a writer of comedies of 'the old style' and of _mimiambi_. He possessed, so Pliny writes, 'vigour, pungency, and wit. He gave honour to virtue and attacked vice.' It is to be feared that such a form of comedy can hardly have been intended for the public stage, and that Vergilius, like so many poets of his age, wrote for private performance or recitation. These two writers are the only authors of legitimate comedies known to us during the Silver Age. But both _fabulae palliatae_ and _togatae_, that is to say, comedies representing Greek and Roman life respectively, continued to be acted on the public stage. The _Incendium_[98] of Afranius, a _fabula togata_, was performed in the reign of Nero, and the evidence of Quintilian[99] and Juvenal[100] shows that _palliatae_ also continued to be performed. But true comedy had been relegated to a back place and the Silver Age did nothing to modify the dictum of Quintilian,[101] _in comoedia maxime claudicamus_. As with comedy so with tragedy. Popular taste rejected the Graeco-Roman tragedy as tedious, and it was replaced by a more sensuous and sensational form of entertainment. The intenser passions and emotions were not banished from the stage, but survived in the _salticae fabulae_ and a peculiar species of dramatic recitation. Infinitely debased as were these substitutes for true drama, the forms assumed by the decomposition of tragedy are yet curious and interesting. The first step was the separation of the _cantica_ from the _diverbia._ Lyric scenes or even important iambic monologues were taken from their setting and sung as solos upon the stage.[102] It was found difficult to combine effective singing with effective gesture and dancing, for music had become more florid and exacting than in the days of Euripides. A second actor appeared who supplied the gesture to illustrate the first actor's song.[103] From this peculiar and to us ridiculous form of entertainment it is a small step to the _fabula saltica,_ which was at once nearer the legitimate drama and further from it. It was nearer in that the scenes were not isolated, but formed part of a more or less carefully constructed whole. It was further inasmuch as the actor disappeared, only the dancer remaining upon the stage. The words of the play were relegated to a chorus, while the character, actions, and emotions of the person represented by the words of the chorus were set forth by the dress, gesticulation, and dancing of the _pantomimus_. How the various scenes were connected is uncertain; but it is almost a necessary inference that the connexion was provided by the chorus or, as in modern oratorio, by recitative. To us the mimetic posturing of the _pantomimus_ appears an almost ridiculous substitute for drama; but the dancing of the actors seems to have been extraordinarily artistic and at times to have had a profound effect upon the emotions of the audience,[104] while the brilliant success in our own time of plays in dumb show, such as the famous _Enfant Prodigue,_ should be a warning against treating the _pantomimus_ with contempt. This form of entertainment was first introduced at Rome in 22 B.C. by the actors Pylades and Bathyllus,[105] the former being famed for his tragic dancing, the latter for a broader and more comic style, whose dramatic counterpart would seem to have been the satyric drama.[106] The satyric element seems, however, never to have become really popular, the _fabula saltica_ as we know it dealing mainly with tragic or highly emotional themes. Indeed, to judge from Lucian's disquisition on the art of dancing, the subjects seem to have been drawn from almost every conceivable source both of history and mythology.[107] Many of these _salticae fabulae_ must have been mere adaptations of existing tragedies. Their literary value was, according to Plutarch, by no means high;[108] it was sacrificed to the music and the dancing, for the emotional effect of which Lucian can scarcely find sufficiently high terms of praise.[109] The themes appear to have been drawn from the more lurid passages in mythology and history. If the libretto was not coarse in itself, there is abundant evidence to show that the subjects chosen were often highly lascivious, while the movements of the dancers--not seldom men of the vilest character--were frequently to the last degree obscene.[110] Inadequate as this substitute for the drama must seem to us, we must remember that southern peoples were--and indeed are--far more sensitive to the language of signs, to expressive gesticulation and the sensuous movements of the body[111] than are the less quick-witted and emotional peoples of the North; and further, even if for the most part these _fabulae salticae_ had small literary value, distinguished poets did not disdain to write librettos for popular actors. Passages from the works of Vergil were adapted for such performances;[112] Lucan wrote no less than fourteen _fabulae salticae,_[113] while the _Agave_ of Statius,[114] written for the dancer Paris, is famous from the well-known passage in the seventh satire of Juvenal. Nothing survives of these librettos to enlighten us as to their literary characteristics, and the other details of the performance do not concern us here.[115] It is sufficient to say that the _pantomimus_ had an enormous vogue in the Silver Age, and won a rich harvest by his efforts, and that the factions of the theatre, composed of the partisans of this or that actor, were scarcely less notorious than the factions of the circus for the disturbances to which they gave rise.[116] Of the musical recitations of portions of existing tragedies or of tragic episodes written for the occasion we possess even less knowledge. The passages selected or composed for this purpose were in all probability usually lyric, but we hear also of the chanting of iambics, as, for instance, in the case of the _Oedipus in Exile,_ in which Nero made his last appearance on the stage.[117] Of the part played by the chorus and of the structure of the librettos we know nothing; they may have been purely episodic and isolated or may, as in the _salticae fabulae,_ have been loosely strung together into the form of an ill-constructed play. That they were sometimes written in Greek is known from the fact that the line quoted by Suetonius from the _Oedipus in Exile_ mentioned above is in that language. Of the writers of this debased and bastard offspring of drama we know nothing save that Nero, who was passionately fond of appearing in them, seems also to have written them. (Suet. Ner. 39.) The tragic stage had indeed sunk low, when it served almost entirely for exhibitions such as these. Nevertheless tragedy had not ceased to exist even if it had ceased to hold the stage.[118] Varius and Ovid had won fame in the Augustan age by their Thyestes and Medea, and the post-Augustan decadence was not without its tragedians. One only is mentioned by Quintilian in his survey of Roman poetry, Pomponius Secundus. Of him he says (x. 1. 98), 'Of the tragedians whom I myself have seen, Pomponius Secundus is by far the most eminent; a writer whom the oldest men of the day thought not quite tragic enough, but acknowledged that he excelled in learning and elegance of style.' Pomponius was a man of great distinction.[119] His friendship for Aelius Gallus, the son of Sejanus, had brought him into disgrace with Tiberius, but he recovered his position under Claudius. He attained to the consulship, and commanded with distinction in a war against the Chatti in A.D. 50. Of his writings we know but very little. Of his plays nothing is left save a brief fragment[120] from a play entitled _Aeneas_; whether it dealt with the deeds of Aeneas in his native land or in the land of his adoption is uncertain, though it is on the whole probable that the scene was Italian and that the drama was therefore a _fabula praetexta_. Whether his plays were performed on the public stage is not quite clear. Tacitus tells us of riots in the theatre in A.D. 44,[121] when 'poems' by Pomponius were being recited on the stage. But the words used by the historian (_is carmina scaenae dabat_) point rather to the recitation of a dramatic solo than to a complete tragedy of the orthodox type. Pomponius, dramatist and philologist,[122] remains a mere name for us. Another distinguished writer of plays was Curiatius Maternus, a well-known orator; it is in his house that Tacitus places the scene of the _Dialogus_, and he is the chief character of the conversation. He had written his first tragedy under Nero,[123] and at the time of the _Dialogus_ (A.D. 79-81) his _Cato_--a _fabula praetexta_--was the talk of Rome.[124] He had written another historical drama on the ancestor of Nero, L. Domitius Ahenobarbus, the persistent foe of Julius Caesar, who perished on the field of Pharsalia.[125] He had also written plays on the more hackneyed themes of Medea and Thyestes.[126] He had all the opportunities and all the requisite gifts for a successful public career, but his heart was with the Muses, and he resolved to quit public life and to devote himself wholly to poetry, for there, in his estimation, the truest fame was to be found.[127] Here our knowledge ends. Of the details of his life we are as ignorant as of his plays. A few other names of tragic poets are known to us. Paccius wrote an _Alcithoe_,[128] Faustus a _Thebais_ and a _Tereus_,[129] Rubrenus Lappa an _Atreus_,[130] while Scaevus Memor,[131] victor at the Agon Capitolinus and brother of Turnus the satirist, wrote a _Hercules_ and a _Hecuba_ or _Troades_.[132] Martial (xi. 9) styles him the 'glory of the Roman buskin', but he too is but the shadow of an empty name. The tragedies of the age are lost to us, all save the tragedies of the philosopher Seneca, plays of which, save for one casual reference[133] in Quintilian, contemporary literature gives no hint, but which, however little they may have deserved it, were destined to have no negligible influence on the subsequent history of the world's drama. II SENECA Lucius Annaeus Seneca, one of the most striking figures among the great writers of Rome, was born at Cordova[134] about the opening of the Christian era, to be the most remarkable member of a remarkable family. His father, who bore the same name, was the famous rhetorician to whom we have already referred. His elder brother, M. Annaeus Novatus,[135] was adopted by L. Iunius Gallio, whose name he assumed, had a distinguished public career, and is best known to us, in his capacity of governor of Achaea, as the 'Gallio' of the Acts. The youngest of the family, M. Annaeus Mela,[136] remained in the equestrian order and devoted himself to the acquisition of wealth, regarding this as the safest path to fame. He succeeded to some extent in his object, but his main claim upon our remembrance is as the father of the poet Lucan. Lucius Seneca came to Rome at an early age,[137] and, in spite of the bad health which afflicted him all his life long,[138] soon made his mark as an orator. Indeed, so striking was his success that--although he showed no particular eagerness for a political career--his sheer mastery of the Roman speech wakened the jealousy of Caligula,[139] who only spared his life on the ground that he suffered from chronic asthma and was not likely to live long, and contented himself, therefore, with mordant but not unjust criticism of the style of his intended victim.[140] But though oratory provided Seneca with the readiest means for the gratification of his not inconsiderable vanity, and for the exercise of his marvellous powers of wit and epigram, it was not the pursuit of rhetoric and its prizes that really held the first place in his heart. That place was claimed by philosophy. His first love was Pythagoreanism, which he studied under Sotion[14l] of Alexandria, whose influence was sufficient to induce his youthful pupil to become a convinced vegetarian. But his father, who hated fads and philosophers, persuaded Seneca without much difficulty to 'dine better', and the doctrines of Pythagoras were soon displaced by the more fashionable teaching of the Stoics. From the lips of Attalus[142] he learned all the principles of that ascetic school. 'I besieged his class-room,' he writes; 'I was the first to come, the last to go; I would waylay him when out walking and lead him to discuss serious problems.' Whether he denounced vice and luxury, or extolled poverty, Attalus found a convinced disciple in Seneca. His convictions did not possess sufficient weight to lead him to embrace a life of austere poverty, but he at least learned to sleep on a hard mattress, and to eschew hot baths, wine, unguents, oysters, and mushrooms. How far his life conformed to the highest principles of his creed, it is hard to say. If we are to believe his detractors, he was guilty of committing adultery with the Princess Julia Livilla, was surrounded with all the luxuries that the age could supply, and drained the life-blood of Italy and the provinces by extortionate usury.[143] During his long exile in Corsica he could write a consolatory treatise to his mother on the thesis that the true philosopher is never an exile;[144] wherever he is, there he is at home; but little more than a year later he writes another consolatory treatise to the imperial freedman Polybius, full of the most grovelling flattery of Polybius himself and of the Emperor Claudius,[145] the same Claudius whom he afterwards bespattered with the coarse, if occasionally humorous, vulgarity of the _Apocolocyntosis_.[146] He was tutor to the young Nero, but had not the strength to check his vices. He sought to control him by flattery and platitudes rather than by the high example of the philosophy which he professed.[147] The composition of the treatise _ad Neronem de Clementia_ was a poor reply to Nero's murder of Britannicus.[148] He could write eloquently of Stoic virtue, but when he himself was confronted with the hard facts of life over which Stoicism claimed to triumph, he proved no more than a 'lath painted to look like iron'. Such is the case against Seneca. That it can be rebutted entirely it is impossible to claim. But we must remember the age in which he lived. Its love of debauchery was only equalled by its prurient love of scandal. Seneca's banishment on the charge of an intrigue with Livilla is not seriously damaging. The accusation _may_ have been true: it is at least as likely to have been false, for it was instigated by Messalina. That he lived in wealth and luxury is undoubted: his only defence was that he was really indifferent to it; he could face any future; he had, therefore, a right to enjoy the present.[149] That he ground down the provincials by his usury is possible; the standard in such matters was low, and the real nature of his extortions may never have come home to him; he must have depended largely on his agents. With regard to his management of the young princeps the case is different. Seneca was given an almost impossible task. Neither his nature nor his surroundings made Nero a suitable subject for moral instruction. Seneca must have been hampered at every turn. He must either bend or break. At least he won the respect of his pupil, and the good governance of the empire during the first five years of Nero's reign was due largely to the fact that the power was really in the hands of Seneca and Burrus.[150] Many of the weaknesses of his character may be accounted for by physical debility, and we must further remember that a Stoic of the age of Nero found himself in a most difficult position. He could not put his principles into full practice in public life without incurring the certain displeasure of the emperor. The stricter Stoic, therefore, like Thrasea, retired to the seclusion of his estates 'condemning the wicked world of Rome by his absence from it'.[151] Seneca, weaker, but possessed of greater common sense, chose the _via media_. He was content to sacrifice something of his principles to the service of Rome--and of himself. It is not necessary to regard him as wholly disinterested in his conduct; it is unjust and absurd to regard him as a glorified Tartuffe.[152] Such a supposition is adequately refuted by his writings. It is easy for a writer at once so fluent and so brilliant to give the impression of insincerity; but the philosophical works of Seneca ring surprisingly true. We cannot doubt his faith, though his life may at times have belied it. He reveals a warmth of human feeling, a richness of imagination, a comprehension of human failings and sorrows, that make him rank high among the great preachers of the world. Even here, it is true, he has his failings; he repeats himself, has little constructive talent, and fails at times to conceal a passion for the obvious beneath the brilliance of his epigram. But alike in the spheres of politics and literature he is the greatest man of his age. In literature he stands alone: he is a prose Ovid, with the saving gift of moral fervour. His style is terse and epigrammatic, but never obscure; it lacks the roll of the continuous prose of the Augustan age, but its phrases have a beauty and a music of their own: at their best they are touched with a genuine vein of poetry, at their worst they have a hard brilliance against the attractions of which only the most fastidious eye is proof. He towered over all his contemporaries. In him were concentrated all the excellences of the rhetorical schools of the day. Seneca became the model for literary aspirants to copy. But he was a dangerous model. His lack of connexion and rhythm became exaggerated by his followers, and the slightest lack of dexterity in the imitator led to a flashy tawdriness such as Seneca himself had as a rule avoided. He was too facile and careless a composer to yield a canon for style. The reaction came soon. Involved, whether justly or not, in the Pisonian conspiracy of 65 A.D., he was forced to commit suicide. He died as the Stoics of the age were wont to die, cheerfully, courageously, and with self-conscious ostentation.[153] Within a few years of his death the great Ciceronian reaction headed by Quintilian began. The very vehemence with which the Senecan style was attacked, now by Quintilian[154] and later by Fronto,[155] shows what a commanding position he held. He was poet as well as philosopher. Quintilian tells us that he left scarcely any branch of literature untouched. 'We possess,' he says, 'his speeches, poems, letters, and dialogues.'[156] Two collections of poems attributed to Seneca have come down to us, a collection of epigrams and a collection of dramas. There is strangely little external evidence to support either attribution, but in neither case can there be any serious doubt as to the general correctness of the tradition. The _Anthologia Latina_, compiled at Carthage in the sixth century, opens with seventy-three epigrams, of which three are attributed by the MSS. to Seneca (_Poet. Lat. Min._ 1-3, Baehrens). The first is entitled _de qualitate temporis_ and descants on the ultimate destruction of the world by fire--a well-known Stoical doctrine. The second and third are fierce denunciations of Corsica, his place of exile. The rest are nameless. But there are several which can only be attributed to Seneca. The ninth is entitled _de se ad patriam_, and is addressed to Cordova by one plunged in deep misfortune--a clear reference to his banishment in Corsica. The fifty-first is a prayer that the author's two brothers may be happier than himself, and that 'the little Marcus may rival his uncles in eloquence'. The brothers are described one as older, the other as younger than the author. It is an obvious inference that the brothers referred to are Gallio and Mela, while it is possible that the little Marcus is no other than the gifted son of Mela, Marcus Annaeus Lucanus, the epic poet.[157] The fifteenth represents him as an exile in a barren land: he appeals to a faithful friend named Crispus, probably the distinguished orator Passienus Crispus, the younger, who was consul for the second time in 44 A.D.[158] There are also other epigrams which, though less explicit, suit the circumstances of Seneca's exile. The fifth is written in praise of the quiet life. The author has two brothers (l. 14), and at the opening of the poem cries, 'let others seek the praetorship!' In this connexion it is noteworthy that at the time of his banishment Seneca had held no higher office than the quaestorship. The seventeenth and eighteenth are on the same subject, and contain a solemn warning against _regum amicitiae_, appropriate enough in the mouth of the victim of a court intrigue. Epigrams 29-36 are devoted to the praises of Claudius for his conquest of Britain. Claudius had banished him and was a suitable subject for flattery. For the rest the poems are largely of the republican character so fashionable in Stoic circles during the first century of the empire. There are many epigrams on Cato [159] and the Pompeys. Others, again, are of a rhetorical nature, dealing with scholastic themes;[160] others of an erotic and even scandalous character. We can claim no certainty for the view that all these poems are by Seneca, but there is a general resemblance of style throughout, and probability points to the whole collection being by the same author. The fact that the same theme is treated more than once scarcely stands in the way. We cannot dictate the amusements of a weary exile. It would be rash even to deny the possibility of his being the author of the erotic poems.[161] Philosopher as he was, he had been banished on a charge of adultery: without in any way admitting the truth of that accusation, we may readily believe that he stooped to one of the fashionable amusements of the day, the composition of pointed and unsavoury verse; for the standard of morality in writing was far lower than the standard of morals in actual life.[162] The poems repay reading, but call for little comment. They lack originality. The thought is thin, the expression neat, though scarcely as pointed as we might expect from such an author, while the metre is graceful: the treatment of the elegiac is freer than that of Ovid, but pleasing and melodious. At times powerful lines flash out. qua frigida semper praefulget stellis Arctos inocciduis (xxxvi. 6) Where the cold constellation of the heaven gleams ever with unsetting stars. shines out from the midst of banal flattery of the emperor with astonishing splendour. The poem _de qualitate temporis_ (4) closes with four fine lines with the unmistakable Senecan ring about them-- quid tam parva loquor? moles pulcerrima caeli ardebit flammis tota repente suis. omnia mors poscit. lex est, non poena, perire: hic aliquo mundus tempore nullus erit. Why speak of things so small? The glorious vault of heaven one day shall blaze with sudden self-kindled flame. Death calls for all creation. 'Tis a law, not a penalty to perish. The universe itself shall one day be as though it had never been. Cato (9) deliberates on suicide with characteristic rhetoric, artificial in the extreme, but not devoid of dignity-- estne aliquid, quod Cato non potuit? dextera, me vitas? durum est iugulasse Catonem? sed, quia liber erit, iam puto, non dubitas. fas non est vivum cuiquam servire Catonem: quinctiam vivit nunc Cato, si moritur.[2] Is there then that which Cato had not the heart to do? Right-hand, dost thou shrink from me? Is it hard to slay Cato? Nay, methinks thou dost hesitate no more, for thou shalt set Cato free. 'Tis a crime that Cato should live to be any man's slave; nay, Cato truly lives if Cato die. Cleverest of all is the treatment of the rhetorical theme of the two brothers who meet in battle in the civil war (72). The one unwittingly slays the other, strips the slain, and discovers what he has done-- quod fuerat virtus, factum est scelus. haeret in hoste miles et e manibus mittere tela timet. inde ferox: 'quid, lenta manus, nunc denique cessas? iustius hoste tibi qui moriatur adest. fraternam res nulla potest defendere caedem; mors tua sola potest: morte luenda tua est, scilicet ad patrios referes spolia ampla penates? ad patrem victor non potes ire tuum. sed potes ad fratrem: nunc fortiter utere telo! impius hoc telo es, hoc potes esse pius. vivere si poteris, potuisti occidere fratrem! nescisti: sed scis: haec mora culpa tua est. viximus adversis, iaccamus partibus isdem (dixit et in dubio est utrius ense cadat). ense meo moriar, maculato morte nefanda? cui moreris, ferrum quo moriare dabit.' dixit et in fratrem fraterno concidit ense: victorem et victum condidit una manus.[163] What had been valour now is made a crime. The soldier halts by his foe and fears to launch his shafts. Then his courage rekindled. 'What! coward hand, dost thou delay _now_? There is one here whom thou shouldst slay sooner than the foe. Naught can assoil of the guilt of a brother's blood save only death; 'tis thy death must atone. Shalt thou bear home to thy father's halls rich spoil of war? Nay, victor thus, thou canst not go to meet thy sire. But victor thou canst go to meet thy brother; _now_ use thy weapon bravely. This weapon stained thee with crime, 'tis this weapon shall make thee clean. If thou hast heart to live, thou hadst the heart to slay thy brother; thou _hadst_ no such murderous thought, but _now_ thou hast; this thy tarrying brings thee guilt. We have lived foes, let us lie united in the peace of the grave.' He ceased and doubted on whose sword to fall.' Shall I die by mine own sword, thus foul with shameful murder. He for whom thou diest shall give thee the steel wherewith to die.' He ceased, and fell dead upon his brother, slain by his brother's sword. The same hand slew both victor and vanquished. This is not poetry of the first class, if indeed it is poetry at all. But it is trick-rhetoric of the most brilliant kind without degenerating into bombastic absurdity. There is, in fact, a restraint in these epigrams which provides a remarkable contrast with the turgid extravagance that defaces so much of the dramas. This is in part due to the difference of the moulds into which the rhetoric is run, but it is hard to resist the belief that the epigrams--written mainly during the exile in Corsica--are considerably later than the plays. They are in themselves insignificant; they show no advance in dexterity upon the dramas, but they do show a distinct increase of maturity. The plays are ten in number; they comprise a _Hercules Furens, Troades, Phoenissae_ (or _Thebais_), _Medea, Phaedra_ (or _Hippolytus_), _Oedipus, Agamemnon, Thyestes, Hercules Oetaeus_, and--sole example of the _fabula praetexta_--the _Octavia_. Despite the curious silence of Seneca himself and of his contemporaries, there can be little doubt as to the general correctness of the attribution which assigns to Seneca the only Latin tragedies that grudging time has spared us. The _Medea, Hercules Furens, Troades, Phaedra, Agamemnon_, and _Thyestes_ are all cited by late writers, while Quintilian[164] himself cites a line from the Medea as the work of Seneca. The name Seneca, without any further specification, points as clearly to Seneca, the philosopher, as the name Cicero to the great orator. The absence of any further or more explicit reference on the part of Quintilian to Seneca's achievements as a tragedian is easily explained on the supposition that the critic regarded them as but an insignificant portion of his work. Yet stronger confirmation is afforded by the internal evidence. The verse is marked by the same brilliant but fatiguing terseness, the same polish and point, the same sententiousness, the same succession of short stabbing sentences, that mark the prose works of Seneca.[165] More remarkable still is the close parallelism of thought. The plays are permeated through and through with Stoicism, and the expression given to certain Stoical doctrines is often almost identical with passages from the philosophical works.[166] Against these evidences the silence of Seneca himself counts for little. We may charitably suppose that he rated his plays at their just value. In any case a poet is under no compulsion to quote his own verses, or even to refer to them, in works of a totally different nature.[167] A more serious question is whether Seneca is the author of all the plays transmitted to us under his name. The authenticity of four of these dramas has been seriously questioned. That the _Octavia_ is by a later hand may be regarded as certain. Seneca could hardly have dared to write a play on so dangerous a theme--the brutal treatment by Nero of his young wife Octavia. Moreover, Seneca himself is one of the dramatis personae, and there are clear references to the death of Nero, while the style is simple and restrained, and wholly unlike that of the other plays. It is the work of a saner and less flamboyant age.[168] The _Agamemnon_ and the _Oedipus_ have been suspected on the ground that certain of the lyric portions are written in a curious patchwork metre of a character fortunately unique in Latin lyric verse. The _Agamemnon_ further has two choruses.[169] But in all other respects the language, technique, and metre closely resemble the other dramas. Neither objection need carry any weight. There is no reason why Seneca should not have introduced a double chorus or have indulged in unsuccessful metrical experiments.[170] Far more difficult is the problem presented by the _Hercules Oetaeus_. It presents many anomalies, of which the least are a double chorus and a change of scene from Oechalia to Trachis. Imitations and plagiarisms from the other plays abound, and the work has more than its fair share of vain repetitions and tasteless absurdities. On the other hand, metre and diction closely recall the dramas accepted as genuine. It is hard to give any certain answer to such a complicated problem, but it is noteworthy that all the worst defects in this play (which among its other peculiarities possesses abnormal length) occur after l. 705, while the earlier scenes depicting the jealousy of Deianira show the Senecan dramatic style almost at its best. Even in the later portion of the play there is much that may be by the hand of Seneca. It is impossible to brand the drama as wholly spurious. The opening lines (1-232) may not belong to the play, but may form an entirely separate scene dealing with the capture of Oechalia: there is no reason to suppose that they are not by Seneca, and the same statement applies to the great bulk of ll. 233-705. The remainder has in all probability suffered largely from interpolation, but its general resemblance to Seneca in style and diction is too strongly marked to permit us to reject it _en bloc_. The problem is too obscure to repay detailed discussion.[171] The most probable solution of the question would seem to be that the work was left in an unfinished condition with inconsistencies, self-plagiarisms, repetitions, and absurdities which revision would have removed; this unfinished drama was then worked over and corrected by a stupid, but careful student of Seneca. There is such a complete absence of evidence as to the period of Seneca's life during which these dramas were composed, that much ingenuity has been wasted in attempts to solve the problem. The view most widely held--why it should be held is a mystery--is that they were composed during Seneca's exile in Corsica (41-9 A.D.).[172] Others, again, hold that they were written for the delectation of the young Nero, who had early betrayed a taste for the stage. This view has nothing to support it save the accusation mentioned by Tacitus,[173] to the effect that the patronage and approval of Nero led Seneca to write verse more frequently than his wont. Direct evidence there is none, but the general crudity of the work, coupled with the pedantic hardness and rigidity of the Stoicism which pervades the plays, points strongly to an early date, considerably earlier than the exile in Corsica. There is no trace of the mature experience and feeling for humanity that characterize the later philosophical works. On the contrary, these plays are just what might be expected of a young man fresh from the schools of rhetoric and philosophy.[174] As to the order in which the plays were written there is practically nothing to guide us.[175] The _Hercules Oetaeus_ is probably the latest, for in it we find plagiarisms from the _Hercules Furens, Oedipus, Thyestes, Phoenissae, Phaedra_, and _Troades_. Even here, however, there is an element of uncertainty, for it is impossible to ascertain whether any given plagiarism is due to Seneca or to his interpolators. Leaving such barren and unprofitable ground, what can we say of the plays themselves? Even after making due allowance for the hopeless decline of dramatic taste and for the ruin wrought by the schools of rhetoric, it is hard to speak with patience of such productions, when we recall the brilliance and charm of the prose works of Seneca. We can forgive him being rhetorical when he speaks for himself; when he speaks through the lips of others he is less easily tolerable. Drama is a reading of human life: if it is to hold one's interest it must deal with the feelings, thought, and action of genuine human beings and represent their complex interaction: the characters must be real and must differ one from the other, so that by force of contrast and by the continued play of diverse aspects and developments of the human soul, the significance, the pathos, and the power of the fragment of human life selected for representation may be fully brought out and set before our eyes. If these characteristics be absent, the drama must of necessity be an artistic failure by reason of its lack of truth. But it requires also plot, with a logical growth leading to some great climax and developing a growing suspense in the spectator as to what shall be the end. It is true that plot without reality may give us a successful melodrama, that truth of character-drawing with a minimum of plot may move and interest us. But in neither case shall we have drama in its truest and noblest form. Seneca gives us neither the half nor the whole. The stage is ultimately the touchstone of dramatic excellence. But if it is to be such a touchstone, it must have an audience with a penetration of intelligence and a soundness of taste such as had long ceased to characterize Roman audiences. The Senecan drama has lost touch with the stage and lacks both unity and life. Such superficial unity as his plots possess is due to the fact that they are ultimately imitations of Greek[176] drama. A full discussion of the plots is neither necessary here nor possible. A few instances of Seneca's treatment of his material must suffice.[177] He has no sense of logical development; the lack of sequence and of proportion traceable in the letters is more painfully evident in the tragedies. The _Hercules Furens_ supplies an excellent example of the weakness of the Senecan plot. It is based on the [Greek: H_erakl_es mainomenos] of Euripides, and such unity as it possesses is in the main due to that fact. It is in his chief divergences from the Euripidean treatment of the story that his deficiencies become most apparent. Theseus appears early in the play merely that he may deliver a long rhodomontade on the appearance of the underworld, whence Hercules has rescued him; and, worst of all, the return of Hercules is rendered wholly ineffective. Amphitryon hears the approaching steps of Hercules as he bursts his way to the upper world and cries (523)-- est est sonitus Herculei gradus. The chorus then, as if they had heard nothing, deliver themselves of a chant that describes Hercules as still a prisoner in Hades. When Hercules at last is allowed to appear, he appears alone, and delivers a long ranting glorification of himself (592-617) before he is joined by his father, wife, and children. As Leo has remarked,[178] this episode has been tastelessly torn into two fragments merely to give Hercules an opportunity for turgid declamation. The _Medea_, again, is, on the whole, Euripidean in form, though it probably owes much to the influence of Ovid.[179] It is, moreover, the least tasteless and best constructed of his tragedies. It loses comparatively little by the omission of the Aegeus episode, but suffers terribly by the insertion of a bombastic description of Medea's incantations. The love of the Silver Age for rhetoric has converted Medea into a skilful rhetorician, its love for the black art has degraded her to a vulgar sorceress. Nothing, again, can be cruder or more awkward than the manner in which the news of the death of Creon and his daughter is announced. After an interval so brief as scarcely to suffice even for the conveyance of the poisoned gifts to the palace, in rushes a messenger crying (879)-- periere cuncta, concidit regni status. nata atque genitor cinere permixto iacent. _Cho_. qua fraude capti? _Nunt_. qua solent reges capi, donis. _Cho_. in illis esse quis potuit dolus? _Nunt_. et ipse miror vixque iam facto malo potuisse fieri credo; quis cladis modus? avidus per omnem regiae partem furit ut iussus ignis: iam domus tota occidit, urbi timetur. _Cho_. unda flammas opprimat. _Nunt_. et hoc in ista clade mirandum accidit, alit unda flammas, quoque prohibetur magis, magis ardet ignis: ipsa praesidia occupat. All is lost! the kingdom's fallen! Father and daughter lie in mingled dust! _Ch_. By what snare taken? _Mess_. By gifts, the snare of kings. _Ch_. What harm could lurk in them? _Mess_. Myself I marvel, and scarce though the deed is done can I believe it possible. How died they? Devouring flames rage through all the palace as at her command. Now the whole house is fallen and men fear for the city. _Ch_. Let water quench the flames. _Mess_. Nay, in this overthrow is this added wonder. Water feeds the flames and opposition makes the fire burn fiercer. It hath seared even that which should have stayed its power. That is all: if we had not read Euripides we should scarcely understand the connexion between the gifts and the mysterious fire. Seneca, with the lack of proportion displayed in nearly all his dramas, has spent so much time in describing the wholly irrelevant and absurd details of Medea's incantations that he finds no room to give what might be a really dramatic description of the all-important catastrophe in which Medea's vengeance finds issue. There is hardly a play which will not provide similar instances of the lack of genuine constructive power. In the _Oedipus_ we get the same long narrative of horror that has disfigured the _Hercules Furens_ and the _Medea_. Creon describes to us the dark rites of incantation used to evoke the shade of Laius.[180] In the _Phaedra_ we find what at first would seem to be a clever piece of stagecraft. Hippolytus, scandalized at Phaedra's avowal of her incestuous passion, seizes her by the hair and draws his sword as though to slay her. He changes his purpose, but the nurse has seen him and calls for aid, denouncing Hippolytus' violence and clearly intending to make use of it as damning evidence against him. But the chorus refuse to credit her, and the incident falls flat.[181] Everywhere there is the same casual workmanship. If we stop short of denying to Seneca the possession of any dramatic talent, it is at any rate hard to resist the conviction that he treated the plays as a _parergon_, spending little thought or care on their _ensemble_, though at times working up a scene or scenes with an elaboration and skill as unmistakable as it is often misdirected. The plays are, in fact, as Nisard has admirably put it, _drames de recette_. The recipe consists in the employment of three ingredients--description, declamation, and philosophic aphorism. There is room for all these ingredients in drama as in human life, but in Seneca there is little else: these three elements conspire together to swamp the drama, and they do this the more effectively because, for all their cleverness, Seneca's description and declamation are radically bad. It is but rarely that he shows himself capable of simple and natural language. If a tragic event enacted off the stage requires description, it must outdo all other descriptions of the same type. And seeing that one of the chief uses of narrative in tragedy is to present to the imagination of the audience events which are too horrible for their eyes, the result in Seneca's hands is often little less than revolting. For example, the self-blinding of Oedipus is set forth with every detail of horror, possible and impossible, till the imagination sickens. (961) gemuit et dirum fremens manus in ora torsit, at contra truces oculi steterunt et suam intenti manum ultro insequuntur, vulneri occurrunt suo. scrutatur avidus manibus uncis lumina, radice ab ima funditus vulsos simul evolvit orbes; haeret in vacuo manus et fixa penitus unguibus lacerat cavos alte recessus luminum et inanes sinus saevitque frustra plusque quam satis est furit. The last line is an epitome of Seneca's methods of description. Yet more revolting is the speech of the messenger describing the banquet, at which Atreus placed the flesh of Thyestes' murdered sons before their father (623-788). Nothing is spared us, much that is impossible is added.[182] At times, moreover, this love of horrors leads to the introduction of descriptions wholly alien to the play. In the _Hercules Furens_ the time during which Hercules is absent from the scene, engaged in the slaying of the tyrant Lycus, is filled by a description of Hades from the mouth of Theseus, who is fresh-come from the underworld. The speech is not peculiarly bad in itself; it is only very long[183] (658-829) and very irrelevant. The effect of the declamation is not less unhappy. Seneca's dramatis personae rarely speak like reasoning human beings: they rant at one another or at the audience with such overwrought subtleties of speech and rhetorical perversions that they give the impression of being no more than mechanical puppets handled by a crafty but inartistic showman. All speak the same strange language, a language born in the rhetorical schools of Greece and Rome. Gods and mortals alike suffer the same melancholy fate. Juno, when she declares her resolve to afflict Hercules with madness, addresses the furies who are to be her ministers as follows (_H.F._ 105): concutite pectus, acrior mentem excoquat quam qui caminis ignis Aetnaeis furit: ut possit animo captus Alcides agi magno furore percitus, nobis prius insaniendum est--Iuno, cur nondum furis? me me, sorores, mente deiectam mea versate primam, facere si quicquam apparo dignum noverca; vota mutentur mea: natos reversus videat incolumes precor manuque fortis redeat: inveni diem invisa quo nos Herculis virtus iuvet. me vicit et se vincat et cupiat mori ab inferis reversus.... pugnanti Herculi tandem favebo. Distract his heart with madness: let his soul More fiercely burn than that hot fire which glows On Aetna's forge. But first, that Hercules May be to madness driven, smitten through With mighty passion, I must be insane. Why rav'st thou not, O Juno? Me, oh, me, Ye sisters, first of sanity deprive, That something worthy of a stepdame's wrath I may prepare. Let all my hate be change To favour. Now I pray that he may come To earth again, and see his sons unharmed; May he return with all his old time strength. Now have I found a day when Hercules May help me with his strength that I deplore. Now let him equally o'ercome himself And me; and let him, late escaped from death, Desire to die... And so at last I'll help Alcides in his wars. MILLER. She is clearly a near relative of that Oedipus who, in the _Phoenissae_, begs Antigone to lead him to the rock where the Sphinx sat of old (120): dirige huc gressus pedum, hic siste patrem. dira ne sedes vacet. monstrum repone maius. hoc saxum insidens obscura nostrae verba fortunae loquar, quae nemo solvat. ... saeva Thebarum lues luctifica caecis verba committens modis quid simile posuit? quid tam inextricabile? avi gener patrisque rivalis sui frater suorum liberum et fratrum parens; uno avia partu liberos. peperit viro, sibi et nepotes. monstra quis tanta explicat? ego ipse, victae spolia qui Sphingis tuli, haerebo fati tardus interpres mei. Direct me thither, set thy father there. Let not that dreadful seat be empty long, But place me there a greater monster still. There will I sit and of my fate propose A riddle dark that no man shall resolve. * * * * * What riddle like to this could she propose, That curse of Thebes, who wove destructive words In puzzling measures? What so dark as this? _He was his grandsire's son-in-law, and yet His father's rival; brother of his sons, And father of his brothers: at one birth The grandame bore unto her husband sons, And grandsons to herself_. Who can unwind A tangle such as this? E'en I myself, Who bore the spoils of triumph o'er the Sphinx, Stand mute before the riddle of my fate. MILLER. There is no need to multiply instances; each play will supply many. Only in the _Troades_[184] and the _Phaedra_ does this declamatory rhetoric rise to something higher than mere declamation and near akin to true poetry. In these plays there are two speeches standing on a different plane to anything else in Seneca's iambics. In the _Troades_ Agamemnon is protesting against the proposed sacrifice of Polyxena to the spirit of the dead Achilles (255). quid caede dira nobiles clari ducis aspergis umbras? noscere hoc primum decet, quid facere victor debeat, victus pati. violenta nemo imperia continuit diu, moderata durant; ... magna momento obrui vincendo didici. Troia nos tumidos facit nimium ac feroces? stamus hoc Danai loco, unde illa cecidit. fateor, aliquando impotens regno ac superbus altius memet tuli; sed fregit illos spiritus haec quae dare potuisset aliis causa, Fortunae favor. tu me superbum, Priame, tu timidum facis. ego esse quicquam sceptra nisi vano putem fulgore tectum nomen et falso comam vinclo decentem? casus haec rapiet brevis, nec mille forsan ratibus aut annis decem. ... fatebor ... affligi Phrygas vincique volui; ruere et aequari solo utinam arcuissem. Why besmirch with murder foul the noble shade of that renowned chief? First must thou learn the bounds of a victor's power, of the vanquished's suffering. No man for long has held unbridled sway; only self-control may endure ... I myself have conquered and have learned thereby that man's mightiness may fall in the twinkling of an eye. Shall Troy o'erthrown exalt our pride and make us overbold? Here we the Danaans stand on the spot whence she has fallen. Of old, I own, I have borne myself too haughtily, self-willed and proud of my power. But Fortune's favour, which had made another proud, has broken my pride. Priam, thou makest me proud, thou makest me tremble. I count the sceptre naught save a glory bright with worthless tinsel that sets the vain splendour of a crown upon my brow. All this the chance of one short hour may take from me without the aid of a thousand ships and ten long years of siege ... I will own my fault ... I desired to crush and conquer Troy. Would I had forbidden to lay her low and raze her walls to the ground! The thought is not deep: the speech might serve for a model for a _suasoria_ in the schools of rhetoric. But there is a stateliness and dignity about it that is most rare in these plays. At last after dreary tracts of empty rant we meet Seneca, the spiritual guide of the epistles and the treatises. Far more striking, however, from the dramatic standpoint, are the great speeches in the _Phaedra_, where the heroine makes known her passion for Hippolytus (600 sqq.). They are frankly rhetorical, but direct, passionate, and to the point. They contain few striking lines or sentiments, but they are clear and comparatively free from affectation. Theseus has maddened Phaedra by his infidelities, and has long been absent from her, imprisoned in the underworld. An uncontrollable passion for her stepson has come upon her. She appeals to the unsuspecting Hippolytus for pity and protection (619): muliebre non est regna tutari urbium; tu qui iuventae flore primaevo viges cives paterno fortis imperio rege, sinu receptam supplicem ac servam tege. miserere viduae. _Hipp_. Summus hoc omen deus avertat. aderit sospes actutum parens. 'Tis no woman's task to rule cities. Do thou, strong in the flower of thy first youth, flinch not, but govern the state by the power thy father held. Take me and shield me in thy bosom, thy suppliant and thy slave! Pity thy father's widow. _Hipp_. Nay, high heaven avert the omen. Soon shall my father return unscathed. Phaedra then begins to show her true colours. 'Nay!' she replies, 'he will not come. Pluto holds him fast, the would-be ravisher of his bride, unless indeed Pluto, like others I wot of, is indifferent to love.' Hippolytus attempts to console her: he will do all in his power to make life easy for her: et te merebor esse ne viduam putes ac tibi parentis ipse supplebo locum. I shall prove me worthy of thee: so thou shalt not deem thyself a widow. I will fill up my absent father's room. These innocent words are as fuel to Phaedra's passion. She turns to him again appealing for pity, pity for an ill she dare not name-- quod in novercam cadere vix credas malum. He bids her speak out. She replies, 'Love consumes me with an all-devouring flame. 'He still fails to catch her meaning, supposing that the passion of which she speaks is for the absent Theseus. She can restrain herself no longer: 'Aye, 'tis for Theseus!' she cries (646): Hippolyte, sic est; Thesei vultus amo [185] illos priores quos tulit quondam puer, cum prima puras barba signaret genas monstrique caecam Cnosii vidit domum et longa curva fila collegit via. quis tum ille fulsit! presserant vittae comam et ora flavus tenera tinguebat pudor; inerant lacertis mollibus fortes tori; tuaeque Phoebes vultus aut Phoebi mei, tuusque potius--talis, en talis fuit cum placuit hosti, sic tulit celsum caput: in te magis refulget incomptus decor; est genitor in te totus et torvae tamen pars aliqua matris miscet ex aequo decus; in ore Graio Scythicus apparet rigor. si cum parente Creticum intrasses fretum, tibi fila potius nostra nevisset soror. te te, soror, quacumque siderei poli in parte fulges, invoco ad causam parem: domus sorores una corripuit duas, te genitor, at me natus. en supplex iacet adlapsa genibus regiae proles domus, respersa nulla labe et intacta, innocens tibi mutor uni. certa descendi ad preces: finem hic dolori faciet aut vitae dies, miserere amantis.[186] Even so, Hippolytus; I love the face that Theseus wore, in the days of old while yet he was a boy, when the first down marked his bright cheeks and he looked on the dark home of the Cretan monster and gathered the long magic thread along the winding way. Ah! how then he shone upon my eyes. A wreath was about his hair and his delicate cheeks glowed with the golden bloom of modesty. Strong sinews stood out upon his shapely arms and his countenance was the countenance of the goddess that thou servest or of mine own bright sun-god; nay, rather 'twas as thine own. Even so, even so looked he when he won the heart of her that was his foe, and lofty was his carriage like to thine. But in thee still brighter shines an artless glory, and on thee is all thy father's beauty. Yet mingled therewith in equal portion is something of thy wild mother's fairness. On thy Greek face is seen the fierceness of the Scythian. Hadst thou sailed o'er the sea with thy sire to Crete, for thee rather had my sister spun the magic thread. On thee, on thee, my sister, I call where'er thou shinest in the starry heaven, on thee I call to aid my cause. Lo! sisters twain hath one house brought to naught--thee did the father ruin, me the son. Lo! suppliant at thy knees I fall, the daughter of a king, stainless and pure and innocent. For thee alone I swerve from my course. I have steeled my soul and stooped to beg of thee. Today shall end either my sorrow or my life. Pity, have pity, on her that loves thee. Then the storm of Hippolytus' anger breaks. Here at least Seneca has used his great rhetorical gifts to good effect. The passion may be highly artificial when compared with the passion of the genuinely human Phaedra of Euripides, but it is nevertheless passion and not bombast: crudity there may be, but there is no real irrelevance. There is less to praise and more to wonder at in Seneca's dialogue. Instead of rational conversation or controversy, he gives us a brilliant but meretricious display of epigram, the mechanical nature of which is often emphasized by a curious symmetry of structure. For line after line one character takes up the words of another and turns them against him with dexterity as extraordinary as it is monotonous. The resulting artificiality is almost incredible. It appears in its most extravagant form in the _Thyestes_.[187] Scarcely less strained, though from the nature of the subject the extravagance is less repellent, is a passage in the _Troades_. Achilles' ghost has demanded the sacrifice of Polyxena. Agamemnon hesitates to give orders for the sacrifice. Pyrrhus, Achilles' son, enumerates the great deeds of his father, and asks, indignantly, if such glory is to win naught save neglect after death. Agamemnon has sacrificed his own daughter, why should he not sacrifice Priam's? Agamemnon--in the speech quoted above--refuses indignantly. 'Sacrifice oxen if you will: no human blood shall be shed!' Pyrrhus replies (306): hac dextra Achilli victimam reddam suam. quam si negas retinesque, maiorem dabo dignamque quam det Pyrrhus; et nimium diu a caede nostra regia cessat manus paremque poscit Priamus. _Agam_. haud equidem nego hoc esse Pyrrhi maximum in bello decus, saevo peremptus ense quod Priamus iacet, _supplex paternus. _Pyrrh_. _supplices_ nostri _patris_ hostesque eosdem novimus. Priamus tamen praesens rogavit; tu gravi pavidus metu, nec ad rogandum fortis Aiaci preces Ithacoque mandas clausus atque hostem tremens. By this right hand he shall receive his own. And if thou dost refuse and keep the maid, A greater victim will I slay, and one More worthy Pyrrhus' gift: for all too long From royal slaughter hath my hand been free, And Priam asks an equal sacrifice. _Agam_. Far be it from my wish to dim the praise That thou dost claim for this most glorious deed-- Old Priam slain by thy barbaric sword, Thy father's suppliant. _Pyrrh_. I know full well My father's suppliants--and well I know His enemies. Yet royal Priam came And made his plea before my father's face; But thou, o'ercome with fear, not brave enough Thyself to make request, within thy tent Did trembling hide, and thy desires consign To braver men, that they might plead for thee. MILLER. Agamemnon retorts, 'What of your father, when he shirked the toils of war and lay idly in his tent?'-- levi canoram verberans plectro chelyn. _Pyrrh_. tunc magnus Hector, arma contemnens tua, cantus Achillis timuit et tanto in metu _navalibus pax alta Thessalicis fuit_. _Agam_. nempe isdem in _istis Thessalis navalibus pax alta_ rursus Hectoris patri _fuit_. _Pyrrh_. est _regis_ alti _spiritum_ regi dare. _Agam_. cur dextra _regi spiritum_ eripuit tua? _Pyrrh_. mortem _misericors_ saepe pro vita dabit. _Agam_. et nunc _misericors_ virginem busto petis? _Pyrrh_. iamne immolari virgines credis nefas? _Agam_. praeferre patriam liberis regem decet. _Pyrrh_. _lex_ nulla capto parcit aut poenam impedit. _Agam_. quod non vetat _lex_, hoc vetat fieri pudor. _Pyrrh_. quodcumque _libuit_ facere victori _licet_. _Agam_. minimum decet _libere_ cui multum _licet_. Idly strumming on his tuneful lyre. _Pyrrh_. Then mighty Hector, scornful of thy arms, Yet felt such wholesome fear of that same lyre, That our _Thessalian ships_ were left in _peace_. _Agam_. An equal _peace_ did Hector's father find, When he betook him to Achilles' _ships_. _Pyrrh_. 'Tis regal thus to spare a _kingly life_. _Agam_. Why then didst thou a _kingly life_ despoil? _Pyrrh_. But _mercy_ oft doth offer death for life. _Agam_. Doth _mercy_ now demand a maiden's blood? _Pyrrh_. Canst thou proclaim such sacrifice a sin? _Agam_. A king must love his country more than child. _Pyrrh_. No _law_ the wretched captive's life doth spare. _Agam_. What _law_ forbids not, yet may shame forbid. _Pyrrh_. 'Tis victor's right to do whate'er he _will_. _Agam_. Then should he _will_ the least, who most can do. MILLER. The cleverness of this is undeniable: individual lines (e.g. the last) are striking. Taken collectively they are ineffective; we feel, moreover, that the cleverness is mere knack: the continued picking up of the adversary's words to be used as weapons against himself is wearisome. It would be nearly as great a strain to listen to such a dialogue as to take part in it: the atmosphere is that of the school of rhetoric, an atmosphere in which sensible and natural dialogue is impossible.[188] The characters naturally suffer from this continued display of declamatory rhetoric. They have but one voice and language; they differ from one another only in their clothes and the situations in which they are placed. It is true that some of them are patterns of virtue and others monsters of iniquity. But strip off the coating of paint, and within the limits of these two types--for there are but two--the puppets are precisely the same. There is none of the play of light and shade so essential to drama: all is agonizingly crude and lurid. This is not due to the rhetoric alone, there is another influence at work. The plays are permeated by a strong vein of Stoicism. Carried to its logical conclusion Stoicism lays itself open to taunts such as Cicero levels at his friend Cato in the _pro Murena_,[189] where he delivers a humorous _reductio ad absurdum_ of its tenets. Such a philosophy is fatal to the drama. It allows no room for human sentiment or human weakness; the most virtuous affections are chilled and robbed of their attractiveness: there are no gradations of temperament, intellect, or character: pathos disappears. The Stoic ideal was a being in whom the natural impulses and desires should be completely subjected to the laws of pure reason. It tends in its intensity to a narrowness, an abstract unreality which is unfavourable to the development of the more human virtues. What it gave with one hand the more rigid Stoic philosophy took away with the other. It preached the brotherhood of man and took away half the value of sympathy. And here in the plays there is nothing of the _mitis sapientia_, the concessions to mortal weakness, the humanity, which characterize the prose works of Seneca and have won the hearts of many generations of men. There the hardness of Stoicism is softened by ripe experience and a tendency to eclecticism, and the doctrinaire stands less sharply revealed. 'Sous l'austérité du philosophe, on trouve un homme.' The most noteworthy result of this hard Stoicism upon the plays is the almost complete absence of pathos springing from the tenderer human affections. Seneca's tragedy may sometimes succeed in horrifying us, as in the ghastly rhetoric of the _Thyestes_ or the _Medea_. He moves us rarely. But there are a few striking exceptions to the rule, notably the beautiful passage of the _Troades_, where Andromache bids her companions in misfortune cease from useless lamentation[190] (409): quid, maesta Phrygiae turba, laceratis comas miserumque tunsae pectus effuso genas fletu rigatis? levia perpessae sumus, si flenda patimur. Ilium vobis modo, mihi cecidit olim, cum ferus curru incito mea membra raperet et gravi gemeret sono Peliacis axis pondere Hectoreo tremens. tunc obruta atque eversa quodcumque accidit torpens malis rigeusque sine sensu fero. iam erepta Danais coniugem sequerer meum, nisi hic teneret: hic meos animos domat morique prohibet; cogit hic aliquid deos adhuc rogare--tempus aerumnae addidit. Why, ye sad Phrygian women, do ye rend your hair and beat your woeful breasts and bedew your cheeks with streaming tears? But light is our sorrow, if it lies not too deep for tears. For you Ilium but now has fallen, for me it fell long ago, when the cruel wheels of the swift ear of Peleus' son dragged in the dust the limbs of him I loved, and groaned loud as they quivered beneath the weight of Hector dead. Then was I overthrown, then cast to utter ruin, and since then I bear whatso falleth upon me, with a heart that is numb with grief, chilled and insensible, and long since had I snatched myself from the hands of the Greeks and followed my husband, did not my child keep me among the living: he checks my purpose and forbids me to die; he constrains me still to make supplication to heaven and prolongs my anguish. Even here the pathos is the calm and reasoned pathos of hopelessness, the pathos of a Stoic who preaches endurance of evils against which his philosophy is not proof. Here, too, we find the Stoic attitude towards death. Death is the end of all; there is naught to dread; death puts an end to hope and fear: to die is to be as though we had never been (394): post mortem nihil est, ipsaque mors nihil. velocis spatii meta novissima; spem ponant avidi, solliciti metum. tempus nos avidum devorat et chaos: mors individua est, noxia corpori nec parcens animae: Taenara et aspero regnum sub domino limen et obsidens custos non facili Cerberus ostio rumores vacui verbaque inania et par sollicito fabula somnio. quaeris quo iaceas post obitum loco? quo non nata iacent. Since naught remains, and death is naught But life's last goal, so swiftly sought: Let those who cling to life abate Their fond desires, and yield to fate; Soon shall grim time and yawning night In their vast depths engulf us quite; Impartial death demands the whole-- The body slays nor spares the soul. Dark Taenara and Pluto fell, And Cerberus, grim guard of hell-- All these but empty rumours seem, The pictures of a troubled dream. Where then will the departed spirit dwell? Let those who never came to being tell. MILLER. Death brings release from sorrow: the worst of torture is to be forced to live on in the midst of woe-- mors votum meum--cries Hecuba--(1171) infantibus violenta, virginibus venis, ubique properas, saeva: me solam times. O death, my sole desire, for boys and maids Thou com'st with hurried step and savage mien: But me alone of mortals dost thou fear. MILLER. So, too, Andromache, in the passage quoted above, almost apologizes for not having put an end to her existence. Polyxena meets death with exultation (_Tro_. 945, 1152-9): even the little Astyanax is infected with Stoic passion for suicide (1090): nec gradu segni puer ad alta pergit moenia. ut summa stetit pro turre, vultus huc et huc acres tulit intrepidus animo.... non flet e turba omnium qui fletur; ac, dum verba fatidici et preces concipit Vlixes vatis et saevos ciet ad sacra superos, sponte desiluit sua in media Priami regna. And with no lingering pace the boy climbed the lofty battlements, and all about him cast his keen gaze with dauntless soul.... But he alone of all the throng who wept for him wept not at all, and, while Ulysses 'uttered in priestly wise the words of fate and prayed' and called the cruel gods to the sacrifice, the boy of his own will cast himself down to death on the fields that Priam ruled. The enthusiasm for death is carried too far.[191] Even the agony of the _Troades_ fails really to stir us: it depresses us without wakening our sympathy. So, too, with other scenes: in the _Hercules Furens_ we have the virtuous Stoic--in the persons of Megara and Amphitryon--confronting the _instans tyrannus_ in the person of Lycus: it is the hackneyed theme of the schools of rhetoric,[192] but derives its inspiration from Stoicism (426): _Lyc_. cogere. _Meg_. cogi qui potest nescit mori. _Lyc_. effare potius, quod novis thalamis parem regale munus. _Meg_. aut tuam mortem aut meam. _Lyc_. moriere demens. _Meg_. coniugi occurram meo. _Lyc_. sceptrone nostro famulus est potior tibi? _Meg_. quot iste famulus tradidit reges neci. _Lyc_. cur ergo regi servit et patitur iugum? _Meg_. imperia dura tolle: quid virtus erit?[193] _Lyc_. obici feris monstrisque virtutem putas? _Meg_. virtutis est domare quae cuncti pavent. _Lyc_. tenebrae loquentem magna Tartareae premunt. _Meg_. non est ad astra mollis e terris via.[194] _Lyc_. Thou shalt be forced. _Meg_. He can be forced, who knows not how to die. _Lyc_. Tell me what gift I could bestow more rich Than royal wedlock? _Meg_. Or thy death or mine. _Lyc_. Then die, thou fool. _Meg_. 'Tis thus I'll meet my lord. _Lyc_. Is that slave more to thee than I, a king? _Meg_. How many kings has that slave given to death! _Lyc_. Why does he serve a king and bear the yoke? _Meg_. Remove hard tasks, and where would valour be? _Lyc_. To conquer monsters call'st thou valour then? _Meg_. 'Tis valour to subdue what all men fear. _Lyc_. The shades of Hades hold that boaster fast. _Meg_. No easy way leads from the earth to heaven. MILLER So, too, a little later (463) Amphitryon crushes Lycus with a true Stoic retort:-- _Lyc_. quemcumque miserum videris, hominem scias. _Amph_. quemcumque fortem videris, miserum neges.[195] _Lyc_. Whoe'er is wretched, him mayst thou know for mortal. _Amph_. Whoe'er is brave, thou mayst not call him wretched. Admirable as are the sentiments expressed by these virtuous and calamitous persons, they leave us cold: they are too self-sufficient to need our sympathy. Pain and death have no terrors for them; why should we pity them? But it would be unjust to lay the blame for this absence of pathetic power entirely on the influence of Stoicism. The scholastic rhetoric is not a good vehicle for pathos, and must bear a large portion of the blame, though even the rhetoric is due in no small degree to the Stoic type of dialectic. As Seneca himself says, speaking of others than himself, 'Philosophia quae fuit, facta philologia est.'[196] And it must further be remembered that of the few flights of real poetry in these plays some of the finest were inspired by Stoicism. The drama cannot nourish in the Stoic atmosphere, poetry can. Seneca was sometimes a poet. His best-known chorus, the famous _regem non faciunt opes_ of the _Thyestes_ (345), is directly inspired by Stoicism. The speeches of Agamemnon and Andromache, together with the chorus already quoted from the _Troades_, all bear the impress of the Stoic philosophy. The same is true of the scarcely inferior chorus on fate from the _Oedipus_ (980). But there are other passages of genuine poetry where the Stoic is silent. The chorus in the _Hercules Furens_ (838), giving the conventional view of death, will stand comparison with the chorus of the _Troades_, giving the philosophic view. The chorus on the dawn (_H.F._ 125) brings the fresh sounds and breezes of early morning into the atmosphere of the rhetorician's lecture-room. The celebrated venient annis saecula seris quibus Oceanus vincula rerum laxet et ingens pateat tellus Tethysque novos detegat orbes nec sit terris ultima Thule (_Med._ 375) Late in time shall come an age, when Ocean shall unbar the world, and the whole wide earth be revealed, and Tethys shall show forth a new world, nor Thule be earth's limit any more. has acquired a fictitious importance since the discovery of the new world, but shows a fine imagination, even if--as has been maintained--it is merely a courtly reference to the British expedition of Claudius. And the invocation to sleep in the _Hercules Furens_ proved worthy to provide an inspiration for Shakespeare[197] (1063): solvite tantis animum monstris solvite superi, caecam in melius flectite mentem. tuque, o domitor Somne malorum, requies animi, pars humanae melior vitae, volucre o matris genus Astracae, frater durae languide Mortis, veris miscens falsa, futuri certus et idem pessimus auctor, pax errorum, portus vitae, lucis requies noctisque comes, qui par regi famuloque venis, pavidum leti genus humanum cogis longam discere noctem: placidus fessum lenisque fove, preme devinctum torpore gravi. Save him, ye gods, from monstrous madness, save him, restore his darkened mind to sanity. And thou, O sleep, subduer of ill, the spirit's repose, thou better part of human life, swift-winged child of Astraca, drowsy brother of cruel death, mixing false with true, prescient of what shall be, yet oftener prescient of sorrow, peace mid our wanderings, haven of man's life, day's respite, night's companion, that comest impartially to king and slave, thou that makest trembling mankind to gain a foretaste of the long night of death; do thou bring gentle rest to his weariness, and sweet balm to his anguish, and overwhelm him with heavy stupor. But the poetry is confined mainly to the lyrics. In them, though the metre be monotonous and the thought rarely more than commonplace, the feeling rings true, the expression is brilliant, and the never absent rhetoric is sometimes transmuted to a more precious substance with a far-off resemblance to true lyrical passion. In the iambics, with the exception of the passages already quoted from the _Troades_ and the _Phaedra_, touches of genuine poetry are most rare.[198] In certain of the long descriptive passages (_H.F._ 658 sqq., _Oed._ 530 sqq.) we get a stagey picturesqueness, but no more. It is for different qualities that we read the iambics of Seneca, if we read them at all. Even in its worst moments the rhetoric is capable of extorting our unwilling admiration by its sheer cleverness and audacity. A good example is to be found in the passage of the _Thyestes_, where Atreus meditates whether he shall call upon his sons Menelaus and Agamemnon to aid him in his unnatural vengeance on Thyestes. He has doubts as to whether he is their father, for Thyestes had seduced their mother Aerope (327):-- prolis incertae fides ex hoc petatur scelere: si bella abnuunt et gerere nolunt odia, si patruum vocant, pater est. eatur. And by this test of crime, Let their uncertain birth be put to proof: If they refuse to wage this war of death And will not serve my hatred; if they plead He is their uncle--then he is their sire. So to my work! MILLER'S translation slightly altered. Equally ingenious is the closing scene between Atreus and Thyestes after the vengeance is accomplished and Thyestes has feasted on the flesh of his own sons (1100): _Thy_. quid liberi meruere? _Atr_. quod fuerant tui. _Thy_. natos parenti-- _Atr_. fateor et, quod me iuvat, certos. _Thy_. piorum praesides testor deos. _Atr_. quin coniugales? _Thy_. scelere quid pensas scelus? _Atr_. scio quid queraris: scelere praerepto doles, nec quod nefandas hauseris angit dapes; quod non pararis: fuerat hic animus tibi instruere similes inscio fratri cibos et adiuvante liberos matre aggredi similique leto sternere--hoc unum obstitit: _tuos_ putasti. _Thy_. What was my children's sin? _Atr_. This, that they were thy children. _Thy_. But to think That children to the father-- _Atr_. That indeed, I do confess it, gives me greatest joy, That thou art well assured they were thy sons. _Thy_. I call upon the gods of innocence-- _Atr_. Why not upon the gods of marriage call? _Thy_. Why dost thou seek to punish crime with crime? _Atr_. Well do I know the cause of thy complaint: Because I have forestalled thee in the deed. Thou grievest, not because thou hast consumed This horrid feast, but that thou wast not first To set it forth. This was thy fell intent, To arrange a feast like this unknown to me, And with their mother's aid attack my sons, And with a like destruction lay them low. But this one thing opposed--thou thought'st them thine. MILLER. These passages are as unreal as they are repulsive, but they are diabolically clever. Seneca's rhetoric is, however, as we have already seen, capable of rising to higher things, and even where he does not succeed, as in the passages quoted above from the _Phaedra_ and _Troades_,[199] in introducing a genuine poetic element, he often produces striking declamatory effects. The exit of the blind Oedipus, as he goes forth into life-long banishment, bringing peace to Thebes at the last, is highly artificial in form, but, given the rhetorical drama, is not easily surpassed as a conclusion-- mortifera mecum vitia terrarum extraho. violenta Fata et horridus Morbi tremor, Maciesque et atra Pestis et rabidus Dolor, mecum ite, mecum. ducibus his uti libet (1058). With me to exile lead I forth 'all pestilential humours of the land. Ye blasting fates', ye trembling agues, famine and deadly plague and maddened grief, go forth with me, with me! My heart rejoices to follow in your train. So likewise the last despairing cry of Jason, as Medea sails victoriously away in her magic car-- per alta vade spatia sublimi aethere, testare nullos esse qua veheris deos Sail on through the airy depths of highest heaven, and bear witness that, where thou soarest, no gods can be. forms a magnificent ending to a play which, for all its unreality, succeeds for more than half its length (l 578) in arresting our attention by its ingenious rhetoric and its comparative freedom from mere bombast. Excellent, too, is the speech (_Phoen_. 193) in which Antigone dissuades her father from suicide. 'What ills can time have in store for him compared to those he has endured?'-- qui fata proculcavit ac vitae bona proiecit atque abscidit et casus suos oneravit ipse, cui deo nullo est opus, quare ille mortem cupiat aut quare petat? utrumque timidi est: nemo contempsit mori qui concupivit. cuius haut ultra mala exire possunt, in loco tuto est situs, quis iam deorum, velle fac, quicquam potest malis tuis adicere? iam nec tu potes nisi hoc, ut esse te putes dignum nece-- non es nec ulla pectus hoc culpa attigit. et hoc magis te, genitor, insontem voca, quod innocens es dis quoque invitis.... ... ... quidquid potest auferre cuiquam mors, tibi hoc vita abstulit. Who tramples under foot his destiny, Who disregards and scorns the goods of life, And aggravates the evils of his lot, Who has no further need of Providence: Wherefore should such a man desire to die, Or seek for death? Each is the coward's act. No one holds death in scorn who seeks to die. The man whose evils can no further go Is safely lodged. Who of the gods, think'st thou, Grant that he wills it so, can add one jot Unto thy sum of trouble? Nor canst thou, Save that thou deem'st thyself unfit to live. But thou art not unfit, for in thy breast No taint of sin has come. And all the more, My father, art thou free from taint of sin, Because, though heaven willed it otherwise, Thou still art innocent.... Whatever death From any man can take, thy life hath taken. MILLER It is, however, in isolated lines and striking _sententiae_ that Seneca's gift for rhetorical epigram is seen at its best. Nothing could be better turned than quaeris Alcidae parem? nemo est nisi ipse: (_H.F_. 84).[A] curae leves loquuntur, ingentes stupent (_Phaedra_ 607).[B] fortem facit vicina libertas senem (_Phaedra_ 139).[C] qui genus iactat suum, aliena laudat (_H.F_. 340). fortuna fortes metuit, ignavos premit (_Med_. 159). fortuna opes auferre, non animum potest (_Med_. 176). maius est monstro nefas:[D] nam monstra fato, moribus scelera imputes (_Phaedra_ 143). [A] Cp. Theobald: None but himself can be his parallel. [B] Cp. Sir W. Raleigh: Passions are best compared with floods and streams, The shallow murmur but the deep are dumb. [C] For dawning freedom makes the aged brave. MILLER. [D] For thy impious love is worse Than her unnatural and impious love. The first you would impute to character, The last to fate. MILLER. If nothing had survived of Seneca's plays but a collection of _sententiae_, we might have regretted his loss almost as we regret the loss of Menander. Here his merits, such as they are, end: they fail to justify us in placing him high as a dramatist; and he has many faults over and above those incidental to his style and modes of thought. While freer than most of his contemporaries from the vain display of obscure erudition, he falls into the common vice of introducing 'catalogues'. They are dull in epic: in drama they are worse than dull. The _Hercules Furens_ is no place for a matter-of-fact catalogue of the hero's labours, set forth (210-248) in monotonous iambics from the mouth of Amphitryon. If they are to be described at all, they demand the decorative treatment of lyric verse,[200] nor is a catalogue of the herbs used by Medea to poison the robe destined for her rival any more excusable.[201] Again, like his contemporaries, he shows a lack of taste and humour which in its worst manifestations passes belief. Not a few of the passages already quoted serve to illustrate the point. But for fatuity it would be hard to surpass the words with which Amphitryon interrupts Theseus' account of the horrors of the underworld: estne aliqua tellus Cereris aut Bacchi ferax? (_H.F._ 697.) Scarcely less absurd is the chorus in the _Phaedra_, who, when hymning the power of love, give a long list of animals subject to such passion: the catalogue culminates with the statement that even whales and elephants fall in love (351): amat insani belua ponti Lucaeque boves. But all such instances pale before the conclusion of the _Phaedra_. Not content with giving a ghastly and exaggerated account of the death of Hippolytus, Seneca must needs bring the fragments of his mutilated body upon the scene. Theseus, at the suggestion of the chorus, attempts to put them together again. The climax comes when, finding an unidentifiable portion, he cries (1267): quae pars tui sit dubito, sed pars est tui! The actual language of the plays is pure and classical. There is no trace of provincialism, nothing to suggest that Seneca was a Spaniard. Its vices proceed from the false mould in which it has been cast. There is a lack of connecting particles, and we proceed by a series of short rhetorical jerks.[202] It is the style that Seneca himself condemns in his letters (114. 1). Its faults are further aggravated by the metre: taken line by line, the iambics of Seneca are impressive: taken collectively they are monotonous in the extreme. The ear suffers a continual series of stabs, which are not the less unpleasant because none of them go deep. The verse seems formed, one might almost say punched out, by a relentless machine. It is never modified by circumstances; it is the same in narrative and dialogue, the same in passion and in calm, if indeed Seneca can ever be said to be either passionate or calm. Its pauses come with monotonous regularity at the end of the line, diversified only by an occasional break at the caesura in the third foot. Nor does the rule[203] observed by Seneca, that only a spondee or anapaest is permitted in the fifth foot, tend to relieve the monotony, though it does much to give the individual lines such weight as they possess. A more complete contrast with the iambics of the early Latin Tragedies cannot be imagined. What has been gained in polish has been lost in dignity. Whence the Senecan iambic is derived, is a question which cannot be answered with certainty. It is wholly unlike the early Roman tragic iambic. Elision is rare, and there is little variety. Instead of the massive and rugged measure of Pacuvius or Accius, we have a finished and elegant monotony. In all likelihood it is the lineal descendant of the iambic of Ovid.[204] In view of Seneca's great admiration for Ovid--he quotes him continually in his prose works--of Ovid's mastery of rhetoric and epigram, and yet more of the distinct parallels traceable between the _Phaedra_ and _Medea_ of Seneca and the corresponding _Heroides_ of Ovid, it becomes a strong probability that the Senecan iambic was deeply influenced--if not actually created--by the iambic style of the earlier poet's lost drama, the famous _Medea_.[205] As to the models to which he is indebted for his treatment of choric metres we know nothing. In spite of the fact that he employs a large variety of metres, and that his choruses at times stray from rhetoric into poetry of a high order, there is in them a still more deadly monotony than in his iambics. The chorus are devoid of life; they are there partly as a concession to convention, but mainly to supply incidental music. Their inherent dullness is not relieved by the metre. Of strophic arrangement there is no clear trace; in a large proportion of cases the choruses are written in one fixed and rigid metre admitting of no variety: even where different metres alternate, the relaxation is but small, for the same monotony reigns unchecked within the limits of each section. The strange experiments in mixed metres in the _Agamemnon_ and _Oedipus_ show Seneca's technique at its worst: they are composed of fragments of Horatian metres, thinly disguised by inversions and resolutions of feet: they lack all governing principle and are an unqualified failure. Of the remaining metres the Anapaestic, Asclepiad, Sapphic, and Glyconic predominate. He is, perhaps, least unsuccessful in his treatment of the Anapaest: the lines do not lack melody, and the natural flexibility of the metre saves them from extreme monotony, though they would have been more successful had he employed the paroemiac line as a solemn and resonant close to the march of the dimeter. But one wearies soon of the eternal Asclepiads and Glyconics which he often allows to continue in unbroken and unvaried series for seventy or eighty lines together. He rarely allows any variation within the Glyconic and never makes use of it to break the monotony of the Asclepiad. Still worse are his Sapphics. Abandoning the usual arrangement in stanzas of three lesser Sapphics followed by an Adonic verse, his Sapphic choruses consist almost entirely of the lesser Sapphic varied by a very occasional Adonic. The continual succession of these lines without so much as an occasional change of caesura to diversify the rhythm is at times almost intolerable. At the close of such choruses we feel as though we had jogged at a rapid trot for long miles on a very hard and featureless road. Language and metre work hand in hand with rhetoric to make these strange plays dramatically ineffective. So strange are they and in many ways so unlike anything else in Classical literature, that the question as to the purpose with which they were written and the place they occupied in the literature of their day affords an interesting subject for speculation. Were they written for the stage? Decayed as was the taste for tragedy, tragedies may occasionally have been acted.[206] But there are considerations which suggest doubt as to whether the plays of Seneca were written with any such purpose. Even under Nero it is scarcely credible that the introduction of the mangled fragments of Hippolytus upon the stage would be possible or palatable.[207] Medea kills her children _coram populo_, and, not content with killing them, flings their bodies at Jason from her magic chariot high in air. Hercules kills his children in full view of the audience, not within the house as in the corresponding drama of Euripides. Such scenes suggest that the plays were written not for the stage but for recitation with musical interludes from a trained choir. Indications that this was the case are to be found in the _Hercules Furens_. While the hero is engaged in slaying his children, Amphitryon, in a succession of short speeches, gives the details of the murder. This would be ridiculous and unnecessary were the scene actually presented on the stage, whereas they become absolutely necessary on the assumption that the play was written for recitation.[208] This assumption has the further merit of being charitable; skilful recitation would cover many defects that would be almost intolerable on the stage. It is improbable, however, that the drama of Seneca occupied an important position in the literature of their day. The golden age of tragedy was past, and it is hard to believe that these plays are favourable specimens even of their own age. The authors of the Silver Age virtually ignore their existence, and, with the exception of two references in Tertullian and one in Apollinaris Sidonius, they are quoted only by scholars and grammarians. They have small intrinsic value: but they afford interesting evidence for the taste[209] of their own day, and their influence on modern drama has been enormous. In the Renaissance at the dawn of the drama's revival, Seneca was regarded as a dramatist of the first order. Scaliger ranked him above Euripides: it was to him men turned to find models for tragedy. Everywhere we see traces of the Senecan drama.[210] It is a tribute to the dexterity of his rhetoric that his influence should have been so enormous, but it is to be regretted in the interests of the drama. For to Seneca more than to any other man is due the excessive prominence of declamatory rhetoric, which has characterized the drama throughout Western Europe from the Renaissance down to the latter half of the nineteenth century, and has proved a blemish to the work of all save a few great writers who recognized the value of rhetoric, but never mistook the shadow for the substance. III THE 'OCTAVIA' A tragedy with this title is included by the MSS. among the plays of Seneca. Its chief interest lies in the fact that it is the one surviving example of a _fabula praetexta_, or tragedy, drawn from Roman life. It deals with a tragic incident of Nero's reign, the final extinction of the Claudian house. Octavia, daughter of Claudius and Messalina, is the heroine. Her life was one long tragedy. Her childhood was darkened by the disaster that befell her unworthy mother, her maturer years by her marriage to Nero. She was a mere pawn in the game of politics. The marriage was brought about by the designs of Agrippina, to render Nero secure of the principate. To effect this end her betrothed Silanus was killed, Claudius, her father, and Britannicus, her brother, dispatched by poison. Soon her own wedded life turned to tragedy. Nero fell madly in love with Poppaea, and resolved to put away Octavia. At Poppaea's instigation she was accused of a base intrigue. The plot failed; the false charge could not be pressed home; she was divorced on the ground of sterility, and imprisoned in a town of Campania. A rumour arose that she was to be reinstated; the mob of Rome declared itself in her favour and gave wild expression to its joy. Poppaea's statues were cast down, Octavia's replaced. Poppaea was furious. She laid siege to Nero and won him to her will. The old false charge of adultery was trumped up; a complaisant freed man was found to confess himself Octavia's lover. She was banished to Pandataria and slain (June 9, 62 A.D.). The play gives us a compressed version of the tragedy. It opens with a speech by Octavia's nurse, setting forth the sorrows of her young mistress. The speech over, she leaves the stage to be succeeded by Octavia, who, in a lament closely modelled on the lament of the Sophoclean Electra,[211] bewails the sorrows of her house, the deaths of Messalina, Claudius, and Britannicus. The nurse reappears, attempts to console her, and counsels submission to fate. Octavia changes her strain and prays for death. After a lament from the chorus, Nero and Seneca enter on the scene. Seneca urges moderation and sets forth his ideal of monarchy. Nero is quite his match in argument, rejects his advice, and, concluding with the words desiste tandem, iam gravis nimium mihi, instare: liceat facere quod Seneca improbat (588). Have done at last, For wearisome has thine insistence grown; One still may do what Seneca condemns ... MILLER. declares his intention of marrying Poppaea without delay. An interesting chorus follows, describing how Rome of old expelled the kings for their crimes. Nero has sinned even more than they. Has he not slain even his mother? There follows a long and interesting description of the murder,[212] which serves as an introduction to the entrance of the ghost of Agrippina in the guise of an avenging fury, prophesying the dethronement and death of her unnatural son. She is succeeded on the stage by Octavia, resigned to the surrender of her position and content to be no more than Nero's sister; once more the chorus bewail her fate. At last her rival Poppaea appears in conversation with her nurse. The nurse congratulates her, but Poppaea has been terrified by visions of the night and is ill at ease. Her rival is not yet removed and her own place is still insecure. At this point comes the one ray of hope that illumines this sombre drama. A messenger arrives with the news that the people have risen in Octavia's favour. But the reader is not left in suspense for a moment. Nero appears and orders the suppression of the _émeute_ and the execution of Octavia. The chorus mourn the fate of the beloved of the Roman people. Their power and splendour is but brief: Octavia perishes untimely, like Gracchus and Livius Drusus. She herself appears in the hands of soldiers, being dragged off to execution and death. Like Cassandra,[213] she compares her fate with that of the nightingale, to whom the gods gave a new life of peace full of sweet lamentation as a close to her troubled human existence. One more song of condolence from the chorus, one more song of sorrow from Octavia, and she is taken from our sight, and the play closes with a denunciation by the chorus of the hardness of heart and the insatiate cruelty of Rome. It is not hard to summarize the general effect of this curious drama. Its author has read the Greek tragedians carefully and to some purpose; he has studied the characters of Electra, Cassandra, and Antigone with diligence, if without insight. He clearly feels deep sympathy for Octavia, and to some extent succeeds in communicating this sympathy to the audience. His heroine speaks in character: she is never a male Stoic, flaunting in female garb, she is a genuine woman, a gentle, lovable creature broken down by misfortune. The other characters are uninteresting. Nero is an academic tyrant, Seneca an academic adviser, Poppaea is little more than a lay figure. The most that can be said for them is that they do not rant. The chorus are on the whole a fairly satisfactory imitation of a chorus of sympathetic Greek women.[214] There is nothing forced or unnatural about them; they are real human beings; their sympathy is genuine, and its expression appropriate. But they are dull; monotonous lamentation in monotonous anapaests is the height of their capacity. The play is a failure: the subject is not in itself dramatic; if it had been, it would have been spoiled by the treatment it receives. We are never in suspense; Octavia has never the remotest chance of escape; our pity for her is genuine enough, but her character lacks both grandeur and psychological interest: the pathos of her situation will not compensate us for the absence of a dramatic plot. The fall of the house of Claudius compares ill with the tragedy of the Pelopidae. And the treatment of the story, from the dramatic standpoint, is childish. The play is scarcely more than a series of melancholy monologues interspersed with not less melancholy dirges from the chorus. The most we can say of it is that it is simple and unaffected: if it lacks brilliance, it also lacks exaggeration. Thought and diction are commonplace and uninspired, but they are never absurd--an extraordinary merit in a poet of the Silver Age. It will have been sufficiently evident from this brief sketch that the _Octavia_ is in all respects very different indeed from the other plays that claim Seneca for their author. It is free from their faults and their merits alike. It never sinks to their depths, but it never rises to their heights. Apart, however, from these general considerations,[215] there is evidence amounting almost to certainty that the _Octavia_ is not by Seneca. The tragedy takes place in the lifetime of Seneca. Seneca himself figures in the play. The story is of such a nature that it could hardly have been written, much less published, in the reign of Nero. Yet more conclusive is the fact that the ghost of Agrippina prophesies the fate of Nero in such a way as to make it certain that the author outlived the emperor and was acquainted with the facts of his death.[216] Who then was the author? When did he write? Evidence is almost absolutely lacking. From its comparative sanity and simplicity and its intense hatred of Nero it may reasonably be conjectured that it is the work of the Flavian age; the age of the anti-Neronian reaction and of the return to saner models in life and literature. But there is no certainty; it may have been written under Nerva, Trajan, or Hadrian. It stands detached and aloof from the literature of its age. CHAPTER III PERSIUS It is possible to form a clearer picture of the personality of Aulus Persius Flaccus, the satirist, than of any other poet of the Silver Age. Not only are the essential facts of his brief career preserved for us in a concise, but extremely relevant biography taken from the commentary of the famous critic Valerius Probus, but there are few poets whose works so clearly reveal the character of their author. Persius was born at the lofty hill-town of Volaterrae, in Tuscany, on the 4th of December, 34 A.D.[217] He was scarcely six years old when he lost his father, a wealthy Roman knight, named Flaccus. His mother, Fulvia Sisennia, married again, but her second husband, a knight named Fusius, died after a few years of wedded life. Persius was educated at home up to the age of twelve, when he was taken to Rome to be taught literature by Remmius Palaemon and rhetoric by Verginius Flavus. Of the latter nothing is known save that he wrote a much-approved textbook on rhetoric and was exiled by Nero;[218] the former was a freedman whose remarkable talents were only equalled by his gross vices; he had a prodigious memory, was a skilful _improvvisatore_, and the most distinguished teacher of the day.[219] At the age of sixteen, shortly after his assumption of the _toga virilis_, the young Persius made the friendship which was to be the ruling influence of his life. He learned to know and love the great Stoic teacher, Cornutus, with an attachment that was broken only by death. It was from Cornutus that he imbibed the principles of Stoicism, and at his house that he met the Greek philosophers, Petronius Aristocrates of Magnesia and the Lacedaemonian physician, Claudius Agathurnus, whose influence upon his character was only less than that of Cornutus. Among his intimates he counted Calpurnius Statura, who died in early youth, and the famous lyric poet, Caesius Bassus,[220] who was destined long to survive his friend and to do him the last service of editing the satires, which his premature death left unpublished and unfinished. Lucan also was one of his fellow students in the house of Cornutus,[221] while at a later date he made the acquaintance of Seneca, the leading writer of the day, although he never felt the seductive attractions of his fluent style and subtle intellect. More important influences were his almost filial respect and affection for the distinguished orator,[222] M. Servilius Nonianus, and his close companionship with Thrasea Paetus, the leader of the Stoic opposition.[223] At one time Persius, if the scholiast may be believed,[224] contemplated a military career. The statement is scarcely probable in view of the contempt and dislike with which he invariably speaks of soldiers, nor is it easy to conceive a profession less suited to the temperament of the quiet and retiring poet. Whatever his original intentions may have been, he actually chose the secluded life of study, the _vita umbratilis_, as the Romans called it, remote from the dust and heat of the great world. That he was wise we cannot doubt. It was the only life possible in those days for a man of his character. 'Fuit morum lenissimorum, verecundiae virginalis, pietatis erga matrem et sororem et amitam exemplo sufficientis: fuit frugi, pudicus.' Even in a saner, purer, and less turbulent age, such a one would have been more fitted for the paths of study than for any branch of public life. He died of a disease of the stomach on the 24th of November, 62 A.D., in his villa on the Appian Way, some eight miles south of Rome,[225] leaving behind him a valuable library, a small amount of unpublished verse, and a considerable fortune, amounting to 2,000,000 sesterces. The whole of this fortune he bequeathed to his mother and sister, only begging them to give to his friend Cornutus a sum of 100,000 sesterces, twenty pounds weight of silver plate, and the whole of his library, containing no less than 700 volumes by the Stoic Chrysippus. Cornutus accepted the books, but refused the rest, showing that indifference to wealth that was to be looked for, though not always to be found, in professors of the Stoic philosophy. The literary work left by the dead poet was submitted by his mother to the judgement of Cornutus, himself a poet.[226] The bulk of the work was not great. Persius had in his boyhood written a _praetexta_ or tragedy with a Roman plot, a book of poems describing his journeys with Thrasea,[227] and a few verses on his kinswoman Arria, the wife of Caecina Paetus, immortalized by her devotion to her husband and her heroic death.[228] As the work of his maturer years he left his satires. Cornutus recommended that all save the satires should be destroyed; they alone, unfinished though they might be, were worthy of the memory of his dead friend. He began the task of correcting them for publication, but transferred it to Caesius Bassus, at the latter's earnest entreaty. Of the nature of the correction and editing required we are ignorant, save for the statement of Probus that a few lines were removed from the end of the book to give it an appearance of completion.[229] The poems met with instant success;[230] they excited both wonder and criticism; that they continued to be read is shown by the existence of copious scholia, which must, indeed, have been almost necessary for such continuance of their popularity.[231] The slender volume of Persius' works is composed of six satires in hexameter verse and a prologue written in choliambi. The first deals with the corruption of literature; the second, addressed to Macrinus on his birthday, treats of the right and wrong objects of prayer; the third is an appeal to an indolent young man for energy and earnestness; the fourth, almost a continuation of the third, attacks the lack of 'self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control', in public men; the fifth, addressed to his friend and teacher Cornutus, maintains the Stoic doctrine that all the world are slaves; only the righteous man attains to freedom; in the sixth, addressed to Caesius Bassus, the poet claims the right to spend his wealth in reasonable enjoyment, and denounces the grasping and unseemly selfishness of an imaginary heir to his fortune. In the prologue--or epilogue as it is sometimes regarded[232]--he sarcastically disclaims any pretensions to poetic inspiration, and hints ironically that, in view of the number of poets who write merely to win their bread, inspiration may be regarded as unnecessary. The ambition to win fame as a satirist was first fired in Persius by his reading the tenth book of the satires of Lucilius. If we may believe Probus, he imitated the opening of that book in his first satire, beginning like Lucilius by detracting from himself and proceeding to attack other authors indiscriminately.[233] Not enough of the tenth book of Lucilius has survived to enable us to check the accuracy of this statement, though it finds independent testimony in a remark of the scholiast on Horace, that the tenth book of Lucilius contained free criticisms of the early poets of Rome.[234] Further, the third satire is said by the scholiast to have been modelled on the fourth book of Lucilius, and there is a certain amount of evidence for supposing the choliambi of the epilogue to be an imitation of a Lucilian model.[235] We have, however, no means of testing the truth of these assertions: the debt of Persius to Lucilius must be taken on trust. Of his enormous indebtedness to Horace we have, on the other hand, the clearest evidence. It is hard to conceive two poets with less in common as regards ideals, temperament, and technique; and yet throughout Persius we are startled by strange, though unmistakable, echoes of Horace. He knows his Horace by heart, and Horace has become a veritable obsession. He is not content with giving his characters Horatian names.[236] That might be convention, not plagiarism. But phrase after phrase calls up the Horatian original. He runs through the whole gamut of plagiarism. There is plagiarism, simple and direct. O si sub rastro crepet argenti mihi seria, dextro Hercule! (2. 10) O that I could hear a crock of silver chinking under my harrow, by the blessing of Hercules. CONINGTON. is undisguisedly copied from Horace (_Sat._ ii. 6. 10). O si urnam argenti fors quae mihi monstret, ut illi, thesauro invento, qui mercennarius agrum ilium ipsum mercatus aravit, dives amico Hercule! But as a rule, since he cannot keep Horace out, he strives to disguise him. The familiar si vis me flere, dolendum est primum ipsi tibi of the _Ars Poetica_ (102) reappears in the far less natural verum nec nocte paratum plorabit, qui me volet incurvasse querela (_Pers_. i. 91). A man's tears must come from his heart at the moment, not from his brains overnight, if he would have me bowed down beneath his piteous tale. CONINGTON. He speaks of his verses so finely turned and polished-- ut per leve severos effundat iunctura unguis (i. 64). So that the critical nail runs glibly along even where the parts join. CONINGTON. In this fantastically contorted and affected phrase we may espy an ingenious blending of two Horatian phrases, totus teres atque rotundus, externi ne quid valeat per leve morari (_Sat._ ii. 7. 86), and the simple ad unguem factus f _Sat._ i. 5. 32.[237] There is no need to multiply instances. Horace appears everywhere, but _quantum mutatus ab illo!_ As the result of this particular method of borrowing, assisted by affectations and obscurities which are all his own, Persius attains to a kind of spurious originality of diction, which often degenerates into sheer eccentricity. In spite of the fact that the original text can almost everywhere be reconstructed with certainty, he is almost the most obscure of Latin poets to the modern reader. A few instances will suffice. There were, it appears, three ways of mocking a person behind his back: one might tap the fingers against the lower portion of the hand in imitation of a stork's beak, one might imitate a donkey's ears, or one might put out one's tongue. When Persius wishes to say 'Janus, I envy you your luck, for no one can mock at you behind your back!' he writes (i. 58): O Iane, a tergo quem nulla ciconia pinsit, nec manus auriculas imitari mobilis albas, nec linguae, quantum sitiat canis Apula, tantae. Happy Janus, whom no stork's bill batters from behind, no nimble hand quick to imitate the ass's white ears, no long tongues thrust out like the tongue of a thirsty Apulian bitch. The obscurity of the first line springs in part from the fact that the custom is not elsewhere spoken of. The second line may pass. The third defies literal translation. It means 'no long tongues thrust out like the tongue of a thirsty Apulian bitch'. But the omission of all mention both of 'protrusion' and of the 'dog days' makes the Latin almost without meaning. The epithet _Apula_ becomes absurd. A 'thirsty Apulian dog' is barely sufficient to suggest the midsummer drought of Apulia. This is an extreme case; it is perhaps fairer to quote lines such as si puteal multa cautus vibice flagellas (iv. 49), 'if in your zeal for the main chance you flog the exchange with many a stripe,' a mysterious passage generally supposed to mean 'if you exact exorbitant usury'. A little less enigmatic, but fully as forced and unnatural is dum veteres avias tibi de pulmone revello (v. 92), 'while I pull your old grandmotherly views from your heart,' or the extraordinarily harsh metaphor of the first satire (24)-- quo didicisse, nisi hoc fermentum et quae semel intus innata est rupto iecore exierit caprificus? What is the good of past study, unless this leaven--unless the wild fig-tree which has once struck its root into the breast, break through and come out? CONINGTON. which means nothing more than 'What is the good of study unless a man brings out what he has in him?' A far more serious source of obscurity, however, is his obscurity of thought. Even when the sense of individual lines has been discovered, it is often difficult to see the drift of the passage as a whole. Logical development is perhaps not to be expected in the 'hotch-potch' of the 'satura'. But one has a right to demand that the transitions should be easy and the drift of the argument clear. This Persius refuses us. The difficulties which he presents are--as in the case of Robert Browning--in part due to his adoption of the traditional dramatic form in satire, a form in which clearness of expression is as difficult as it is desirable. But we cannot excuse his obscurity as we sometimes can in Browning--either as being to some extent a realistic representation of the discursiveness and lack of method that characterize the reasonings of the average intelligent man, or on the other hand as springing from the intensity of the poet's thought. It is not the case with Persius that his thoughts press so thick and quick upon him, or are of so deep and complicated a character, as to be incapable of simple and lucid expression. It is sheer waywardness and perversity springing from the absence of true artistic feeling to which we must attribute this cardinal defect. For his thought is commonplace, and his observation of the minds and ways of men is limited. The qualities that go to the making of the true satirist are many. He must be dominated by a moral ideal, not necessarily of the highest kind, but sufficiently exalted to lend dignity to his work and sufficiently strongly realized to permeate it. He must have a wide and comprehensive knowledge of his fellow men. A knowledge of the broad outlines of the cardinal virtues and of the deadly sins is not sufficient. The satirist must know them in their countless manifestations in the life of man, as they move our awe or our contempt, our admiration or our terror, our love or our loathing, our laughter or our tears. He must be able to paint society in all its myriad hues. He must have a sense of humour, even if he lacks the sense of proportion; he must have the gift of laughter, even though his laughter ring harsh and painful. He must have the gift of mordant speech, of epigram, and of rhetoric. He must drive his points home with directness and lucidity. Mere denunciation of vice is not enough. Few prophets are satirists; few satirists are prophets. Of these qualities Persius has all too few. The man who has become the pupil of a Cornutus at the age of sixteen, who has shunned a public career, and is characterized by a _virginalis verecundia_, is not likely, even in a long life, to acquire the knowledge of the world required for genuine satire. The satirist, it might almost be said, must not only have walked abroad in the great world, but must have passed through the fire himself, and in some sense experienced the vices he has set himself to lash. But Persius is young and, as far as might be in that age, innocent. His outlook is from the seclusion of literary and philosophic circles, and his satire lacks the peculiar vigour that can only be got from jostling one's way in the wider world. In consequence the picture of life which he presents lacks vividness. A few brilliant sketches there are; but they are drawn from but a narrow range of experience. There is nothing better of its kind than the description in the first satire of the omnipresent poetaster of the reign of Nero, with his affected recitations of tawdry, sensuous, and soulless verse (15): Scilicet haec populo pexusque togaque recenti et natalicia tandem cum sardonyche albus sede leges celsa, liquido cum plasmate guttur mobile conlueris, patranti fractus ocello. tunc neque more probo videas nec voce serena ingentis trepidare Titos, cum carmina lumbum intrant et tremulo scalpuntur ubi intima versu. Yes--you hope to read this out some day, got up sprucely with a new toga, all in white, with your birthday ring on at last, perched up on a high seat, after gargling your supple throat by a liquid process of tuning, with a languishing roll of your wanton eye. At this you may see great brawny sons of Rome all in a quiver, losing all decency of gesture and command of voice, as the strains glide into their very bones, and the marrow within is tickled by the ripple of the measure. CONINGTON. A few lines later comes a similar and equally vivid picture (30): ecce inter pocula quaerunt Romulidae saturi, quid dia poemata narrent. hic aliquis, cui circum umeros hyacinthina laena est, rancidulum quiddam balba de nare locutus, Phyllidas Hypsipylas, vatum et plorabile siquid, cliquat ac tenero subplantat verba palato. Listen. The sons of Rome are sitting after a full meal, and inquiring in their cups, 'What news from the divine world of poesy?' Hereupon a personage with a hyacinth-coloured mantle over his shoulders brings out some mawkish trash or other, with a snuffle and a lisp, something about Phyllises or Hypsipyles, or any of the many heroines over whom poets have snivelled, filtering out his tones and tripping up the words against the roof of his delicate mouth. CONINGTON. Here the poet is describing what he has seen; in the world of letters he is at home. He can laugh pungently enough at the style of oratory prevailing in the courts-- nilne pudet capiti non posse pericula cano pellere, quin tepidum hoc optes audire 'decenter'. 'fur es', ait Pedio. Pedius quid? crimina rasis librat in antithetis, doctas posuisse figuras laudatur, 'bellum hoc?' (i. 83). Are you not ashamed not to be able to plead against perils threatening your grey hairs, but you must needs be ambitious of hearing mawkish compliments to your 'good taste'? The accuser tells Pedius point blank, 'You are a thief.' What does Pedius do? Oh, he balances the charges in polished antitheses-- he is deservedly praised for the artfulness of his tropes. Monstrous fine that! CONINGTON. He can parody the decadent poets with their effeminate rhythms and their absurdities of speech.[238] He can mock the archaizer who goes to Accius and Pacuvius for his inspiration.[239] He can give an admirable summary of the genius of Lucilius and Horace-- secuit Lucilius urbem, te Lupe, te Muci, et genuinum fregit in illis; omne vafer vitium ridenti Flaccus amico tangit et admissus circum praecordia ludit, callidus excusso populum suspendere naso (i. 114). Lucilius bit deep into the town of his day, its Lupuses and Muciuses, and broke his jaw-tooth on them. Horace, the rogue, manages to probe every fault while making his friend laugh; he gains his entrance and plays about the heartstrings with a sly talent for tossing up his nose and catching the public on it. CONINGTON. But the first satire stands alone _qua_ satire. It is not, perhaps, the most interesting to the modern reader. It mocks at empty literary fashions, which have comparatively small human interest. But it is in this satire that Persius comes nearest the true satirist. The obscurity and affectation of its language is its one serious fault; otherwise it shows sound literary ideals, close observation, and a pretty vein of humour. Elsewhere there is small trace of keen observation[240] of actual life; he calls up before his reader no vision of the varied life of Rome, whether in the streets or in the houses of the rich. Instead, he laboriously tricks out some vice in human garb, converses with it in language such as none save Persius ever dreamed of using, or scourges it with all the heavy weapons of the Stoic armoury. There is at times a certain violence and even coarseness[241] of description which does duty for realism, but the words ring hollow and false. The picture described or suggested is got at second-hand. He lacks the vivacity, realism, and common sense of Horace, the cultured man of the world, the biting wit, the astonishing descriptive power, and the masterly rhetoric of Juvenal. We care little for the greater part of Persius' disquisition[242] on the trite theme of the schools, 'what should be the object of man's prayers to heaven?' when we have read the tenth satire of Juvenal. There is the same commonplace theme in both, and there is perhaps less originality to be found in the general treatment applied to it by Juvenal. But Juvenal makes us forget the triteness of the theme by his extraordinary gift of style. Like Victor Hugo, he has the gift of imparting richness and splendour to the obvious by the sheer force and glory of his declamatory power. Similarly the fifth satire, where Persius descants on the theme that only the good man is free, while all the rest are slaves, compares ill as a whole with the dialogue between Horace and Davus on the same subject (_Sat._ ii. 7). There is such a harshness, an angularity and bitterness about it, that he wholly fails of the effect produced by the easy dignity of the earlier poet. It is abrupt, violent, and obscure; and for this reason the austere Stoic makes less impression than his more engaging and easy-going predecessor. Horace knew how to press home his points, even while he played about the hearts of men. Persius has neither the persuasiveness of Horace nor the force of Juvenal. But Persius, if he falls below his great rivals in point of art, is in one respect immeasurably their superior. He is a better and a nobler man. In his denunciations of vice his eyes are set on a more exalted ideal, an ideal from which he never wanders. There is a world of difference between the 'golden mean' of Horace, and the worship of virtue that redeems the obscurities of Persius. There is a still greater gulf between the high scorn manifested by Persius for all that is base and ignoble, and the fierce, almost petulant, indignation of Juvenal, that often seems to rend for the mere delight of rending, and is at times disfigured by such grossness of language that many an unsympathetic reader has wondered whether the indignation was genuine. Neither Horace nor Juvenal ever rose to the moral heights of the conclusion of the second satire (61): O curvae in terris animae et caelestium inanes, quid iuvat hoc, templis nostros immittere mores et bona dis ex hac scelerata ducere pulpa? haec sibi corrupto casiam dissolvit olivo et Calabrum coxit vitiato murice vellus, haec bacam conchae rasisse et stringere venas ferventis massae crudo de pulvere iussit. peccat et haec, peccat, vitio tamen utitur. at vos dicite, pontifices, in sancto quid facit aurum? nempe hoc quod Veneri donatae a virgine pupae. quin damus id superis, de magna quod dare lance non possit magni Messalae lippa propago? compositum ius fasque animo sanctosque recessus mentis et incoctum generoso pectus honesto: haec cedo ut admoveam templis et farre litabo. O ye souls that cleave to earth and have nothing heavenly in you! How can it answer to introduce the spirit of the age into the temple-service and infer what the gods like from this sinful pampered flesh of ours? The flesh it is that has got to spoil wholesome oil by mixing casia with it--to steep Calabrian wool in purple that was made for no such use; that has made us tear the pearl from the oyster, and separate the veins of the glowing ore from the primitive slag. It sins--yes, it sins; but it takes something by its sinning; but you, reverend pontiffs, tell us what good gold can do in a holy place. Just as much or as little as the dolls which a young girl offers to Venus. Give _we_ rather to the gods such an offering as great Messala's blear-eyed representative has no means of giving, even out of his great dish--duty to God and man well blended in the mind--purity in the shrine of the heart, and a manly flavour of nobleness pervading the bosom. Let me have these to carry to the temple, and a handful of meal shall win me acceptance. CONINGTON. This is real enthusiasm, though the theme be trite, and it is noteworthy that the enthusiasm has clarified the language, which goes straight to the point without obscurity or circumlocution. Here alone does the second satire of Persius surpass the more famous tenth satire of Juvenal. Yet even this fine outburst is surpassed by the deservedly well-known passage of the third satire, in which Persius appeals to a young man 'who has great possessions' to live earnestly and strenuously (23): udum et molle lutum es, nunc nunc properandus et acri fingendus sine fine rota. sed rure paterno est tibi far modicum, purum et sine labe salinum (quid metuas?) cultrixque foci secura patella est. hoc satis? an deceat pulmonem rumpere ventis, stemmate quod Tusco ramum millesime ducis, censoremve tuum vel quod trabeate salutas? ad populum phaleras, ego te intus et in cute novi. non pudet ad morem discincti vivere Nattae. sed stupet hic vitio et fibris increvit opimum pingue, caret culpa, nescit quid perdat, et alto demersus summa rursus non bullit in unda. magne pater divum, saevos punire tyrannos haut alia ratione velis, cum dira libido moverit ingenium ferventi tincta veneno: virtutem videant intabescantque relicta. anne magis Siculi gemuerunt aera iuvenci, et magis auratis pendens laquearibus ensis purpureas subter cervices terruit, 'imus, imus praecipites' quam si sibi dicat et intus palleat infelix quod proxima nesciat uxor? You are moist soft earth, you ought to be taken instantly, instantly, and fashioned without end by the rapid wheel. But you have a paternal estate with a fair crop of corn, a salt-cellar of unsullied brightness (no fear of ruin surely!), and a snug dish for fireside service. Are you to be satisfied with this? or would it be decent to puff yourself and vapour because your branch is connected with a Tuscan stem, and you are thousandth in the line, or because you wear purple on review days and salute your censor? Off with your trappings to the mob! I can look under them and see your skin. Are you not ashamed to live the loose life of Natta? But he is paralysed by vice; his heart is overgrown by thick collops of fat; he feels no reproach; he knows nothing of his loss; he is sunk in the depth and makes no more bubbles on the surface. Great Father of the Gods, be it thy pleasure to inflict no other punishment on the monsters of tyranny, after their nature has been stirred by fierce passion, that has the taint of fiery poison--let them look upon virtue and pine that they have lost her for ever! Were the groans from the brazen bull of Sicily more terrible, or did the sword that hung from the gilded cornice strike more dread into the princely neck beneath it, than the voice which whispers to the heart, 'We are going, going down a precipice,' and the ghastly inward paleness, which is a mystery, even to the wife of our heart? CONINGTON. The man who wrote this has 'loved righteousness and hated iniquity'. In the work of Persius' rivals it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that it is the hatred of iniquity that is most prominent; the love of righteousness holds but a secondary place. Persius is uncompromising; he is the true Stoic with the motto 'all or nothing'. But he has nothing of the stilted Stoicism that is such a painful feature of the plays of Seneca; nor, however perverse and affected he may be in diction, do we ever feel that his Stoicism is in some respects no better than a moral pose, a distressing feeling that sometimes afflicts as we read Seneca's letters or consolatory treatises. He speaks straight from the heart. His faults are more often the faults of the school of philosophy than of the schools of rhetoric. The young Lucan is said to have exclaimed, after hearing a recitation given by Persius:[243] 'That is real poetry, my verses are mere _jeux d'esprit_.' If we take Persius at his noblest, Lucan's criticism is just. In these passages not only is the thought singularly pure and noble, and the expression felicitous, but the actual metre represents almost the high-water mark of the post-Vergilian hexameter. Here, as in other writers of the age, the influence of Ovid is traceable in the increase of dactyls and the avoidance of elision. But the verse has a swing and dignity, together with a variety, that can hardly be found in any other poetry of the Silver Age. It is the existence of passages such as these, and the high unswerving moral enthusiasm characterizing all his work, that have made Persius live through the centuries. It is fashionable for the critic to say, 'We lay down Persius with a sigh of relief.' That is true, but we feel the better for reading him. He is one of the few writers of Rome whose personality awakens a feeling of warm affection. He was a rigid Stoic, yet not proud or cold. In an age of almost universal corruption he kept himself unspotted from the world. He had a rare capacity for whole-hearted friendship. If his teacher Cornutus had never made another convert, and his preaching had been vain, it would have been ample reward to have won such a tribute of affection and gratitude as the lines in which Persius pours forth his soul to him (v. 21): tibi nunc hortante Camena excutienda damus praecordia, quantaque nostrae pars tua sit, Cornute, animae, tibi, dulcis amice, ostendisse iuvat. pulsa dinoscere cautus quid solidum crepet et pictae tectoria linguae. hic ego centenas ausim deposcere fauces, ut quantum mihi te sinuoso in pectore fixi, voce traham pura, totumque hoc verba resignent, quod latet arcana non enarrabile fibra. cum primum pavido custos mihi purpura cessit bullaque subcinctis Laribus donata pependit, cum blandi comites totaque inpune Subura permisit sparsisse oculos iam candidus umbo, cumque iter ambiguum est et vitae nescius error deducit trepidas ramosa in compita mentes, me tibi supposui. teneros tu suscipis annos Socratico, Cornute, sinu. tune fallere sollers adposita intortos extendit regula mores, et premitur ratione animus vincique laborat artificemque tuo ducit sub pollice vultum. tecum etenim longos memini consumere soles, et tecum primas epulis decerpere noctes. unum opus et requiem pariter disponimus ambo, atque verecunda laxamus seria mensa. non equidem hoc dubites, amborum foedere certo consentire dies et ab uno sidere duci: nostra vel aequali suspendit tempora libra Parca tenax veri, seu nata fidelibus hora dividit in geminos concordia fata duorum, Saturnumque gravem nostro Iove frangimus una: nescio quod certe est quod me tibi temperat astrum. It is to you, at the instance of the muse within me, that I would offer my heart to be sifted thoroughly; my passion is to show you, Cornutus, how large a share of my inmost being is yours, my beloved friend; strike it, use every test to tell what rings sound, and what is the mere plaster of a varnished tongue. An occasion indeed it is for which I may well venture to ask a hundred voices, that I may bring out in clear utterance how thoroughly I have lodged you in the very corners of my breast, and unfold in words all the unutterable feelings which lie entwined deep down among my heart-strings. When first the guardianship of the purple ceased to awe me and the band of boyhood was hung up as an offering to the quaint old household gods, when my companions made themselves pleasant, and the folds of my gown, now white, the stripe of purple gone, left me free to cast my eyes at will over the whole Subura--just when the way of life begins to be uncertain, and the bewildered mind finds that its ignorant ramblings have brought it to a point where roads branch off--then it was that I made myself your adopted child. You at once received the young foundling into the bosom of a second Socrates; and soon your rule, with artful surprise, straightens the moral twists that it detects, and my spirit becomes moulded by reason and struggles to be subdued, and assumes plastic features under your hand. Aye, I mind well how I used to wear away long summer suns with you, and with you pluck the early bloom of the night for feasting. We twain have one work and one set time for rest, and the enjoyment of a moderate table unbends our gravity. No, I would not have you doubt that there is a fixed law that brings our lives into one accord, and one star that guides them. Whether it be in the equal balance that truthful Destiny hangs our days, or whether the birth-hour sacred to faithful friends shares our united fates between the Heavenly Twins, and we break the shock of Saturn together by the common shield of Jupiter, some star, I am assured, there is which fuses me with you. CONINGTON. There is a sincerity about these beautiful lines that is as rare as it is welcome in the poetry of this period. Much may be forgiven to the poet who could write thus, even though rarely. And it must be remembered that Persius is free from the worst of the besetting sins of his age, the love of rhetorical brilliance at the expense of sense, a failing that he criticizes with no little force in his opening satire. His harshness and obscurity are due in part to lack of sufficient literary skill, but still more to his attempt to assert his originality against the insistent obsession of the satires of Horace. As in the case of so many of his contemporaries, his literary fame must depend in the main on his 'purple patches'. But he does what few of his fellow poets do; he leaves a vivid impression of his personality, and reveals a genuine moral ardour and nobility of character that refuse to be clouded or hidden by his dark sayings and his perverse obscurity. CHAPTER IV LUCAN Marcus Annaeus Lucanus,[244] the poet who more than any other exhibits the typical excellences and defects of the Silver Age, was born at Cordova on November 3, in the year 39 A.D.[245] He came of a distinguished line. He was the son of M. Annaeus Mela, brother of Seneca the philosopher and dramatist, and son of Seneca the rhetorician. Mela was a wealthy man,[246] and in 40 A.D. removed with his family to Rome. His son (whose future as a great poet is said to have been portended by a swarm of bees that settled on the cradle and the lips of the bard that was to be[247]) received the best education that Rome could bestow. He showed extraordinary precocity in all the tricks of declamatory rhetoric, soon equalling his instructors in skill and far out-distancing his fellow pupils.[248] Among his preceptors was his kinsman, the famous Stoic, L. Annaeus Cornutus, well known as the friend and teacher of Persius.[249] His first appearance before the public was at the Neronia in 60 A.D., when he won the prize for Latin verse with a poem in praise of Nero.[250] Immediately afterwards he seems to have proceeded to Athens. But his talents had attracted the attention and patronage of Nero. He was recalled to Rome,[251] and at the nomination of the princeps became Quaestor, although he had not yet attained the requisite age of twenty-five.[252] He was also admitted to the College of Augurs, and for some time continued to enjoy Nero's friendship. But it was not to last. Lucan had been educated in Stoic surroundings. Though his own relatives managed to combine the service of the emperor with their Stoic principles, Lucan had not failed to imbibe the passionate regret for the lost liberty of the republic that was so prominent a feature in Stoic circles. It was not a mere pose that led him to select the civil war as the subject of his poem. His enthusiasm for liberty may have been literary rather than political in character. But when we are dealing with an artistic temperament we must bear in mind that the ideals which were primarily inspiration for art may on slight provocation become incentives to action. And in the case of Lucan that provocation was not lacking. As his fame increased, Nero's friendship was replaced by jealousy. The protégé had become too serious a rival to the patron.[253] Lucan's vanity was injured by Nero's sudden withdrawal from a recitation.[254] From servile flattery he turned to violent criticism: he spared his former patron neither in word nor deed. He turned the sharp edge of his satire against him in various pungent epigrams, and was forbidden to recite poetry or to plead in the law courts.[255] But it would be unjust to Lucan to attribute his changed attitude purely to wounded vanity. Seneca was at this very moment attempting to retire from public life. The court of Nero had become no place for him. Lucan cannot have been unaffected by the action of his uncle, and it is only just to him to admit the possibility that the change in his attitude may have been due, at any rate in part, to a change in character, an awakening to the needs of the State and the needs of his own soul. There is no need to question the genuineness of his political enthusiasm, even though it tended to be theatrical and may have been largely kindled by motives not wholly disinterested. The Pisonian conspiracy found in him a ready coadjutor. He became one of the ringleaders of the plot ('paene signifer coniurationis'), and in a bombastic vein would promise Nero's head to his fellow-conspirators.[256] On the detection of the plot, in 65 A. D., he, with the other chiefs of the conspiracy, was arrested. For long he denied his complicity; at last, perhaps on the threat or application of torture, his nerve failed him; he descended to grovelling entreaties, and to win himself a reprieve accused his innocent mother, Acilia, of complicity in the plot.[257] His conduct does not admit of excuse. But it is not for the plain, matter-of-fact man to pass judgement lightly on the weakness of a highly-strung, nervous, artistic temperament; the artist's imagination may transmute pain such as others might hope to bear, to anguish such as they cannot even imagine. There lies the palliation, if palliation it be, of Lucan's crime. But it availed him nothing: the reprieve was never won; he was condemned to die, the manner of his death being left to his free choice. He wrote a few instructions for his father as to the editing of his poems, partook of a sumptuous dinner, and then, adopting the fashionable form of suicide, cut the arteries of his arms and bled to death. He died declaiming a passage from his own poetry in which he had described the death of a soldier from loss of blood.[258] It was a theatrical end, and not out of keeping with his life. He lived but a little over twenty-five years and five months, but he left behind him a vast amount of poetry and an extraordinary reputation. His earliest work[259] seems to have been the _Iliacon_, describing the death of Hector, his ransom and burial. Next came the _Catachthonion_, a short work on the underworld. This was followed by the _laudes Neronis_, to which reference has already been made, and the _Orpheus_, which was extemporized in a competition with other poets.[260] If we follow the order given by Statius, his next work was the prose declamation on the burning of the city (64 A.D.) and a poem addressed to his wife Polla (_adlocutio ad Pollam_). Then comes his _chef d'oeuvre_, the _Pharsalia_, to which we shall return. Of the other works mentioned by Vacca, the _Silvae_ must have been, like the _Silvae_ of Statius, trifles thrown off hurriedly for the gratification of friends or for the celebration of some great occasion.[261] The _salticae fabulae_ were _libretti_ written for the _pantomimus_,[262] while the _Saturnalia_ were light verse sent as presents to friends on the festival of Saturn.[263] Of these works nothing has come down to us save a few scanty fragments, not in any way calculated to make us regret their loss.[264] Even Vacca can find no very high praise for them. Judging alike from the probabilities of the case and from the _Pharsalia_ itself, they must have suffered from Lucan's fatal gift of fluency. It was the _Pharsalia_ that won Lucan undying fame. Three books of this ambitious historical epic were finished and given to the world during the poet's lifetime.[265] These the poet had, at any rate in part, recited in public, calling attention, with a vanity worthy of himself and of the age, to his extreme youth; he was younger than Vergil when he composed the _Culex_![266] The remaining seven books never had the benefit of revision, owing to the poet's untimely end,[267] though curiously enough they show no special signs of lack of finish, and contain some of the finest passages in the whole work. The composition of all ten books falls between 60 and 65 A.D. Lucan had chosen for his theme the death-struggle of the republic. It was a daring choice for more reasons than one. There were elements of danger in singing the praises of Pompey and Cato under the principate. To that the fate of Cremutius Cordus bore eloquent testimony.[268] But Nero was less sensitive about the past than Tiberius. The republic had never become officially extinct. Tyrannicide was a licensed and hackneyed theme of the schools of rhetoric; in skilful hands it might be a subtle instrument of flattery. Moreover, Nero was descended in direct line from Domitius Ahenobarbus, who had fought and died for Pompey on the field of Pharsalus. In the books published during Lucan's lifetime there is not a line that could have given personal offence to the princeps, while the fulsome dedication would have covered a multitude of indiscretions.[269] Far more serious were the difficulties presented by the nature of the story itself. Historical epic rarely admits of artistic treatment, and the nearer the date of the events described, the more insoluble is the problem. Two courses were open to Lucan: he might treat the story with comparative fidelity to truth, avoiding all supernatural machinery, save such as was justified by historical tradition; on the other hand he might adopt the course subsequently pursued by Silius Italicus in his poem on the Punic War, and introduce all the hackneyed interventions of Olympus, sanctioned by Vergil and followed by many a poet since. The latter method is obviously only suited for a purely legendary epic, though even the legendary epic can well dispense with it, and it might have been supposed that an age so sceptical and careless of the orthodox theology, as that into which Lucan was born, would have felt the full absurdity of applying such a device to historical epic. Lucan was wise in his choice, and left Olympus severely alone. But his choice roused contemporary criticism. In the _Satyricon_ of Petronius we find a defence of the old conventional mechanism placed in the mouth of a shabby and disreputable poet named Eumolpus (118). He complains 'that young men plunge headlong into epic verse thinking that it requires no more skill than a showy declamation at the school of rhetoric. They do not realize that to be a successful poet one must be steeped in the great ocean of literature. They do not recognize that there is such a thing as a special poetic vocabulary,[270] or that the commonplaces of rhetoric require to be interwoven with, not merely tacked on to, the fabric of their verse, and so it comes about that the writer who would turn the Civil War into an epic is apt to stumble beneath the burden he takes upon his shoulders, unless indeed he is permeated through and through with literature. You must not simply turn history into verse: historians do it better in prose. Rather the poet should sweep on his way borne by the breath of inspiration and untrammelled by hard fact, making use of cunning artifice and divine intervention, and interfusing his "commonplaces" with legendary lore; only so will his work seem to be the fine frenzy of an inspired bard rather than the exactitude of one who is giving sworn evidence before a judge'. He then proceeds in 295 verses to deal, after the manner he has prescribed, with the events contained in the first three books of the _Pharsalia_, the only books that had been made public at the time when Petronius' romance was composed. Pluto inspires Caesar to the crime of civil war. Peace, Fidelity, and Concord fly from the earth at his approach. The gods range themselves on this side and on that. Discord perched high on Apennine incites the peoples of Italy to war. The verse is uninspired, the method is impossible, the remedy is worse than the disease. The last hope of our taking the poem seriously has departed. Yet this passage of Petronius contains much sound criticism. Military and political history does _not_ admit of being turned into genuine poetry; an epic on an historic war must depend largely on its purple patches of description and rhetoric: it almost demands that prominence of epigram and 'commonplace' that Eumolpus condemns.[27l] Petronius sees the weakness of Lucan's epic; he fails because, like Silius Italicus, he thinks he has discovered a remedy. The faults of Lucan's poem are largely inherent in the subject chosen; they will stand out clearly as we review the structure and style of the work. In taking the whole of the Civil War for his subject Lucan was confronted with a somewhat similar problem to that which faced Shakespeare in his _Julius Caesar_. The problem that Shakespeare had to meet was how to prolong and sustain the interest of the play after the death of Caesar and the events that centre immediately round it. The difficulty was surmounted triumphantly. The obstacles in Lucan's path were greater. The poem is incomplete, and there must be some uncertainty as to its intended scope. That it was planned to include the death of Cato is clear from the importance assigned him in the existing books. But could the work have concluded on such a note of gloom as the death of the staunchest champion of the republic? The whole tone of the poem is republican in the extreme. If the republic must perish, it should not perish unavenged. There are, moreover, many prophetic allusions to the death of Caesar,[272] which point conclusively to Lucan's intention to have made the vengeance of Brutus and Cassius the climax of his poem. The problem which the poet had to resolve was how to prevent the interest from nagging, as his heroes were swept away before the triumphant advance of Caesar. He concentrates our attention at the outset on Pompey. Throughout the first eight books it is for him that he claims our sympathy. And then he is crushed by his rival and driven in flight to die an unheroic death. It is only at this point that Cato leaps into prominence. But though he has a firmness of purpose and a grandeur of character that Lucan could not give Pompey, he never has the chance to become the protagonist. Both Pompey and Cato, for all the fine rhetoric bestowed on them, fail to grip the reader, while from the very facts of history it is impossible for either of them to lend unity to the plot. Both are dwarfed by the character of Caesar. Caesar is the villain of the piece; he is a monster athirst for blood, he will not permit the corpses of his enemies (over which he is made to gloat) to be buried after the great battle, and when on his coming to Egypt the head of his rival is brought him, his grief and indignation are represented as being a mere blind to conceal his real joy. The successes are often merely the result of good fortune. Lucan is loth to admit even his greatness as a general. And yet, blacken his character as he may, he feels that greatness. From the moment of his brilliant characterization of Caesar in the first book[273] we feel we have a man who knows what he desires and will shrink from nothing to attain his ends; he 'thinks naught yet done while aught remains to do',[274] he 'strikes fear into men's hearts because he knows not the meaning of fear',[275] and through all the melodramatic rhetoric with which he addresses his soldiers, there shines clear the spirit of a great leader of men. Whoever was intended by the poet for his hero, the fact remains that Caesar dominates the poem as none save the hero should do. He is the hero of the _Pharsalia_ as Satan is the hero of _Paradise Lost_.[276] It is through him above all that Lucan retains our interest. The result is fatal for the proper proportion of the plot. Lucan does not actually alienate our sympathies from the republic, but, whatever our moral judgement on the conflict may be, our interest centres on Caesar, and it is hardly an exaggeration to say that the true tragedy of the epic would have come with his death. The _Pharsalia_ fails of its object as a republican epic; its success comes largely from an unintended quarter. What the exact scale of the poem was meant to be it is hard to say. Vergil had set the precedent for an epic of twelve books, and it is not improbable that Lucan would have followed his example. On the other hand, if Cato and Caesar had both to be killed in the last two books, great compression would have been necessary. In view of the diffuseness of Lucan's rhetoric, and the rambling nature of his narrative, it is more than probable that the epic would have exceeded the limit of twelve books and been a formidable rival in bulk to the _Punica_ of Silius Italicus. On the other hand, the last seven books of the existing poem are unrevised, and may have been destined for abridgement. There is so much that is irrelevant that the task would have been easy. But it is not for the plot that Lucan's epic is read. It has won immortality by the brilliance of its rhetoric, its unsurpassed epigrams, its clear-cut summaries of character, its biting satire, and its outbursts of lofty political enthusiasm. These features stand out pre-eminent and atone for its astounding errors of taste, its strained hyperbole, its foolish digression. Lucan fails to make his actors live as they move through his pages; their actions and their speeches are alike theatrical; he has no dramatic power. But he can sum up their characters in burning lines that live through all time and have few parallels in literature. And these pictures are in all essentials surprisingly just and accurate. His affection for Pompey and the demands of his plot presented strong temptations to exalt his character at the expense of historical truth. Yet what can be more just than the famous lines of the first book, where his character is set against Caesar's? (129): vergentibus annis in senium longoque togae tranquillior usu dedidicit iam pace ducem: famaeque petitor multa dare in volgus; totus popularibus auris inpelli plausuque sui gaudere theatri; nec reparare novas vires, multumque priori credere fortunae, stat magni nominis umbra: qualis frugifero querens sublimis in agro exuvias veteres populi sacrataque gestans dona ducum: nec iam validis radicibus haerens pondere fixa suo est, nudosque per aera ramos effundens trunco non frondibus efficit umbram. One aged grown Had long exchanged the corselet for the gown: In peace forgotten the commander's art, And learned to play the politician's part,-- To court the suffrage of the crowd, and hear In his own theatre the venal cheer; Idly he rested on his ancient fame, And was the shadow of a mighty name. Like the huge oak which towers above the fields Decked with ancestral spoils and votive shields. Its roots, once mighty, loosened by decay, Hold it no more: weight is its only stay; Its naked limbs bespeak its glories past, And by its trunk, not leaves, a shade is cast. PROF. GOLDWIN SMITH. Even the panegyric pronounced on him by Cato on hearing the news of his death is as moderate as it is true and dignified (ix. 190): civis obit, inquit, multum maioribus inpar nosse modum iuris, sed in hoc tamen en utilis aevo, cui non ulla fuit iusti reverentia; salva libertate potens, et solus plebe parata privatus servire sibi, rectorque senatus, sed regnantis, erat. ... invasit ferrum, sed ponere, norat; praetulit arma togae, sed pacem armatus amavit: iuvit sumpta ducem iuvit dimissa potestas. A man, he said, is gone, unequal far To our good sires in reverence for the law, Yet useful in an age that knew not right, One who could power with liberty unite, Uncrowned 'mid willing subjects could remain, The Senate rule, yet let the Senate reign. * * * * * He drew the sword, but he could sheathe it too, War was his trade, yet he to peace inclined, Gladly command accepted-and resigned.--PROF. GOLDWIN SMITH. Elsewhere he is as one of the 'strengthless dead', here he lives. Elsewhere he may be invested with the pathos that must cling to the shadow of a mighty name, but he is too weak and ineffective to be interesting. His wavering policy in his last campaign is unduly emphasized.[277] When he is face to face with Caesar at Pharsalus and exhorts his men, he can but boast, he cannot inspire.[278] When the battle turns against him he bids his men cease from the fight, and himself flies, that he may not involve them in his own disaster.[279] No less convincing portrait could be drawn. The material was unpromising, but Lucan emphasizes all his weaknesses and wholly fails to bring out his nobler elements. He is unworthy of the line nec cinis exiguus tantam compescuit umbram. So, too, in a lesser degree with Caesar. For a moment in the first book he flashes upon us in his full splendour (143): sed non in Caesare tantum nomen erat nec fama ducis: sed nescia virtus stare loco, solusque pudor non vincere bello. acer et indomitus, quo spes quoque ira vocasset. ferre manum et numquam temerando parcere ferro, successus urgere suos, instare fauori numinis, inpellens quidquid sibi summa petenti obstaret, gaudensque viam fecisse ruina. Not such the talisman of Caesar's name, But Caesar had, in place of empty fame. The unresting soul, the resolution high That shuts out every thought but victory. Whate'er his goal, nor mercy nor dismay He owned, but drew the sword and cleft his way: Pressed each advantage that his fortune gave; Constrained the stars to combat for the brave; Swept from his path whate'er his rise delayed, And marched triumphant through the wreck he made. PROF. GOLDWIN SMITH. Here at any rate is Caesar the general: in such a poem there is no room for Caesar the statesman. But from this point onward we see no true Caesar. Henceforward, save for a few brief moments, he is a figure for the melodramatic stage alone, a 'brigand chief', a master hypocrite, the favourite of fortune. And yet, for all his unreality, Lucan has endowed him with such impetuous vigour and such a plenitude of power that he dwarfs the other puppets that throng his pages even more, if possible, than in real life he overtopped his contemporaries. Cato, the third great figure of the _Pharsalia_, was easier to draw. Unconsciously stagey in life, he is little stagier in Lucan. And yet, in spite of his absurdity, he has a nobility and a sincerity of purpose which is without parallel in that corrupt age. He was the hero of the Stoic republicans[280] of the early principate, the man of principle, stern and unbending. He requires no fine touches of light and shade, for he is the perfect Stoic. But from the very rigidity of his principles he was no statesman and never played more than a secondary part in politics. Lucan's task is to exalt him from the second rank to the first. But it is no easy undertaking, since it was not till after the disaster of Pharsalus that he played any conspicuous part in the Civil War. He first appears as warrant for the justice of the republican cause (i. 128). We next see him as the hope of all true patriots at Rome (ii. 238). Pompey has fled southward. Cato alone remains the representative of all that is noblest and best in Rome. He has no illusions as to Pompey's character. He is not the leader he would choose for so sacred a cause; but between Pompey and Caesar there can be no wavering. He follows Pompey. Not till the ninth book does he reappear in the action. Pompey is fallen, and all turn to Cato as their leader. The cause is lost, and Cato knows it well; but he obeys the call of duty and undertakes the hopeless enterprise undismayed. He is a stern leader, but he shares his men's hardships to the full, and fortifies them by his example. He is in every action what the real Cato only was at Utica. On him above all others Lucan has lavished all his powers; and he has succeeded in creating a character of such real moral grandeur that, in spite of its hardness and austerity, it almost succeeds in winning our affection (ii. 380): hi mores, haec duri inmota Catonis secta fuit, servare modum finesque tenere naturamque sequi patriaeque inpendere vitam nec sibi sed toti genitum se credere mundo. 'Twas his rule Inflexible to keep the middle path Marked out and bounded; to observe the laws Of natural right; and for his country's sake To risk his life, his all, as not for self Brought into being, but for all the world. SIR E. RIDLEY. Here is a man indeed worthy to be the hero of a republican epic, did history permit it. Our chief reason--at moments there is a temptation to say 'our only reason'--for regretting the incompletion of the _Pharsalia_ is that Lucan did not live to describe Cato's death. _There_ was a subject which was worthy of his pen and would have been a labour of love. With what splendour of rhetoric he might have invested it can only be conjectured from the magnificent passage where Cato refuses to inquire into his fate at Ammon's oracle (ix. 566): quid quaeri, Labiene, iubes? an liber in armis occubuisse velim potius quam regna videre? an sit vita nihil, sed longa? an differat aetas? an noceat vis ulla bono, fortunaque perdat opposita virtute minas, laudandaque velle sit satis, et numquam successu crescat honestum? scimus, et hoc nobis non altius inseret Hammon. haeremus cuncti superis, temploque tacente nil facimus non sponte dei; nec vocibus ultis numen eget, dixitque semel nascentibus auctor quidquid scire licet, steriles nec legit harenas, ut caneret paucis, mersitque hoc pulvere verum. estque dei sedes, nisi terra et pontus et aer et caelum et virtus? superos quid quaerimus ultra? Iuppiter est quodcumque vides quodcumque moveris. sortilegis egeant dubii semperque futuris casibus ancipites; me non oracula certum, sed mors certa facit. pavido fortique cadendum est; hoc satis est dixisse Iouem. What should I ask? Whether to live a slave Is better, or to fill a soldier's grave? What life is worth drawn to its utmost span, And whether length of days brings bliss to man? Whether tyrannic force can hurt the good, Or the brave heart need quail at Fortune's mood? Whether the pure intent makes righteousness, Or virtue needs the warrant of success? All this I know: not Ammon can impart Force to the truth engraven on my heart. All men alike, though voiceless be the shrine, Abide in God and act by will divine. No revelation Deity requires, But at our birth, all men may know, inspires. Nor is truth buried in this desert sand And doled to few, but speaks in every land. What temple but the earth, the sea, the sky, And heaven and virtuous hearts, hath deity? As far as eye can range or feet can rove Jove is in all things, all things are in Jove. Let wavering souls to oracles attend, The brave man's course is clear, since sure his end. The valiant and the coward both must fall This when Jove tells me, he has told me all. PROF. GOLDWIN SMITH. One Cato will not lend life to an epic, and history, to the great loss of art, forbids him to play a sufficiently important role. It is unnecessary to comment on the lesser personages of the epic; if the leading characters lack life, the minor characters lack individuality as well.[281] Lucan has nothing of the dramatic vitalising power that is so necessary for epic. He is equally defective in narrative power. He can give us brilliant pictures as in the lines describing the vision of Caesar at the Rubicon[282] or Pompey's last sight of Italy.[283] But such passages are few and far between. Of longer passages there are not perhaps more than three in the whole work where we get any sustained beauty of narrative-the parting of Pompey and his wife,[284] Pompey's dream before Pharsalus,[285] and a description of a Druid grove in Southern Gaul.[286] The first of these is noticeable as being one of the few occasions on which Lucan shows any command of simple pathos unmarred by tricks of tawdry rhetoric. The whole episode is admirably treated. The speeches of both husband and wife are commendably and unusually simple and direct, but the climax comes after Cornelia's speech, where the poet describes the moment before they part. With the simplest words and the most severe economy of diction, he produces an effect such as Vergil rarely surpassed, and such as was never excelled or equalled again in the poetry of Southern Europe till Dante told the story of Paolo and Francesca (v. 790): sic fata relictis exsiluit stratis amens tormentaque nulla vult differre mora. non maesti pectora Magni sustinet amplexu dulci, non colla tenere, extremusque perit tam longi fructus amoris, praecipitantque sues luctus, neuterque recedens sustinuit dixisse 'vale', vitamque per omnem nulla fuit tarn maesta dies; nam cetera damna durata iam mente malis firmaque tulerunt. So spake she, and leaped frenzied from the couch, loth to put off the pangs of parting by the least delay. She cannot bear to cast her arms about sad Magnus' bosom, or clasp his neck in a last sweet embrace; and thus the last delight, such long love as theirs might know, is cast away: they hasten their own agony; neither as they parted had the heart to say farewell; and while they lived they knew no sadder day than this. All other losses they bore with hearts hardened and steeled by misery. It is faulty and monotonous in rhythm, but one would gladly have more from Lucan of the same poetic quality, even at the expense of the same blemishes. The dream of Pompey is scarcely inferior (vii. 7): at nox, felicis Magno pars ultima vitae, sollicitos vana decepit imagine somnos. nam Pompeiani visus sibi sede theatri innumeram effigiem Romanae cernere plebis attollique suum laetis ad sidera nomen vocibus et plausu cuneos certare sonantes; qualis erat populi facies clamorque faventis, olim cum iuvenis primique aetate triumphi * * * * * sedit adhuc Romanus eques; seu fine bonorum anxia venturis ad tempera laeta refugit, sive per ambages solitas contraria visis vaticinata quies magni tulit omina planctus. seu vetito patrias ultra tibi cernere sedes sic Romam fortuna dedit. ne rumpite somnos, castrorum vigiles, nullas tuba verberet aures. crastina dira quies et imagine maesta diurna undique funestas acies feret, undique bellum. But night, the last glad hours that Magnus' life should know, beguiled his anxious slumbers with vain images of joy. He seemed to sit in the theatre himself had built, and to behold the semblance of the countless Roman multitude, and hear his name uplifted to the stars by joyous voices, and all the roaring benches vying in their applause. Even so he saw the people and heard their cheers in the days of old, when still a youth, in the hour of his first triumph ... he sat no more as yet than a knight of Rome; whether it was that at thy fortune's close thy sleep, tormented with the fears of what should be, fled back to happier days, or riddling as 'tis wont, foretold the contrary of thy dreams and brought thee omens of mighty woe; or whether, since ne'er again thou mightest see thy father's home, thus even in dreams fortune gave it to thy sight. Break not his slumbers, guardians of the camp; let not the trumpet strike his ears at all. Dread shall to-morrow's slumbers be, and, haunted by the sad image of the disastrous day, shall bring before his eyes naught save war and armies doomed to die. The scene is well and naturally conceived; there is no rant or false pathos; it is an oasis in a book which, though in many ways the finest in the _Pharsalia_, yet owes its impressiveness to a rhetoric which, for all its brilliance and power, will not always bear more than superficial examination. The last passage, with its description of the Druid's grove near Massilia,[287] is on a different plane. It gives less scope to the higher poetical imagination; it describes a scene such as the Silver Age delighted in,[288] a dark wood, whereto the sunlight scarce can penetrate; altars stand there stained with dark rites of human sacrifice; no bird or beast will approach it; no wind ever stirs its leaves; if they rustle, it is with a strange mysterious rustling all their own: there are dark pools and ancient trees, their trunks encircled by coiling snakes; strange sounds and sights are there, and when the sun rides high at noon, not even the priest will approach the sanctuary for fear lest unawares he come upon his lord and master. While similar descriptions may be found in other poets of the age, there is a strength and simplicity about this passage that rivets the attention, whereas others leave us cold and indifferent. But Lucan does not always exercise such restraint, and such passages are as rare as they are welcome. The reason for this is obvious: the narrative must necessarily consist in the main of military movements. In the words of Petronius,[289] that is better done by the historians. The adventures on the march are not likely as a rule to be peculiarly interesting; there are no heroic single combats to vary and glorify the fighting. Conscious of this inevitable difficulty, and with all the rhetorician's morbid fear of being commonplace, Lucan betakes himself to desperate remedies, hyperbole and padding. If he describes a battle, he must invent new and incredible horrors to enthral us; his sea-fight at Massilia is a notable instance;[290] death ceases to inspire horror and becomes grotesque. If a storm arises he must outdo all earlier epic storms. Vergil had attempted to outdo the storms of the Odyssey. Lucan must outdo Vergil. Consequently, in the storm that besets Caesar on his legendary voyage to Italy in the fisherman's boat[291] that 'carried Caesar and his fortunes', strange things happen. The boat rocks helplessly in mid-sea-- Its sails in clouds, its keel upon the ground, For all the sea was piled into the waves And drawn from depths between laid bare the sand.[292] In the same tempest-- The sea had risen to the clouds In mighty mass, had not Olympus' chief Pressed down its waves with clouds,[293] If he is concerned with a march through the African desert, he must introduce the reader to a whole host of apocryphal serpents, with details as to the nature of their bites.[294] So terrible are these reptiles that it is a positive relief to the army to enter the region of lions.[295] Before such specimens as this the hyperbole of Seneca seems tame and insignificant. The introduction of irrelevant episodes would be less reprehensible were it not that such episodes are for the most part either dull or a fresh excuse for bombast or (worse still) a display of erudition.[296] He devotes no less than 170 lines in the first book to a description of the prodigies that took place at Rome on the outbreak of the Civil War, and of the rites performed to avert their omens.[297] In the next book a hundred and sixty-six lines are given to a lurid picture of the Marian and Sullan proscriptions,[298] and forty-six to a compressed geography of Italy.[299] In the fifth book we are given the tedious story of how a certain obscure Appius consulted the Delphian oracle[300] and how he fared, merely, we suspect, that Lucan may have an opportunity for depicting the frenzies of the Pythian prophetess. Similarly, at the close of the sixth book, Pompey's son consults a necromancer as to the result of the war.[301] The scene is described with not a little skill and ingenuity, but it has little _raison d'etre_ save the gratification of the taste for witchcraft which Lucan shared with his audience and his fellow poets. Apart from these weaknesses of method and execution, Lucan's style is unsuited to epic whether historical or legendary. He has not sufficient command of a definitely poetical vocabulary to enable him to captivate the reader by pure sensuous charm. He is, as Quintilian says, 'magis oratoribus quam poetis imitandus.' He cannot shake himself free from the influence of his rhetorical training. It is a severe condemnation of an epic poet to deny him, as we have denied, the gifts of narrative and dramatic power. Yet much of Lucan is more than readable, to some it is even fascinating. He has other methods of meeting the difficulties presented by historical epic. The work is full of speeches, moralising, and apostrophes. He will not let the story tell itself; he is always harping on its moral and political significance. As a result, we get long passages that belong to the region of elevated political satire. They are not epic, but they are often magnificent. It is in them that Lucan's political feeling appears at its truest and strongest.[302] The actual fortunes of the republican armies, as recounted by Lucan, must fail to rouse the emotions of the most ardent anti-Caesarian, and it is doubtful whether they would have responded to more skilful treatment. But in the apostrophes grief and indignation can find a voice and stir the heart. They may reveal a monstrous lack of the sense of historical proportion. To attribute the depopulation of the rural districts of Italy to the slaughter at Pharsalus is absurd. That Lucan does this is undeniable, but his words have a deeper significance. It was at Pharsalus, above all other battles, that the republic fell to ruin, and the poet is justified in making it the symbol of that fall.[303] And even where the sentiment is at bottom false, there is such an impetuosity and vigour in the lines, and such a depth of scorn in each epigram, that the reader is swept off his balance and convinced against his will. We hardly pause to think whether Pharsalus, or even the whole series of civil wars, really prevented the frontiers of Rome being conterminous with the limits of the inhabited globe, when we read such lines as (vii. 419)-- quo latius orbem possedit, citius per prospera fata cucurrit. omne tibi bellum gentes dedit omnibus annis: te geminum Titan procedere vidit in axem; haud multum terrae spatium restabat Eoae, ut tibi nox, tibi tota dies, tibi curreret aether, omniaque errantes stellae Romana viderent. sed retro tua fata tulit par omnibus annis Emathiae funesta dies, hac luce cruenta effectum, ut Latios non horreat India fasces, nec vetitos errare Dahas in moenia ducat Sarmaticumque premat succinctus consul aratrum, quod semper saevas debet tibi Parthia poenas, quod fugiens civile nefas redituraque numquam libertas ultra Tigrim Rhenumque recessit ac totiens nobis iugulo quaesita vagatur, Germanum Scythicumque bonum, nec respicit ultra Ausoniam. The wider she lorded it o'er the world, the swifter did she run through her fair fortunes. Each war, each year, gave thee new peoples to rule thee did the sun behold advancing towards either pole; little remained to conquer of the Eastern world; so that for thee, and thee alone, night and day and heaven should revolve, and the planets gaze on naught that was not Rome's. But Emathia's fatal day, a match for all the bygone years, has swept thy destiny backward. This day of slaughter was the cause that India trembles not before the lictor-rods of Rome, and that no consul, with toga girded high, leads the Dahae within some city's wall, forbidden to wander more, and in Sarmatia drives the founder's plough. This day was the cause that Parthia still owes thee a fierce revenge, that freedom flying from the crimes of citizens has withdrawn behind Tigris and the Rhine, ne'er to return, and, sought so oft by us with our life's blood, wanders the prize of German and of Scyth, and hath no further care for Ausonia. But this famous apostrophe closes on a truer note with six lines of unsurpassed satire (454)-- mortalia nulli sunt curata deo. cladis tamen huius habemus vindictam, quantam terris dare numina fas est: bella pares superis facient civilia divos; fulminibus manes radiisque ornabit et astris, inque deum templis iurabit Roma per umbras. No god has a thought for the doings of mortal men: yet for this overthrow this vengeance is ours, so far as gods may give satisfaction to the earth: civil wars shall raise dead Caesars to the level of the gods above; and Rome shall deck the spirits of the dead with rays and thunderbolts and stars, and in the temples of the gods shall swear by the name of shades. Noblest of all are the lines that close another apostrophe on the same subject a little later in the same book (638)-- maius ab hac acie quam quod sua saecula ferrent volnus habent populi; plus est quam vita salusque quod perit; in totum mundi prosternimur aevum, vincitur his gladiis omnis quae serviet aetas. proxima quid suboles aut quid meruere nepotes in regnum nasci? pavide num gessimus arma teximus aut iugulos? alieni poena timoris in nostra cervice sedet. post proelia natis si dominum, Fortuna, dabas, et bella dedisses. A deeper wound than their own age might bear was dealt the peoples of this earth in this battle: 'tis more than life and safety that is lost: for all future ages of the world are we laid low: these swords have vanquished generations yet unborn, and doomed them to eternal slavery. What had the sons and grandsons of those who fought that day deserved that they should be born into slavery? Did we bear our arms like cowards, or screen our throats from death? Upon our necks is riveted the doom that we should live in fear of another. Nay, Fortune, since thou gavest a tyrant to those born since the war, thou shouldst have given them also the chance to fight for freedom. These are the finest of not a few[304] remarkable expressions of Lucan's hatred for the growing autocracy of the principate: it is noteworthy that almost all occur in the last seven books. They can hardly be regarded as mere abstract meditations; they have a force and bitterness which justify us in regarding them as evidence of his changed attitude towards Nero. The first three books were published while he yet basked in the sunshine of court favours. Then came the breach between himself and Nero. His wounded vanity assisted his principles to come to the surface.[305] The speeches, with very few exceptions,[306] scarcely rank with the apostrophes. Like the speeches in the plays of Seneca, they are little more than glorified _suasoriae_. They are, for the most part, such speeches as--after making the most liberal allowance for rhetorical licence--no human being outside a school of rhetoric could have uttered. Caesar's soldiery would have stared aghast had they been addressed by their general in such language as Lucan makes him use to inspire them with courage before Pharsalus. They would have understood little, and cared less, had Caesar said (vii. 274)-- civilia paucae bella manus facient; pugnae pars magna levabit his orbem populis Romanumque obteret hostem; Not in civil strife Your blows shall fall--the battle of to-day Sweeps from the earth the enemies of Rome. SIR E. RIDLEY. or (279)-- sitque palam, quas tot duxit Pompeius in urbem curribus, unius gentes non esse triumphi. Make plain to all men that the crowds who decked Pompeius' hundred pageants scarce were fit For one poor triumph. SIR E. RIDLEY. They would have laughed at exaggerations such as (287)-- cuius non militis ensem agnoscam? caelumque tremens cum lancea transit, dicere non fallar quo sit vibrata lacerto. Of each of you shall strike, I know the hand: The javelin's flight to me betrays the arm That launched it hurtling. SIR E. RIDLEY. And yet beneath all this fustian there is much that stirs the blood. Lines such as (261)-- si pro me patriam ferro flammisque petistis, nunc pugnate truces gladiosque exsolvite culpa. nulla manus belli mutato iudice pura est. non mihi res agitur, sed vos ut libera sitis turba precor, gentes ut ius habeatis in omnes. ipse ego privatae cupidus me reddere vitae plebeiaque toga modicum compomere civem, omnia dum vobis liceant, nihil esse recuso. invidia regnate mea; If for my sake you sought your fatherland with fire and sword, fight fierce to-day, and by victory clear your swords from guilt. No hand is guiltless judged by a new arbiter of war. The struggle of to-day does naught for me; but for you, so runs my prayer, it shall bring freedom and dominion o'er the world. Myself, I long to return to private life, and, even though my garb were that of the common people, to be a peaceful citizen once more. So be it all be made lawful for you, there is naught I would refuse to be: for me the hatred, so be yours the power. or (290)-- quod si signa ducem numquam fallentia vestrum conspicio faciesque truces oculosque minaces, vicistis, Nay, if I behold those signs that ne'er deceived your leader, fierce faces and threatening eyes, you are already conquerors. though they are not the words of the historical Caesar, have a stirring sincerity and force. But the speeches fail because all speak the same artificial language. A mutineer can say of Caesar (v. 289)-- Rheni mihi Caesar in undis dux erat, hic socius. facinus quos inquinat aequat; Caesar was my leader by the waves of Rhine, here he is my comrade. The stain of crime makes all men equal. or threaten with the words (292)-- quidquid gerimus fortuna vocatur. nos fatum sciat esse suum. As fortune's gift He takes the victory which our arms have won: But _we_ his fortunes are, his fates are ours To fashion as we will. SIR E. RIDLEY. The lines are brilliant and worthy of life: in their immediate context they are ridiculous. Epigrams have their value, however, even when they suit their context ill, and neither Juvenal nor Tacitus has surpassed Lucan in this respect, or been more often quoted. He is, says Quintilian, _sententiis clarissimus_. Nothing can surpass (iv. 519)-- victurosque dei celant, ut vivere durent, felix esse mori. And the gods conceal from those who are doomed to live how happy it is to die. Thus only may they endure to live. or (viii. 631-2)-- mutantur prospera vitae, non fit morte miser; Life may bring defeat, But death no misery. SIR E. RIDLEY. or (i. 32)-- alta sedent civilis volnera dextrae; Deep lie the wounds that civil war hath made. or (ix. 211)-- scire mori sors prima viris, sed proxima cogi. Best gift of all The knowledge how to die: next, death compelled. SIR E. RIDLEY. Lines such as (i. 281)-- semper nocuit differre paratis, To pause when ready is to court defeat. SIR E. RIDLEY. or (v. 260)-- quidquid multis peccatur, inultum est The crime is free where thousands bear the guilt. SIR E. RIDLEY. are commonplace enough in thought but perfect in expression. Of a different character, but equally noteworthy, are sayings such as iv. 819-- momentumque fuit mutatus Curio rerum; The change of Curio turned the scale of history. or (iv. 185)-- usque adeone times, quem tu facis ipse timendum? Dost fear him so Who takes his title to be feared from thee? SIR E. RIDLEY, _slightly altered._ Lucan's gift for epigram is further enhanced by the nature of his metre. Ponderous in the extreme, it is ill-suited for epic, though in isolated lines its very weight gives added force. But he had a poor ear for rhythm: his hexameter is monotonous as the iambics of Seneca. There is a want of variety in pauses; he will not accommodate his rhythm to circumstances; line follows line with but the slightest rhythmical variation, and there is far too[307] sparing a use of elision. This failing is in part due to his desire to steer clear of the influence of Vergil and strike out on a line of his own. Faint echoes of Vergil, it is true, occur frequently throughout the poem, but to the untrained eye Lucan is emphatically un-Vergilian. His affinity to Ovid is greater. Both are rhetorical, and Lucan is indebted to Ovid for much mythological detail. And it is probable that he owes his smoothness and monotony of metre largely to the influence of the _Metamorphoses_. His ponderosity is all his own.[308] Lucan is the child of his age, but he is almost an isolated figure in literature. He has almost every conceivable defect in every conceivable degree, from the smallest detail to the general conception of his poem. And yet he triumphs over himself. It is a hateful task to read the _Pharsalia_ from cover to cover, and yet when it is done and the lapse of time has allowed the feeling of immediate repulsion to evaporate, the reader can still feel that Lucan is a great writer. The absurdities slip from the memory, the dreariness of the narrative is forgotten, and the great passages of lofty rhetoric, with their pungent epigram and their high political enthusiasm, remain deeply engraven on the mind. It is they that have given Lucan the immortality which he promised himself. The _Pharsalia_ is dead, but Lucan lives. It is useless to conjecture what might have been the fate of such remarkable gifts in a less corrupt age. This much, however, may be said, Lucan never had a fair chance. The circle in which he moved, the education which he received, suffered only his rhetorical talent to develop, and to this were sacrificed all his other gifts, his clearness of vision, his sense of proportion, his poetical imagination. He was spoilt by admiration and his own facility. Moreover, Seneca was his uncle: a comparison shows how profoundly the elder poet influenced the younger. There is the same self-conscious arrogance begotten of Stoicism, the same brilliance of wit and absence of humour. Their defects and merits alike reveal them as kindred, though Lucan stands worlds apart as a poet from Seneca, the ranting tragedian. He was but twenty-five when he died. Age might have brought a maturity and dignity of spirit which would have made rhetoric his servant and not his master, and refined away the baser alloys of his character. Even as it was he left much that, without being pure gold, yet possessed many elements and much of the brilliance of the true metal. Dante's judgement was true when he set him among the little company of true poets, of which Dante himself was proud to be made one. CHAPTER V PETRONIUS The most curious and in some respects the most remarkable work that the Silver Age has bequeathed to us is a fragment of a novel, the _Satyricon_ of Petronius Arbiter, Its author is generally identified with Titus Petronius, the friend and victim of Nero. Tacitus has described him in a passage, remarkable even among Tacitean portraits for its extraordinary brilliance. 'His days he passed in sleep, his nights in the business and pleasures of life. Indolence had raised him to fame, as energy raises others, and he was reckoned not a debauchee and spendthrift, like most of those who squander their substance, but a man of refined luxury. And indeed his talk and his doings, the freer they were, and the more show of carelessness they exhibited, were the better liked for their look of a natural simplicity. Yet as proconsul of Bithynia and soon afterwards as consul, he showed himself a man of vigour and equal to business. Then, falling back into vice or affecting vice, he was chosen by Nero to be one of his few intimate associates, as a critic in matters of taste (_elegantiae arbiter_). The emperor thought nothing charming or elegant in luxury unless Petronius had expressed his approval. Hence jealousy on the part of Tigellinus, who looked on him as a rival, and even his superior, in the science of pleasure. And so he worked on the prince's cruelty, which dominated every other passion: charging Petronius with having been the friend of Scaevinus, bribing a slave to turn informer, robbing him of the means of defence, and hurrying into prison the greater part of his domestics. It happened at the time that the emperor was on his way to Campania, and that Petronius, after going as far as Cumae, was there detained. He bore no longer the suspense of fear or of hope. Yet he did not fling away life with precipitate haste, but having made an incision in his veins and then according to his humour bound them up, he again opened them, while he conversed with his friends, not in a serious strain or on topics that might win him the glory of courage. He listened to them as they repeated, not thoughts on the immortality of the soul or on the theories of philosophers, but light poetry and playful verses. To some of his slaves he gave liberal presents, to others a flogging. He dined, indulged himself in sleep, that death, even though forced, might have a natural appearance. Even in his will he did not, as did many in their last moments, flatter Nero or Tigellinus, or any other of the men in power. On the contrary, he described fully the prince's shameful excesses, with the names of his male and female companions and their novelties in debauchery, and sent the account under seal to Nero. Then he broke his signet-ring, that it might not be available to bring others into peril.'[309] There is nothing definitely to bring this ingenious and brilliant debauchee into connexion with the Petronius Arbiter of the _Satyricon_. But the character of Titus Petronius is exactly in keeping with the tone of the novel; the novelist's cognomen Arbiter, though in itself by no means extraordinary, may well have sprung from or given rise to the title _elegantiae arbiter_; and finally the few indications of date in the novel all point to a period not far from the reign of Nero. There is the criticism of Lucan,[310] which certainly loses point if not written during Lucan's lifetime; there is the criticism of the rhetorical training of the day,[311] which finds a remarkable echo in the criticism of Vipstanus Messala in the _Dialogus_ of Tacitus, a work which, whatever the date of its actual composition, certainly refers to a period less than ten years after the death of T. Petronius; there is the style of the work itself; wherever the writer abandons the colloquial Latin, in which so much of the work is written, we find a finished diction, whether in prose or verse, which no unprejudiced judge could place later than the accession of Trajan, and which has nothing in it to prevent its attribution to the reign of Nero. In that reign there is but one Petronius to whom we can assign the _Satyricon_, the Petronius immortalized by Tacitus.[312] Of the work as a whole this is no place to speak. The fragments which survive are in the main in prose. But the work is modelled on the Menippean satires of Varro, and belongs to the same class of writing as the _Apocolocyntosis_ of Seneca. In the form of a loosely-strung and rambling novel we have a satirical commentary on human life; the satire is cynical and pungent, rather than mordant, makes no pretence of logic, and proceeds not from a moral sense but from a sense of humour. Wild and indecent as Petronius' laughter often is, it springs from one who is a real artist, possessing a sense of proportion as well as the sense of contrast that is the source and fount of humour. This is most strongly evident in that portion of his satire which concerns us here, inasmuch as it is directed against contemporary literary tendencies. We must beware of fastening on the words of the characters in the novel as necessarily expressing the thoughts of its author. But it is noteworthy that all his literary criticism points in the same direction; it is above all conservative. Through the mouths of Encolpius, the dissolute hero of the story, and the rhetorician Agamemnon[313] he denounces the flamboyant rhetoric of the day, its remoteness from reality, the lack of sanity and industry on the part both of pupil and instructor. 'As boys they pass their time at school at what is no better than play, as youths they make themselves ridiculous in the forum, and, worst of all, when they grow old they refuse to acknowledge the faults acquired by their education.' Study is necessary, and above all the study of good models. Sophocles, Euripides, Pindar, the great lyricists, Plato, Demosthenes, Thucydides, Hyperides, all the great classics, these are the true models for the young orator. Agamemnon cannot restrain himself and even bursts into verse in the course of this disquisition on the decadence of oratory: artis severae si quis ambit effectus mentemque magnis applicat, prius mores frugalitatis lege poliat exacta. nec curet alto regiam trucem vultu cliensve cenas impotentium captet nec perditis addictus obruat vino mentis calorem, neve plausor in scaenam sedeat redemptus histrionis ad rictus. sed sive armigerae rident Tritonidis arces, seu Lacedaemonio tellus habitata colono Sirenumve domus, det primos versibus annos Maeoniumque bibat felici pectore fontem. mox et Socratico plenus grege mittat habenas liber et ingentis quatiat Demosthenis arma. hinc Romana manus circumfluat et modo Graio exonerata sono mutet suffusa saporem. interdum subducta foro det pagina cursum et cortina[314] sonet celeri distincta meatu; dein[315] epulas et bella truci memorata canore grandiaque indomiti Ciceronis verba minetur. his animum succinge bonis: sic flumine largo plenus Pierio defundes pectore verba. If any man court success in the lofty art of letters and apply his mind to great things, he must first perfect his character by simplicity's stern law; he must care naught for the haughty frown of the fierce tyrant that lords it in his palace, nor seek client-like for invitations to the board of the profligate, nor deliver himself over to the company of debauchees and drown the fire of his understanding in wine, nor sit in the theatre the hired applauder of the mouthing actor. But whether the citadel of panoplied Minerva allure him with its smile, or the land where the Spartan exile came to dwell, or the Sirens' home, let him devote his early years to poesy, and let his spirit drink in with happy omen a draught from the Maeonian fount. Thereafter, when his soul is full of the lore of the Socratic school, let him give himself free rein and brandish the weapons of great Demosthenes. Next let the band of Roman authors throng him round, and, but newly freed from the music of Greece, suffuse his soul and change its tone. Meanwhile, let his pen run its course withdrawn from the forum, and let Apollo's tripod send forth a voice rhythmic and swift: next let him roll forth in lordly speech the tale of heroes' feasting and wars, set forth in fierce strain and lofty language, such as fell from the lips of dauntless Cicero. Prepare thy soul for joys such as these; and, steeped in the plenteous stream of letters, thou shalt give utterance to the thoughts of thy Pierian soul. This is not inspired poetry; but its advice is sound, and its point of view just. Nor is this criticism a mere _jeu d'esprit_; it is hard to resist the conclusion that the author is putting his own views into the mouths of his more than shady characters. For, _mutatis mutandis_, the same attitude towards literary art is revealed in the utterances of the poet Eumolpus.[316] It is a curious fact that while none of the characters in Petronius are to be taken seriously, their speech at times soars from the reeking atmosphere of the brothel and the clamour of the streets to clearer and loftier regions of thought, if not of action. The first appearance of Eumolpus is conceived in a broadly comic vein. 'While I was thus engaged a grey-haired old man entered the picture gallery. He had a troubled countenance, which seemed to promise some momentous utterance. His dress was lamentable, and showed that he was clearly one of those literary gentlemen so unpopular with the rich. He took his stand by my side. "I am a poet," he said, "and no mean one, if any trust is to be placed in wreaths of honour, which are so often bestowed even on those who least deserve them." "Why, then, are you so ill-clad?" I asked. "Just for that very reason. Devotion to art never brought any one wealth"-- qui pelago credit magno se faenore tollit; qui pugnas et castra petit, praecingitur auro; vilis adulator picto iacet ebrius ostro, et qui sollicitat nuptas, ad praemia peccat: sola pruinosis horret facundia pannis atque inopi lingua desertas invocat artes.[317] He who entrusts his fortunes to the sea, wins a mighty harvest; he who seeks the camp and the field of war, may gird him with gold: the vile flatterer lies drunken on embroidered purple; the gallant who courts the favours of wedded wives, wins wealth by his sin: eloquence alone shivers in frosty rags and invokes the neglected arts with pauper tongue. 'There's no doubt as to the truth of it. If a man has a detestation of vice and chooses the paths of virtue, he is hated on the ground that his morals are eccentric. No one approves of ways of life other than his own. Then there are those whose sole care is the acquisition of wealth; they are unwilling that anything should be thought to be a superior good to that which they themselves possess. And so they persecute lovers of literature with all their might.' This _vitiorum omnium inimicus_ then proceeds to tell a story which casts a startling light upon his 'eccentric morality'. Its undoubted humour can hardly be said to redeem its amazing grossness. He has scarcely finished the narration of his own shame when he is back again in another world--the world of letters. He laments the decay of art and philosophy. 'The passion for money-making has brought ruin in its train. While virtue went bare and was a welcome guest, the noble arts flourished, and men vied with one another in the effort to discover anything that might be of service to mankind.' He quotes the examples of Democritus, Eudoxus, Chrysippus in the world of science, of Myron in art. 'We have given ourselves up to wine and women, and take no pains to become acquainted even with the arts already discovered. We traduce antiquity by teaching and learning its vices only. Where is dialectic? Where is astronomy? Where is philosophy?' He sees that Encolpius is not listening, but is absorbed in the contemplation of a picture representing the sack of Troy, and seizes the opportunity of reciting a poem of his own upon the subject. The lines are for the most part neither original nor striking; they form a kind of abstract in iambics of the second Aeneid, from the appearance of Sinon to the emergence of the Greeks from the Trojan horse. But the work is finished and elegant,[318] and the simile which describes the arrival of the serpents that were to slay Laocoon is not unworthy of a more successful poet than Eumolpus is represented to have been: ecce alia monstra; celsa qua Tenedos mare dorso replevit, tumida consurgunt freta undaque resultat scissa tranquillo minans[319] qualis silenti nocte remorum sonus longe refertur, cum premunt classes mare pulsumque marmor abiete imposita gemit. respicimus; angues orbibus geminis ferunt ad saxa fluctus, tumida quorum pectora rates ut altae lateribus spumas agunt. Lo! a fresh portent; where the ridge of lofty Tenedos filled the sea, there breaks a swelling surge, and the broken waves rebound and threaten the calm: as when in the silent night the sound of oars is borne afar, when navies burden the main and the smitten deep groans beneath its freight of pine. We looked round: the waves bear towards the rocks two coiling snakes, whose swelling breasts, like tall ships, drive the water in foam along their sides. The picture is at once vivid and beautiful, and we feel almost regretful at the fate which his recitation brought on the unhappy poet. 'Those who were walking in the colonnade began to throw stones at Eumolpus as he recited. He recognized this method of applauding his wit, covered his head with his cloak and fled from the temple. I was afraid that he would denounce me as a poet. And so I followed him till I came to the sea-shore and was out of range. "What do you mean," I said, "by inflicting this disease of yours upon us? You have been less than two hours in my company, and you have more often spoken like a poet than a man. I'm not surprised that people throw stones at you. I'm going to fill my own pockets with stones, and the moment you begin to unburden yourself, I'm going to break your head." His face revealed a painful emotion. "My good youth," said he, "to-day is not the first occasion on which I have suffered this fate. Nay, I have never entered a theatre to recite, without attracting this kind of welcome. But as I don't want to quarrel with you, I will abstain from my daily food for the whole day."' Eumolpus did not keep this promise; but the poem with which he broke it is of small importance and need not detain us.[320] It is a little disquisition on the refinements of luxury now prevalent, and has but one notable line--the last-- quidquid quaeritur optimum videtur. Whatever must be sought for, that seems best. But later he has another outbreak. Encolpius and his friends have been shipwrecked near Croton. On their way to the town Eumolpus beguiles the tedium of the climb by the criticism of Lucan and the attempt to improve on the _Pharsalia_, which have been discussed in the chapter on Lucan. If neither his poetry nor his criticism as a whole are sound, they are at least meant seriously. Here, again, we have a plea for earnest study, and for the avoidance of mere tricks of rhetoric. As for the rhetorician Agamemnon, so for Eumolpus, the great poets of the past are Homer and the lyric poets; and nearer home are the 'Roman Vergil' and Horace. If there was nothing else in this passage than the immortal phrase 'Horatii curiosa felicitas', it would redeem it from the commonplace. Petronius is a 'classicist'; the friend of Nero, he protests against the flamboyance of the age as typified in the rhetorical style of Seneca and Lucan. If the work was written at the time when Seneca and Lucan first fell from the Imperial favour, such criticism may well have found favour at court. If, with the brilliant whimsicality that characterizes all his work, Petronius has placed these utterances in the mouth of disreputable and broadly comic figures, that does not impair the value or sincerity of the criticism. Eumolpus' complaint of the decline of the arts and the baneful effect of the struggle for wealth is no doubt primarily inspired by the fact that he is poor and can find no patron nor praise for his verse, but must put up with execrations and showers of stones. But that does not affect the truth of much that he says, nor throw doubt upon the sincerity of Petronius himself. The same whimsicality is shown elsewhere in the course of the novel. It contains not a few poems which, detached from their context, are full of grace and charm, though their application is often disgusting in the extreme. Such are the hexameters towards the close of the work in which Encolpius describes the scene of his unhappy love affair with a certain Circe: Idaeo quales fudit de vertice flores terra parens, cum se concesso iunxit amori Iuppiter et toto concepit pectore flammas: emicuere rosae violaeque et molle cyperon, albaque de viridi riserunt lilia prato: talis humus Venerem molles clamavit in herbas, candidiorque dies secreto favit amori (127); As the flowers poured forth by mother earth from Ida's peak, when she yielded to Jove's embrace and the god's soul was filled with passionate flame; the rose, the violet, and the soft iris flashed forth, and white lilies gleamed from the green meadow; so shone the earth when it called our love to rest upon the soft grass, and the day, brighter than its wont, smiled on our secret passion. nobilis aestivas platanus diffuderat umbras et bacis redimita Daphne tremulaeque cupressus et circum tonsae trepidanti vertice pinus. has inter ludebat aquis errantibus amnis spumeus et querulo vexabat rore lapillos. dignus amore locus: testis silvestris aedon atque urbana Procne, quae circum gramina fusae ac molles violas cantu sua furta colebant (131). A noble plane tree and the bay tree with its garland of berries, and the quivering cypress and the trim pine with its tremulous top, spread a sweet summer shade abroad. Amid them a foaming river sported with wandering waters and lashed the pebbles with its peevish spray. Meet was the place for love, with the woodland nightingale and the town-haunting swallow for witness, that, flitting all about the grass and the soft violets, told of their loves in song. The unpleasing nature of the context cannot obscure the fact that here we have genuine poetry of great delicacy and beauty.[321] Of the satirical epigrams contained in the novel little need be said. They are not in any way pointless or feeble, but they lack the ease and grace, and, it may be added, the sting, of the best work of Martial. The themes are hackneyed and suffer from the absence of the personal note. But it is at least refreshing to find that Petronius does not attempt, like Martial and others, to excuse his obscenity on the ground that his actual life is chaste. He speaks out frankly. 'Why hide what all men know?' quid me constricta spectatis fronte Catones damnatisque novae simplicitatis opus? sermonis puri non tristis gratia ridet, quodque facit populus, Candida lingua refert (132). Why gaze at me, ye Catos, with frowning brow, and damn the fresh frankness of my work? my speech is Latin undefiled, and has grace unmarred by gloom, and my candid tongue tells of what all Rome's people do. A more interesting collection of poems, probably Petronian, remains to be discussed. In addition to the numerous fragments of poetry included in the surviving excerpts from the _Satyricon_, a considerable number of epigrams, attributed with more or less certainty to Petronius, are preserved in the fragments of the _Anthologia Latina_.[322] Immediately following on the epigrams assigned to the authorship of Seneca, the Codex Vossianus Q. 86 gives sixteen epigrams,[323] each headed by the word _item_. Of these two are quoted by Fulgentius as the work of Petronius.[324] There is, therefore, especially in view of the fact that they all bear a marked family resemblance to one another, a strong presumption that all are by the author of the _Satyricon_. Further, there are eleven epigrams[325] published by Binet in his edition of Petronius[326] from a MS. originally in the cathedral library of Beauvais, but now unfortunately lost. The first of the series is quoted by Fulgentius[327] as being by Petronius, and there is no reason for doubting the accuracy of Binet or his MS.[328] as to the rest. These poems are followed by eight more epigrams,[329] the first two of which Binet attributes to Petronius on stylistic grounds, but without any MS. authority.[330] Lastly, four epigrams are preserved by a third MS. (Cod. Voss. F. III) under the title _Petronii_[331]. Of these the first two are found in the extant portions of the _Satyricon_. The evidence for the Petronian authorship of these thirty-seven poems is not conclusive. Arguments based on resemblance or divergence in points of style are somewhat precarious in the case of an author like Petronius, writing with great variety of style on a variety of subjects. But there are some very marked resemblances between certain of these poems and verses surviving in the excerpts from the Satyricon[332], and the evidence _against_ the Petronian authorship is of the slightest. A possible exception may be made in the case of the last eight epigrams preserved by Binet, though even here Binet is just enough in pointing out the resemblance of the first two of these to what is admittedly the work of Petronius. But with regard to the rest we shall run small risk in regarding them as selected from the lost books of the _Satyricon_. These poems are very varied in character and as a whole reach a higher poetical level than most of those preserved in the existing fragments of the _Satyricon_.[1] The most notable features are simplicity and unaffected grace of diction coupled with a delicate appreciation of the beauties of nature. There is nothing that is out of keeping with the classicism on which we have insisted as a characteristic of Petronius, there is much that is worthy of the best writers of the Augustan age. The five lines in which he describes the coming of autumn have much in common with the descriptions of nature already quoted from the _Satyricon_. The last line in particular has at once a conciseness and a wealth of suggestion that is rare in any post-Ovidian poet: iam nunc algentes autumnus fecerat umbras atque hiemem tepidis spectabat Phoebus habenis, iam platanus iactare comas, iam coeperat uvas adnumerare suas defecto palmite vitis: ante oculos stabat, quidquid promiserat annus.[333] Now autumn had brought its cool shades, Phoebus' reins glowed less hot and he was looking winterward. The plane was beginning to shed her leaves, the vine to count its clusters, and its fresh shoots were withered. Before our eyes stood all the promise of the year. Equally charming and sincere in tone is the description of the delights of the simple life: parvula securo tegitur mihi culmine sedes uvaque plena mero fecunda pendet ab ulmo. dant rami cerasos, dant mala rubentia silvae Palladiumque nemus pingui se vertice frangit. iam qua diductos potat levis area fontes, Corycium mihi surgit olus malvaeque supinae et non sollicitos missura papavera somnos. praeterea sive alitibus contexere fraudem seu magis inbelles libuit circumdare cervos aut tereti lino pavidum subducere piscem, hos tantum novere dolos mea sordida rura. i nunc et vitae fugientis tempora vende divitibus cenis! me qui manet exitus olim, hic precor inveniat consumptaque tempora poscat.[334] My cottage is sheltered by a roof that fears no ill; the grape, bursting with wine, hangs from the fertile elm; cherries hang by the bough and my orchard yields its rosy apples, and the tree that Pallas loves breaks beneath the rich burden of its branches. And now, where the garden bed's light soil drinks in the runnels of water, rises for me Corycian kale and low-growing mallow, and the poppy that grants easy slumber. Moreover, whether 'tis my pleasure to set snares for birds or hem in the timid deer, or on fine-meshed net to draw up the affrighted fish, this is all the guile known to my humble lands. Go to, now, and waste the flying hours of life on sumptuous feasts! I pray, that my destined end may find me here, and here demand an account of the days I have lived. These lines may be no more than an academic exercise on a commonplace theme, but there can be no doubt of their artistic success. We find the same simplicity in Columella, but not the same art. Compare them with the work of Petronius' contemporary, Calpurnius Siculus, and there is all the difference between true poetry and mere poetising. More passionate and more convincing is the elegiac poem celebrating the poet's return to the scene of former happiness: o litus vita mihi dulcius, o mare! felix, cui licet ad terras ire subinde tuas! o formosa dies! hoc quondam rure solebam naidas alterna[335] sollicitare manu. hic fontis lacus est, illic sinus egerit algas: haec statio est tacitis fida cupidinibus. pervixi; neque enim fortuna malignior umquam eripiet nobis, quod prior aura dedit.[336] O shore, O sea, that I love more than life! Happy is he that may straightway visit the lands ye border. O fairest day! 'Twas here that once I was wont to swim and vex the sea-nymphs with my hands' alternate strokes. Here is a stream's deep pool, there the bay casts up its seaweed: here is a spot that can faithfully guard the secret of one's love. I have lived my life to the full; nor can grudging fortune ever rob me of that which her favouring breeze once gave me. But Petronius can attain to equal success in other veins. Now we have a fragment in the epic style containing a simile at once original and beautiful: haec ait et tremulo deduxit vertice canos consecuitque genas; oculis nec defuit imber, sed qualis rapitur per vallis improbus amnis, cum gelidae periere nives et languidus auster non patitur glaciem resoluta vivere terra, gurgite sic pleno facies manavit et alto insonuit gemitu turbato murmure pectus.[337] He spake, and rent the white hair on his trembling head and tore his cheeks, and his eyes streamed with a flood of tears. As when a resistless river sweeps down the valley when the chill snows have melted and the languid south wind thaws the earth and suffers not the ice to remain, even so his face streamed with a torrent of weeping and his breast groaned loud with a confused murmur of sorrow. Elsewhere we find him writing in satirical vein of the origin of religion,[338] on the decay of virtue,[339] on the hardship of the married state[340]: 'uxor legis onus, debet quasi census amari.' nec censum vellem semper amare meum. 'One should love one's wife as one loves one's fortune.' Nay, I desire not always to love even my fortune. But it is in a love-poem that he reaches his highest achievement: lecto compositus vix prima silentia noctis carpebam et somno lumina victa dabam: cum me saevus Amor prensat sursumque capillis excitat et lacerum pervigilare iubet. 'tu famulus meus,' inquit, 'ames cum mille puellas, solus, io, solus, dure, iacere potes?' exsilio et pedibus nudis tunicaque soluta omne iter incipio, nullum iter expedio. nunc propero, nunc ire piget, rursumque redire paenitet et pudor est stare via media. ecce tacent voces hominum strepitusque viarum et volucrum cantus turbaque fida canum: solus ego ex cunctis paveo somnumque torumque et sequor imperium, magne Cupido, tuum.[341] I lay on my bed and began to enjoy the silence of the night scarce yet begun, and was yielding my wearied eyes to sleep, when fierce Love laid hold of me, and, seizing me by the hair, aroused me, tore me, and bade me wake. 'Canst thou, my servant,' he cried, 'the lover of a thousand girls, lie thus alone, alone, hard-hearted?' I leapt from my couch, and barefoot, with dishevelled robe, started on my errand, yet never accomplished it. Now I hurry forward, now am loth to go; now repent me that I have returned, and feel shame to stand thus aimless in mid-street. So the voices of men, the murmur of the streets, the song of birds, and the trusty watchdogs all are silent; and I alone dread the slumbers of my couch and follow thy behest, great god of love. If this is not great poetry, it is at least one of the most perfect specimens of conventional erotic verse in all ancient literature. If we except a very few of the best poems of Propertius, Latin Elegiacs have nothing to show that combines such perfection of form with such exquisite sensuous charm. It breathes the fragrance of the Greek anthology. The general impression left by the poetical work of Petronius is curiously unlike that left by any Latin poet. Sometimes dull, he is never eccentric; without the originality of the greatest artists, he has all the artist's sensibility for form. He writes not as one inspired, but as one steeped in the best literature. Many were greater stylists, but few were endowed with such an exquisite sense of style. As a poet he is a _dilettante_, and his claim to greatness lies in the brilliant and audacious humour of his 'picaresque novel'. But his verse at its best has a charm and fragrance of its own that is almost unique in Latin, and reveals a combination of grace and facility, to find a parallel for which among writers of the post-Augustan age we must turn to the pages of Martial. CHAPTER VI MINOR POETRY, 14-70 A.D. I DIDACTIC POETRY Only two didactic poems of this period have survived, the poem of Columella on gardening, and the anonymous work on Mount Etna, setting forth a theory of volcanic action. i THE 'AETNA' The _Aetna_ is a hexameter poem, 646 lines in length. The author laments the indifference shown by poets to the natural phenomena of his day. They waste their time on the description of the marvels of art, the spectacular side of human civilization, and the surface-beauties of Nature.[342] They write trivial epics on the voyage of Argo, the sack of Troy, Niobe, Thyestes, Cadmus, Ariadne, the Battle of the Giants[343]. They tell of the terrors of the underworld[344], and the loves of the gods[345]: they seek the false rather than the true, they neglect the genuine wonders of Nature, the laws that govern heavenly and terrestrial phenomena. He will be wiser. But there is no need to travel far. He will not soar skyward to treat of the stars in their courses, of the seasons and signs of the weather, to the neglect of the marvels of mother earth.[346] The greatest of miracles is close at hand, Etna, the home of eternal fire. Deep in the heart of earth dwell two irresistible forces, wind and fire.[347] It is their conflict that causes the outbursts of flame and molten rock that devastate the slopes of Etna. It is no smithy of the gods, no Titan's prison. The causes are natural, water and wind and fire. He has seen Etna; he describes the crater,[348] the volcanic rock that can imprison fire,[349] the clouds that continually veil the mountain's crest,[350] the flames that burst from its summit, the subterranean rumblings,[351] the terrors of the lava stream. He concludes with the touching story of the Catanian brothers who, neglecting all else, sought only to save their aged parents from the flames. Their piety had its reward; they, and they alone, escaped from the lava; their neighbours, who sought to save their chattels and their wealth, perished in the stream, encumbered by their belongings. Of the poet's theory of volcanic action we need not speak; it was the current scientific theory of the day, and has no value for us; nor has the author any claim to originality. As to the style and composition of the work, brief comment will suffice. We may give the author credit for a real enthusiasm, and for a just contempt of the prevailing themes that engaged the attention of the minor poets of the day. But he has no gifts for poetry. His theme, although it gave considerable opportunities for episodic display, was one of great difficulty. Much dry scientific detail was necessarily required. If Lucretius is sometimes tedious and prosaic in spite of the vastness of his theme, the magnificence of his moral background, and his inspired enthusiasm, what can be expected of a poem on a minor scientific theme such as Etna? Volcanoes can hardly compete with the universe as a theme for poetry. The subject is one that might have fascinated an Alexandrian poet and found skilful treatment at his hands. But the author of the _Aetna_ had not the stylistic gifts of the Alexandrian. The actual arrangement of his matter is good, but, even when due allowance is made for the corruption of our text, his obscurity is intolerable, his imagery confused, his language cumbrous and wooden. He has, moreover, no poetic imagination. _Aetna_, not the poet, provides the fire. Even the beautiful story of the Catanian brothers, which forms by far the best portion of the poem, never rises to the level of pure poetry. It is illumined neither by the fire of rhetoric nor by the lambent light of sensuous diction and rich imagination. A few lines may be quoted to show its general character (605): Nam quondam ruptis excanduit Aetna cavernis, et velut eversis penitus fornacibus ingens evecta in longum est rapidis fervoribus unda. * * * * * ardebant agris segetes et mollia cultu iugera cum dominis, silvae collesque rubebant. * * * * * tum vero ut cuique est animus viresque rapinae tutari conantur opes, gemit ille sub auro, colligit ille arma et stulta cervice reponit, defectum raptis illum sua carmina tardant, hic velox minimo properat sub pondere pauper. * * * * * ... haec nullis parsura incendia pascunt, vel solis parsura piis. namque optima proles Amphinomus fraterque pari sub munere fortes, cum iam vicinis streperent incendia tectis, aspiciunt pigrumque patrem matremque senecta eheu defessos posuisse in limine membra, parcite, avara manus, dulces attollere praedas: illis divitiae solae materque paterque: hanc rapient praedam. mediumque exire per ignem ipso dante fidem properant. o maxima rerum et merito pietas homini tutissima virtus! erubuere pios iuvenes attingere flammae et, quacumque ferunt illi vestigia, cedunt felix illa dies, illa est innoxia terra. dextra saeva tenent, laevaque incendia fervent; ille per obliquos ignes fraterque triumphant tutus uterque pio sub pondere: suffugit illa et circa geminos avidus sibi temperat ignis, incolumes abeunt tandem et sua numina secum salva ferunt. illos mirantur carmina vatum, illos seposuit claro sub nomine Ditis nec sanctos iuvenes attingunt sordida fata, securas cessere domus et iura piorum. For once Etna burst its caves and, glowing with fire, cast forth all that its furnaces contained; a vast wave, swift and hot with fire, streamed forth afar.... Crops blazed along the fields, rich acres with their masters were consumed, forest and hill glowed rosy red.... Then each man, as he had courage and strength to bear away his goods, strove to protect his wealth. One groans beneath a weight of gold, another collects his weapons and slings them on his foolish neck. Another, unable to carry away what he has snatched up, wastes time in repeating charms, while there the poor man moves swift beneath his slender burden.... The fire feeds on all it meets: nought will it spare, or, if aught it spares, only the pious. For Amphinomus and his brother, the best of sons, brave in the toil they shared, when the fires roared loud and were already nigh their home, behold their father and their mother fall fainting on the threshold fordone with years. Cease, greedy folk, to shoulder the spoil of your fortunes that are so dear to you: for these men father and mother are their sole wealth; this only is the spoil that they would save. They hasten to escape through the midst of the fire, which itself gave them confidence. O piety, greatest of all that man may possess, of all virtues that which most saves the righteous. The flames blushed to touch the pious youths, and yield a path wherever they turn their steps. Blest was that day; the ground they trod was unharmed. The fierce burning holds all things on their right and blazes on their left. The brethren move triumphant on their path aslant the flame, each saved by his pious burden: the fire shuns their path and restrains its greedy hunger where pass the twain; scatheless they escape at length and bear those whom they worship to a place of safety. The songs of poets hymn their praise and the underworld gives them a glorious resting-place apart, nor does any unworthy fate befall these youths that lived so holy. They have passed away to dwell among the blessed, and sorrow cometh not nigh their dwelling-place. The narrative is clear, and the story delightful. But the telling of it, though free from affectation, is dull, prosaic, and uninspired. And it must be remembered that this passage shows the author in his most favourable aspect. In his more technical passages the clearness and simplicity is absent, the prosiness and lack of imagination remain, nakedly hideous. The author of the poem is unknown, the very date is uncertain. The conception of the work is Lucretian, but in point of style, while full of reminiscences of Lucretius, the poem owes most to Vergil, whose hexameter has undoubtedly been taken for a model, though it has lost all its music. Except in the avoidance of elision there is no trace of the influence of Ovid. The poem might easily have been written in the latter half of the reign of Augustus.[352] The obscurity is due to the lack, not the excess of art, and the poem has no special affinity with the Silver Age. Servius and Donatus, indeed, both seem to ascribe the poem to Vergil,[353] while it is found in the MSS. which give us the _Appendix Vergiliana_. But there are considerations which have inclined editors to place it later, in the reign of Nero, or in the opening years of the principate of Vespasian. In one of his letters (Sen. 79) Seneca, writing to his friend Lucilius Junior, urges him to 'describe Etna in his poem, and by so doing treat a topic common to all poets'. The fact that Vergil had already treated it was no obstacle to Ovid's essaying the task, nor was Cornelius Severus deterred by the fact that both Vergil and Ovid had handled the theme. Later he adds, 'If I know you aright, the subject of Aetna will make your mouth water.' Lucilius was procurator in Sicily, and had sung the story of the Syracusan nymph Arethusa.[354] It has been suggested that he[355] wrote the _Aetna_. But Lucilius was an imitator of Ovid,[356] and Seneca advises him _not_ to write a didactic poem on Etna, but to treat it episodically (_in suo carmine_), as Vergil and Ovid[357] had done. It is conceivable that he may have written a didactic poem on the subject, but Seneca's remarks yield absolutely no evidence for the fact. Others have made Cornelius Severus the author,[358] though it is practically certain that his description of the volcano must have occurred in his poem _On the Sicilian War_.[359] But the fact that Seneca makes no reference to the existence of any learned didactic poem on the subject carries a little more weight, and there are marked parallels between Seneca's 'quaestiones Naturales' and passages in the _Aetna_.[360] Further, the very badness of the poem makes us hesitate to place it in the Augustan period. That age, no doubt, produced much bad work as well as good, but a poem so obscure and inartistically prosaic as the _Aetna_ was more likely to be produced and more likely to survive in an imitative and uninspired age such as that which followed on the death of Augustus. But for the evidence of Seneca we should place the poem in the prosaic reign of Tiberius; the considerations adduced from Seneca lead us, though with the utmost hesitation, to place it somewhere between 57 and 79 A.D.[361] Of the lower limit there can be no doubt. The fires of the Phlegraean plains are extinct,[362] therefore the poem was composed before the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 A.D.[363] The question of the authorship of the _Aetna_ has necessarily been treated at greater length than the merits of the poem deserve. It is a work of small importance; its chief value is to show how low it was possible for Roman didactic poetry to sink. In the _Aetna_ it sinks lower than epic in the _Punica_ of Silius Italicus. That poem, for all its portentous dullness, shows a certain ponderous technical skill and literary facility. The author of the _Aetna_, though clearly a man of culture, is never at his ease, the verse is laboured and lacking flexibility, and there is no technical dexterity to compensate for a total absence of genius. The terror and beauty of the mountain crowned with snow and fire find no adequate expression in these monotonous lines. There remains a conglomerate of unoriginal and unsound physical speculation. ii COLUMELLA The _Aetna_ is a Lucretian poem decked out in a Vergilian dress. In the tenth book of Columella we have a didactic poem modelled on the _Georgics_ of Vergil. The author was of Spanish origin, a native of Gades,[364] and the contemporary of his great compatriot the younger Seneca.[365] He had served in a military capacity in Syria,[366] but his real passion was agriculture. His ambition was to write a really practical farmers' manual.[367] He had written nine books in prose, covering the whole range of farming, from the tillage of the soil to the breeding of poultry and cattle, and concluding with a disquisition on wild animals and bee-keeping. But in the tenth book, yielding to the solicitation of his friend Publius Silvinus,[368] he set himself a more exalted task, no less than the writing of a fifth Georgic on gardening. Vergil, in his fourth Georgic (148), had left the theme of gardens for another's singing. Columella takes him at his word. The tenth book is manifestly intended as the crown and conclusion of his work. But later he changed his plan. Another friend, Claudius Augustalis,[369] demanded a paraphrase, or rather an amplification in prose. This resulted in an eleventh book, in which the care of the garden and the duties of the _villicus_ are described, while the work was finally concluded in a twelfth book setting forth the duties of the _villica_.[370] It may be doubted whether Columella was well advised when he yielded to the entreaties of his friend Silvinus and wrote his tenth book in verse. He had no great poetic talent, nor did he possess the sleight of hand of Calpurnius, the imitator of the _Eclogues_. But he possesses qualities which render his work far more attractive than that of Calpurnius. He is a genuine enthusiast, with a real love of the countryside and a charming affection for flowers. And as a stylist he is modest. He makes no attempt at display, no contorted striving after originality. His verse is clear and simple as his tastes. He is content to follow humbly in the footsteps of his great master, the 'starry' Vergil.[371] He imitates and even plagiarizes[372] because he loves, not because it is the fashion. He shows no appreciation of the more intimate harmonies of the Vergilian hexameter; like so many contemporaries, he realizes neither the value of judicious elision nor varied pauses; but his verse, in spite of its monotony and lack of life and movement, is not unmelodious. The poem is a sober work, uninspired in tone, straightforward and simple in plan. It need not be described in detail; its advice is obvious, setting forth the times and seasons to be observed by the gardener, the methods of preparing the soil, the choice of flowers, with all the customary mythological allusions.[373] At its worst, with its tedious lists of the names of flowers, it reads like a seedsman's catalogue,[374] at its best it is lit up with a quaint humour, a love of colour, and a homely yet vivid imagination. Mother earth--'sweet earth' he calls her--is highly personified; that she may be adorned anew, her green locks must be torn from their tangle by the plough, her old raiment stripped from her, her thirst quenched by irrigation, her hunger satisfied with fertilizing manure.[375] The garden is to be no rich man's park for the display of statues and fountains. Its one statue shall be the image of the garden god, its patron and its protector.[376] Its splendour shall be the varied hue of its flower-beds and its wealth in herbs that serve the use of man: verum ubi iam puro discrimine pectita tellus deposito squalore nitens sua semina poscet, pingite tunc varios, terrestria sidera, flores, candida leucoia et flaventia lumina caltae narcissique comas et hiantis saeva leonis ora feri calathisque virentia lilia canis, nec non vel niveos vel caeruleos hyacinthos, tum quae pallet humi, quae frondens purpurat auro, ponatur viola et nimium rosa plena pudoris (94). But when earth, with parted locks combed clear, gleams, all soilure cast aside, and demands the seeds that are her due, call forth the varied hues of flowers, earth's constellations, the white snowflake and the marigold's golden eyes, the narcissus-petals and the blossom that apes the fierce lion's gaping maw; the lily, too, with calix shining white amid its green leaves, the hyacinths white and blue; plant also the violet lying pale upon the ground or purple shot with gold among its leafage, and the rose with its deep shamefaced blush. He loves the return of spring with as deep a love as Vergil's, though he must borrow Vergil's language to describe its coming and its power.[377] But his painting of its harvest of colour is his own: quin et odoratis messis iam floribus instat: iam ver purpureum, iam versicoloribus anni fetibus alma parens pingi sua tempora gaudet. iam Phrygiae loti gemmantia lumina promunt et coniventis oculos violaria solvunt (255). Nay, more, the harvest-time draws near for sweet-scented flowers. The purple spring has come, and kindly mother earth rejoices that her brows are painted bright with all the many-coloured offspring of the year. Now the Phrygian lotus puts forth its jewelled orbs and the violet beds open their winking eyes. All the glories of an Italian spring are in the lines in which a little later he describes the joy of living when the year is young, and the wasting heat of summer is still far off, when it is sweet to be in the sun and watch the garden with its rainbow colours: nunc ver egelidum, nunc est mollissimus annus, dum Phoebus tener ac tenera decumbere in herba suadet et arguto fugientes gramine fontes nec rigidos potare iuvat nec sole tepentes, iamque Dionaeis redimitur floribus hortus, iam rosa mitescit Sarrano clarior ostro. nec tam nubifugo Borea Latonia Phoebe purpureo radiat vultu, nec Sirius ardor sic micat aut rutilus Pyrois aut ore corusco Hesperus, Eoo remeat cum Lucifer ortu, nec tam sidereo fulget Thaumantias arcu quam nitidis hilares conlucent fetibus horti (282). Now cool spring is come, the gentlest season of the year, while Phoebus yet is young and bids us recline in the young herbage, and 'tis sweet to drink the rill that flows among the murmuring grass, with waters neither icy cold nor warm with the sun's heat. Now, too, the garden is crowned with the flowers Dione loves, and the rose ripens brighter than Tyrian purple. Not so brightly does Phoebe, Leto's daughter, shine with radiant face when Boreas has dispersed the clouds, nor glows hot Sirius so, nor ruddy Pyrois, nor Hesperus with shining countenance when he returns as the daystar at the break of dawn, not so fair gleams Iris with her starry bow, as shines the joyous garden with its bright offspring. These are the words of an enthusiast and a poet, and these few outbursts of song redeem the poem from dullness. There is wafted from his pages the perfume of the countryside, and the fresh air breathes welcome amid the hothouse cultures of contemporary poets. And he is almost the only poet of the age that can be read without a wince of pain. He is at least as good a laureate of the garden as Thomson of the seasons, and he has all the grace of humility. Even when the artist fails us, we love the man. II CALPURNIUS SICULUS. THE EINSIEDELN FRAGMENTS AND THE 'PANEGYRICUS IN PISONEM' It may be said of pastoral poetry, without undue disrespect, that it is the most artificial and the least in touch with reality of all the more important forms of poetic art. Even in the hands of a master like Theocritus, invested as it is with an incomparable charm, and distinguished in many respects by an astonishing truth and fidelity, it is never other than highly artificial. For its birth an age was required in which the class whence the majority of poets and their audience are drawn had largely lost touch with country life, or had at any rate developed ideals that can only spring up in town society. This does not imply that men have ceased altogether to appreciate the value of the country life or the beauty of country surroundings, only that they have lost much of their understanding of them; and so their appreciation takes new forms. They love the country as a half-forgotten paradise, they fly back to it as a refuge from the artificiality of town life, but they take much of that artificiality with them. From the time of Theocritus pastoral poetry pure and simple has steadily declined. Great poems have been written with exquisite pastoral elements or even cast in pastoral form. But they have never owed their greatness entirely, or even chiefly, to the pastoral element. That element has merely provided a charming setting for scenes or thoughts that have nothing genuinely pastoral about them. Of the small amount of pastoral poetry extant in Latin it need hardly be said that the _Bucolica_ of Vergil stand in a class by themselves. And yet for all their beauty they are unsatisfactory to those who know and love Theocritus. Their charm is undeniable, but they are immature and too obviously imitative. But Vergil was at least country-born and had a deep sympathy for country life. When we come to the scanty relics of his successors and imitators we are conscious of a lamentable falling away. If Vergil's imitations of Theocritus fail to ring as true as their original, what shall be said of the imitators of Vergil's imitations? Even if they had been true poets, their verse must have rung false. But the poets with whom we have to deal, Calpurnius Siculus and the anonymous author of two poems known as the Einsiedeln fragments, were not genuine poets. They had little of the intimacy with nature and unsophisticated man that was demanded by their self-chosen task. That they possessed some real affection for the country is doubtless true, but it was not the prime inspiration of their verse. They had the ambition to write poetry rather than the call; a slight bent towards the country, heightened by a vague dissatisfaction and weariness with the artificial luxury of Rome, led them to choose pastoral poetry. They make up for depth of observation by a shallow minuteness. In the seven eclogues of Calpurnius may be found a larger assortment of vegetables, of agricultural implements and operations, than in the _Bucolics_ of Vergil, but there is little poetry, pastoral or otherwise. The 'grace of all the Muses' and the breath of the country are fled for ever; the dexterous phrasing of a laborious copyist reigns in their stead. Of the life of Calpurnius Siculus nothing is known and but little can be conjectured. Of his date there can be little doubt. We learn from the evidence of the poems themselves that they were written in the principate of a youthful Caesar (i. 44; iv. 85, 137; vii. 6), beautiful to look upon (vii. 84), the giver of splendid games (vii. 44), the inaugurator of an age of peace, liberty and plenty (i. 42-88; iv _passim_). This points strongly to the opening of Nero's reign. The young Nero was handsome and personally popular, and the opening years of his reign (_quinquennium Neronis_) were famous for good government and prosperity. But there are two further pieces of internal evidence which clinch the argument. A comet is mentioned (i. 77) as appearing in the autumn, an appearance which would tally with that of the comet observed shortly before the death of Claudius in 54 A.D., while the line maternis causam qui vicit Iulis (i. 45) seems clearly to refer to the speech delivered by the young Nero for the people of Ilium,[378] from whom the Iuli, Nero's ancestors on the mother's side, claimed to trace their descent. It may therefore safely be assumed that the poems were written early in the reign of Nero. A most ingenious attempt has been made to throw some light on the identity of their author.[379] He speaks of himself as Corydon, and he has a patron whom he styles Meliboeus. He prays that Meliboeus may bring him before Caesar's notice as Pollio brought Vergil (iv. 157 sqq.; also i. 94). It has been suggested with some plausibility that Meliboeus is no other than C. Calpurnius Piso, the distinguished noble round whom in 65 A.D. centred the great conspiracy against Nero. The evidence rests on the existence of a poem entitled _panegyricus in Pisonem_,[380] in which a nameless poet seeks by his laudations to win Piso for a patron. The style of the poem has a marked resemblance to that of Calpurnius. If, as is possible, it should be assigned to his authorship, it becomes fairly certain that he was a dependent of Piso, and the name Calpurnius would suggest that he may have been the son of one of his freedmen. The eclogues of Calpurnius are seven in number.[381] The first is in praise of the Golden Age, with special reference to the advent of the young princeps. Though given a different setting it is clearly modelled on the fourth eclogue of Vergil. The second, describing a contest of song between two shepherds before a third as judge, follows Vergil even more closely.[382] Parallels might be further elaborated, but it is sufficient to say here that only two of the poems show any originality, namely, the fifth and the seventh. In the former we have the advice given by an aged farmer to his son, to whom he is handing over his farm. It is inclined to be prosy, but is simple and pleasing in tone, and the old countryman may be forgiven if he sometimes seems to be quoting the Georgics. The seventh is a more ambitious effort. A rustic describes the great games that he has seen given in the amphitheatre at Rome. The language, though characteristically decadent in its elaboration, shows considerable originality. The amphitheatre is, for instance, thus described (vii. 30): qualiter haec patulum concedit vallis in orbem et sinuata latus resupinis undique silvis inter continuos curvatur concava montes, sic ibi planitiem curvae sinus ambit arenae et geminis medium se molibus alligat ovum. * * * * * balteus en gemmis, en illita porticus auro certatim radiant; nec non, ubi finis arenae proxima marmoreo praebet spectacula muro, sternitur adiunctis ebur admirabile truncis et coit in rotulum, tereti qui lubricus axe impositos subita vertigine falleret ungues excuteretque feras. auro quoque torta refulgent retia, quae totis in arenam dentibus extant, dentibus aequatis: et erat (mihi crede, Lycota, si qua fides) nostro dens longior omnis aratro. Even as this vale rounds to a wide circle, and with bending sides and slanting woods on every side makes a curved hollow amid the unbroken hills, so there the circle of the curving arena surrounds its level plain and locks either side of its towering structure into an oval about itself.... See how the gangway's parapet studded with gems and the colonnade plated with gold vie with each other's brightness; nay more, where the arena's bound sets forth its shows close to the marble wall, ivory is overlaid in wondrous wise on jointed beams and is bent into a cylinder, which, turning nimbly on its trim axle, may cheat with sudden whirl the wild beast's claws and cast them from it. Nets, too, of twisted gold gleam forth, hung out into the arena on tusks in all their length and of equal size, and--believe me, Lycotas, if you can--each tusk was longer than our ploughshare. In its defence it may be urged that the very nature of the subject demands elaboration, and that the resulting picture has the merit of being vivid despite its elaborate ingenuity. It is in this poem that Calpurnius is seen at his best. Elsewhere his love for minute and elaborate description is merely wearisome. It would be hard, for instance, to find a more tiresomely circuitous method of claiming to be an authority on sheep-breeding than (ii. 36)-- me docet ipsa Pales cultum gregis, ut niger albae terga maritus ovis nascenti mutet in agna quae neque diversi speciem servare parentis possit et ambiguo testetur utrumque colore. Pales herself teaches me how to breed my flocks and tells me how the black ram transforms the fleece of the white ewe in the lamb that comes to birth, that cannot reproduce the colour of its sire, so different from that of its dam, and by its ambiguous hue testifies to either parent. It is difficult to give a poetic description of the act of rumination, but et matutinas revocat palearibus herbas (iii. 17) And recalls to its dewlaps the grass of its morning's meal. is needlessly grotesque. And the vain struggle to give life to old and outworn themes leads to laboured lines such as (iii. 48)-- non sic destricta marcescit turdus oliva, non lepus extremas legulus cum sustulit uvas, ut Lycidas domina sine Phyllide tabidus erro. Not so does the thrush pine when the olives are plucked, not so does the hare pine when the vintager has gathered the last grapes, as I, Lycidas, droop while I roam apart from my mistress Phyllis. Calpurnius yields little to compensate for such defects. He meanders on through hackneyed pastoral landscapes haunted by hackneyed shepherds. It is only on rare occasions that a refreshing glimmer of poetry revives the reader. In lines such as (ii. 56)-- si quis mea vota deorum audiat, huic soli, virides qua gemmeus undas fons agit et tremulo percurrit lilia rivo inter pampineas ponetur faginus ulmos; If any of the gods hear my prayer, to his honour, and his alone, shall his beechwood statue be planted amid my vine-clad elms, where the jewelled stream rolls its green wave and with rippling water runs through the lilies. or, in the pleasant description of the return of spring (v. 16), vere novo, cum iam tinnire volueres incipient nidosque reversa lutabit hirundo, protinus hiberno pecus omne movebis ovili. tune etenim melior vernanti germine silva pullat et aestivas reparabilis incohat umbras, tune florent saltus viridisque renascitur annus,[383] When spring is young and the birds begin to pipe once more, and the swallow returns to plaster its nest anew, then move all your flock from its winter fold. For then the wood sprouts in fresh glory with its spring shoots and builds anew the shades of summer, then all the glades are bright with flowers and the green year is born again. we seem to catch a glimpse of the real countryside; but for the most part Calpurnius paints little save theatrical and _maniéré_ miniatures. Of such a character is the clever and not unpleasing description of the tame stag in the sixth eclogue (30). He shows a pretty fancy and no more. The metre is like the language, easy, graceful, and correct. But the pauses are poorly managed; the rhythm is unduly dactylic; the verse trips all too lightly and becomes monotonous. The total impression that we receive from these poems is one of insignificance and triviality. The style is perhaps less rhetorical and obscure than that of most writers of the age; as a result, these poems lack what is often the one saving grace of Silver Latin poetry, its extreme cleverness. To find verse as dull and uninspired, we must turn to Silius Italicus or the _Aetna_. * * * * * The two short poems contained in a MS. at Einsiedeln and distinguished by the name of their place of provenance are also productions of the Neronian age. The first, in the course of a contest of song between Thamyras and Ladas, with a third shepherd, Midas, as arbiter, sets forth the surpassing skill of Nero as a performer on the _cithara_.[384] The second celebrates the return of the Golden Age to the world now under the beneficent guidance of Nero. Neither poem possesses the slightest literary importance; both are polished but utterly insipid examples of foolish court flattery. The author is unknown. An ingenious suggestion[385] has been made that he is no other than Calpurnius Piso, the supposed Meliboeus of Calpurnius Siculus. The second of these eclogues begins, 'Quid tacitus, Mystes?' The fourth eclogue of Calpurnius Siculus begins (Meliboeus loquitur), 'Quid tacitus, Corydon?' Is Meliboeus speaking in person and quoting his own poem? It may be so, but the evidence is obviously not such as to permit any feeling of certainty. But it is at least probable that the poet had access to the court and had been praised by Nero. Such is the most plausible interpretation of a passage in the first eclogue, where Ladas, in answer to Thamyras, who claims the prize on the ground that his song shall be of Caesar, replies (16, 17): et me sidereo respexit Cynthius ore laudatamque chelyn iussit variare canendo.[386] On me, too, has the Cynthian god cast his starry glance and bidden me accompany the lyre he praised with diverse song. Whether the author be Piso or another, the poems do him small credit. The _Panegyricus in Pisonem_ remains to be considered. Attributed to Vergil by one MS.,[387] to Lucan by another,[388] the poem is certainly by neither. Quite apart from stylistic evidence, which is convincing against its attribution to Lucan, it is almost certain that the name of Lucan has been wrongly inserted for that of Vergil. That it is not by Vergil would be clear from the very inferior nature of the verse, but it can further be shown that the Piso addressed is the Calpurnius Piso of the reigns of Claudius and Nero to whom we have alluded above. If the account of Piso given by Tacitus be compared with the characteristics described in the _Panegyricus_, it will be found that both alike refer in strong terms to his eloquence in the law courts so readily exercised in defence of accused persons, and also to his affability and capacity for friendship.[389] Further, we have the evidence of a scholium on Juvenal as to his skill in the game of draughts.[390] He played so well that crowds would throng to see him. One of the chief points mentioned in the _Panegyricus_ is the skill of Piso at the same game.[391] Nor is it a mere casual allusion; on the contrary, the writer treats this portion of his eulogy with even greater elaboration than the rest. There can, therefore, be little doubt as to the date of the poem. It is addressed to Calpurnius Piso after his rise to fame (i.e. during the latter portion of the principate of Claudius, or during the earlier part of the reign of Nero). The poet prays that Piso may be to him what Maecenas was to Vergil. It is hardly possible for a poem of this type to possess any real interest for others than the recipient of the flattery and its author. But in this case the poet has done his work well. The flattery never becomes outrageous and is expressed in easy flowing verse and graceful diction. At times the language is genuinely felicitous. Any great man might be proud to receive such a tribute as (129)-- tu mitis et acri asperitate carens positoque per omnia fastu inter ut aequales unus numeraris amicos, obsequiumque doces et amorem quaeris amando. Mild is thy temper and free from sharp harshness. Thou layest aside thy pride in thy every act, and among thy friends thou art counted a friend and equal, thou teachest men to follow thee and seekest to be loved by loving. There is, moreover, little straining after effect and little real obscurity. The difficulties of the description of Piso's draught-playing are due to our ignorance of the exact nature of the game.[392] The actual language is at least as lucid as Pope's famous description of the game of ombre in _The Rape of the Lock_. The verse is of the usual post-Augustan type, showing strongly the primary influence of Vergil modified by the secondary influence of Ovid. It is light and easy and not ill-suited to its subject. It has distinct affinities, both in metre and diction, with the verse of Calpurnius Siculus, and may be by the same hand; but the resemblance is not so close as to afford anything approaching positive proof. Minor poets, lacking all individuality, the victims and not the controlling forces of the tendencies of the age, are apt to resemble one another. There are, however, two noteworthy passages which point strongly to the identity of the author of the _Panegyricus_ with the Bucolic poet. The former, addressing Piso as his patron (246), says: mea vota si mentem subiere tuam, memorabilis olim tu mihi Maecenas tereti cantaberé versu. If my prayers reach thy mind, thou shalt be sung of as Maecenas in my slender verse, and future ages shall tell of thy glory. The latter, addressing his patron Meliboeus and begging him to commend him to Caesar, exclaims (iv. 152): o mihi quae tereti decurrent carmina versu tunc, Meliboee, meum si quando montibus istis (i.e. at Rome) dicar habere larem. O how shall my songs trip in slender verse then, Meliboeus, if ever men shall say of me 'He has a house on yonder mountain'. Is it a mere coincidence, a plagiarism, or a direct allusion? There is no certainty, but the coincidence is--to say the least--suggestive. If the identity of authorship be assumed as correct, it is probable that the eclogues are the later production. To place one's patron among the _dramatis personae_ of an eclogue argues a nearer intimacy than the writing of a formal panegyric. That the poet is more at home as a panegyrist than as a writer of idylls does not affect the question. In such an age such a result was to be expected. III THE ILIAS LATINA Latin poetry may almost be said to have begun with Livius Andronicus' translation of the _Odyssey_ into the rude Saturnian metre. This translation had great vogue as a school book. But the _Iliad_ remained untranslated, and it was only natural that later authors should try their hand upon it. Translations were produced in Republican times by Cn. Matius[393] and Ninnius Crassus,[394] but neither work attained to any popularity. With the growth of the knowledge of Greek and its increasing use as a medium of instruction in the schools on the one hand, and the appearance of Vergil and the rise of the Aeneas saga on the other, the demand for a translation of the _Iliad_ naturally became less. The Silver Age arrived with the problem unsolved. It was a period when writers abounded who would have been better employed on translation than on any attempt at original work. Further, in spite of the general knowledge of Greek, a translation of Homer would have its value in the schools both as a handbook for the subject-matter and as a 'crib '. Three works of the kind seem to have been produced between the reigns of Tiberius and Nero. Attius Labeo[395] translated not only the _Iliad_ but also the _Odyssey_ into hexameters. But it was a poor performance. It was a baldly literal translation, paying small attention to the meaning of the original.[396] Persius pours scorn upon it, and one verse has survived to confirm our worst suspicions[397]-- crudum manduces Priamum Priamique pisinnos. Polybius, the well-known freedman of Claudius, also produced a work, which is praised by Seneca as having introduced Homer and Vergil to a yet larger public than they already enjoyed, and as preserving the charm of the original in an altered form.[398] As Polybius had dealt with Vergil as well as Homer, it may be conjectured that the work praised by Seneca was a prose paraphrase. Lastly, there is the _Ilias Latina_, which has been preserved to the present day. It is written in graceful hexameter verse, and is an abridgement rather than a translation. It consists of 1,070 lines, of which the first five books in fact claim a little more than half. The author wearied of his task and finished off the remaining nineteen books in summary fashion. While the twenty-second occupies as much as sixty lines, the abridgements of the thirteenth and seventeenth are reduced to a meagre seven and three lines respectively. That such work is of small importance is obvious. It must have been useless from its birth save as a handbook for the schools, and even for this purpose its value must have been greatly impaired by its lack of proportion. Its survival can only be accounted for on the assumption that it was written and employed as a textbook. In fact, during the Middle Ages, when the original was a sealed book, there is definite evidence that it was so used.[399] The work is trivial, but might well have been worse. The language is clear and often vigorous, and there is an easy grace about the verse which shows that the author was a man of culture, knowing his Vergil well and his Ovid better. The date cannot be proved with certainty, but there can be no doubt that it was written before the death of Nero. The lines (899), quem (Aenean) nisi servasset magnarum rector aquarum ut profugus laetis Troiam repararet in arvis, augustumque genus claris submitteret astris, non carae gentis nobis mansisset origo, Unless the ruler of the mighty deep had preserved Aeneas to found in exile a new Troy in happier fields, and beget a line of princes to shine among the stars, the stock of the race we love would not have endured to bless us. can only have been written under the Julian Dynasty. The work is clearly post-Ovidian and must therefore be attributed to the principates of Tiberius, Gaius, Claudius, or Nero. Further evidence of date is entirely wanting. No meaning can be attached to the heading Pindarus found in certain MSS.[400] There is, however, an interesting though scarcely more fruitful problem presented by the possible existence of two acrostics in the course of the poem.[401] The initial letters of the first nine lines spell the name 'Italices', while the last eight lines yield the word 'scqipsit'. Baehrens, by a not very probable alteration in the eighth line, procures the name 'Italicus', while a slighter and more natural change yields 'scripsit' at the close.[402] Further, a late MS. gives Bebius Italicus as the name of the author.[403] On these grounds the poem has been attributed to Silius Italicus. But Martial makes no reference to the existence of this work in any of his references to Silius, and indeed suggests that Silius only took to writing poetry after his withdrawal from public life.[404] This would make the poem post-Neronian, which, as we have seen, is most improbable. Further, the style of the verse is very different from that of the _Punica_. When, over and above these considerations, it is remembered that the acrostics can only be produced by emendation of the text, the critic has no course open to him but to abandon the attribution to Silius and to give up the problem of the acrostics as an unprofitable curiosity of literature. IV LOST MINOR POETS In addition to the poets of whom we have already treated as writing under the Julian Dynasty there must have been many others of whom chance or their own insignificance has deprived us. But few names have survived,[405] and only two of these lost poets merit mention here, the erotic poet Lentulus Gaetulicus and the lyric writer Caesius Bassus. Gnaeus Cornelius Lentulus Gaetulicus was consul in 26 A.D.,[406] and for ten years was legatus in Upper Germany, where his combination of firmness and clemency won him great popularity.[407] He conspired against Caligula while holding this command, and was put to death.[408] Pliny the younger speaks of him as the writer of sportive and lascivious erotic verse, and Martial writes of him in very similar terms.[409] His mistress was named Caesennia, and was herself a poetess.[410] It is possible that the poems in the Greek Anthology under the title [Greek: Gaitoulikou][411] may be from his pen, but the only fragment of his Latin poems which survives is from a work in hexameters, and describes the geographical situation of Britain.[412] More important is the lyric poet Caesius Bassus,[413] whose loss is the more to be regretted because of the very scanty remains of Roman lyric verse that have survived to modern times. Statius attempted with but indifferent success to imitate the Sapphics and Alcaics of Horace, while the plays of Seneca provide a considerable quantity of lyric choruses of varying degrees of merit. But of lyric writers pure and simple there is scarcely a trace. That they existed we know from Quintilian. If we may trust him, certain of his contemporaries[414] attained to considerable distinction in this branch of poetry--that is to say, they surpassed all Roman lyric poets subsequent to Horace. But when all is said, it is scarcely possible to go beyond Quintilian's emphatic statement, that of Roman lyricists Horace alone repays reading. If any other name deserves mention it is that of Caesius Bassus, but he is inferior to Quintilian's own contemporaries. Caesius Bassus is best known to us as the editor of the satires of Persius. The sixth satire is actually addressed to him: admovit iam bruma foco te, Basse, Sabino? iamne lyra et tetrico vivunt tibi pectine chordae? mire opifex numeris veterum primordia vocum atque marem strepitum fidis intendisse Latinae, mox iuvenes agitare iocos et pollice honesto egregius lusisse senex.[415] Has winter made you move yet to your Sabine fireside, dear Bassus? Are your lyre and its strings and the austere quill that runs over them yet in force? Marvellous artist as you are at setting to music the primitive antiquities of our language, the manly utterance of the Latian harp, and then showing yourself excellent in your old age at wakening young loves and frolicking over the chords with a virtuous touch. CONINGTON. The only information yielded by this passage is that Bassus had a Sabine villa, that he was already advanced in years, that he affected 'the simple and manly versification of antiquity', and that he dealt also with erotic themes. But few other facts are known to us. He wrote a treatise on metre--a portion of which has been preserved to the present day,[416] and he perished at his Campanian villa in 79 A.D., during the great eruption of Vesuvius.[417] The fragments of verse enshrined in his metrical treatise suggest that he wrote in a large variety of metres,[418] but they may be no more than examples invented solely to illustrate metres unfamiliar in Latin. The one quotation that is explicitly made from his lyrical poems is, curiously enough, a hexameter line. As to his literary merits or defects, it is now impossible even to guess. CHAPTER VII THE EMPERORS FROM VESPASIAN TO TRAJAN AND MINOR POETS I THE EMPERORS AND POETS WHOSE WORKS ARE LOST After the death of Nero and the close of the Civil War a happier era, both for literature and the world at large, was inaugurated by the accession of Vespasian in 69 A.D. A man of low birth and of little culture, he yet had a true appreciation of art and literature. Of his own writing we know nothing save that he left behind him memoirs.[419] But we have abundant evidence that he showed himself a liberal patron of the arts. He gave rich rewards to poets and sculptors,[420] effected all that was possible to repair the great loss of works of art occasioned by the burning of the Capitol,[421] and did what he could for the stage, perhaps even attempting to revive the legitimate drama.[422] Above all, he set aside a large sum annually for the support of Greek and Latin professors of rhetoric,[423] the first instance in the history of Rome of State endowment of education. Against this we must set his expulsion from Italy of philosophers and astrologers, an intemperate and presumably ineffective act, prompted by reasons of State and probably without any appreciable influence on literature.[424] His sons, however, had received all the advantages of the highest education. Of Titus' (79-81 A.D.) achievements in literature we have no information save that he aspired to be both orator and poet. The language used in praise of his efforts by Pliny the elder, our one authority on this point, is so extravagant as to be virtually meaningless.[425] Of the literary exploits of his brother Domitian (81-96 A.D.) there is more to be said. It pleased him to lay claim to distinction both in prose and verse.[426] His only prose work of which any record remains was a treatise on the care of the hair;[427] his own baldness rankled in his mind and turned the _calvus Nero_ of Juvenal into a hair specialist. As to his poems it is almost doubtful if he ever wrote any. He professed an enthusiasm for poetry, an art which, according to Suetonius, he had neglected in his youth and despised when he came to the throne. But Quintilian, Valerius Flaccus, and Martial[428] all load him with praise of various degrees of fulsomeness, though, reading between the lines of Quintilian, it is easy to see that Domitian's output must have been exceedingly small. The evidence of these three authors goes to show that he had contemplated, perhaps even begun, an epic on the achievements of his brother Titus in the Judaic War. Whether these _caelestia carmina belli_, as Martial calls them, ever existed, save in the imagination of courtiers and servile poets, there is nothing to show. If they did exist there seems no reason to regret their loss. Domitian's chief service to literature, if indeed it was a true service, was the establishment of the Agon Capitolinus in 86, a quinquennial festival at which prizes were awarded not only for athletics and chariot-racing, but for declamations in verse and prose,[429] and the institution of a similar, though annual, contest at his own palace on the Alban Mount, which took place as often as the great festival of Minerva, known as the Quinquatria, came round.[430] But his interest in literature was only superficial; he had no originality and read nothing save the memoirs and edicts of Tiberius.[431] His capricious cruelty extended itself to artists and authors;[432] twice (in 89 and 93 A.D.), following his father's example, he banished philosophers and astrologers from Rome;[433] the crime of having written laudatory biographies of the Stoics Thrasea and Helvidius Priscus brought Arulenus Rusticus and Herennius Senecio to their deaths.[434] But Domitian's tyranny had little effect on _belles-lettres_, however adverse it may have been to free-spoken philosophy, rhetoric, or history. Valerius Flaccus, Silius, Statius, and Martial, all wrote during his reign, and the works of the last-named poet and Quintilian give ample evidence of widespread literary activity. The minor poet replenished the earth, and the prizes for literature awarded at the Agon Capitolinus and the festival of the Alban Mount must have been a real stimulus to writing, even though the type of literature produced by such a stimulus may have been scarcely worth producing. The worst feature of the poetry of the time is the almost incredibly fulsome flattery to which the tyranny of Domitian gave rise. As a compensation we have in the two succeeding reigns the biting satire of Juvenal and Tacitus, rendered all the keener by its long suppression under the last of the Flavian dynasty. But, however impossible it may have been to write really effective satire during the Flavian dynasty, of poets there was no lack. It was, moreover, under the Flavians that there sprang up that reaction towards a saner style to which we have already referred as finding its expression in the Ciceronianism of Quintilian, and to a lesser degree in the Vergilianism of Valerius, Statius, and Silius. Of lesser luminaries there were enough and to spare. Serranus and Saleius Bassus are both warmly commended by Quintilian for their achievements in Epic. The former died young, before his powers had ripened to maturity, but showed great soundness of style and high promise.[435] Of Saleius Quintilian[436] says, 'He had a vigorous and poetic genius, but it was not mellowed by age.' That is to say, he died young, like Serranus. In the _Dialogus_ of Tacitus he is spoken of as the best of men and the most finished of poets. He won Vespasian's favour and received a gift from him of five hundred thousand sesterces. His poems brought him no material profit; both Tacitus and Juvenal emphasize this point: contentus fama iaceat Lucanus in hortis marmoreis; at Serrano tenuique Saleio gloria quantalibet quid erit, si gloria tantum est.[437] Statius' father, a distinguished teacher of rhetoric at Naples, had written a poem on the burning of the Capitol in 69 A.D., and was only prevented by death[438] from singing the great eruption of Vesuvius. Arruntius Stella of Patavium,[439] the friend of Statius and Martial, wrote elegies to his wife Violentilla. Turnus,[440] like Juvenal the son of a freedman, attained considerable success as a satirist, while the two distinguished soldiers, Verginius Rufus[441] and Vestricius Spurinna,[442] wrote light erotic verse and lyrics respectively. In addition to these there are a whole host of minor poets mentioned by Statius and Martial. In fact the writing of verse was the most fashionable occupation for the leisure time of a cultivated gentleman. With Nerva and Trajan the happiest epoch of the principate set in. Nerva (96-98 A.D.) sprung from a line of distinguished jurists, was celebrated by Martial as the Tibullus of his time,[443] and is praised by the younger Pliny for the excellence of his light verses.[444] Trajan, his successor (98-117 A.D.), though a man of war, rather than a man of letters, wrote a history of the Dacian wars,[445] and possessed--as his letters to Pliny testify--a remarkable power of expressing himself tersely and clearly. He was, like Vespasian, a generous patron to rhetoric and education,[446] and the founder of the important library known as the _Bibliotheca Ulpia_.[447] But the great service which he and his predecessor rendered to literature was, as Pliny and Tacitus bear eloquent witness, the gift of freedom. This did more for prose than for poetry, save for one important fact--it was the means of enriching the world with the satires of Juvenal. If the quantity of the literature surviving from the principates of Nerva and Trajan is small, its quality is unmistakable. Pliny the younger, Tacitus, and Juvenal form a trio whose equal is to be found at no other period of the post-Augustan principate, while the letters of Pliny give proof of the existence of a highly cultivated society devoted to literature of all kinds. Poets were numerous even if they were not good. Few names, however, survive, and those have but the slightest interest for us. It will suffice to mention three of them: Passennus Paulus, Sentius Augurinus, and the younger Pliny. With the dramatic poets, Pomponius Bassulus and Vergilius Romanus, we have already dealt.[448] Pliny shall speak for himself and his friends. 'Passennus Paulus,' he writes,[449] 'a distinguished Roman knight of great learning, is a writer of elegies. This runs in the family; for he is a fellow townsman of Propertius and indeed counts him among his ancestors.' In a later letter[450] he speaks with solicitude of his failing health, and goes on to describe the characteristics of his work. 'In his verse he imitates the ancients, paraphrases them, and reproduces them, above all Propertius, from whom he traces his descent. He is a worthy scion of the house, and closely resembles his great ancestor in that sphere in which he of old excelled. If you read his elegies you will find them highly polished, possessed of great sensuous charm, and quite obviously written in the house of Propertius. He has lately betaken himself to lyric verse, and imitates Horace with the same skill with which he has imitated Propertius. Indeed, if kinship counts for anything in the world of letters, you would deem him Horace's kinsman as well.' Pliny concludes with a warm tribute to Passennus' character. The picture is a pleasant one, but it is startling and significant to find Pliny awarding such praise to one who was frankly imitative, if he was not actually a plagiarist.[451] Pliny is not less complimentary to Sentius Augurinus. 'I have been listening,' he writes,[452] 'to a recitation given by Sentius Augurinus. It gave me the greatest pleasure, and filled me with the utmost admiration for his talent. He calls his verses "trifles" (_poematia_). Much is written with great delicacy, much with great elevation of style; many of the poems show great charm, many great tenderness; not a few are honey-sweet, not a few bitter and mordant. It is some time since anything so perfect has been produced.' The next clause, however, betrays the reason, in part at any rate, for Pliny's admiration. In the course of his recitation he had produced a small hendecasyllabic poem in praise of Pliny's own verses. Pliny proceeds to quote it with every expression of gratification and approval. It is certainly neatly turned and well expressed, but it is such as any cultivated gentleman who had read his Catullus and Martial might produce, and can hardly have been of interest to any one save Augurinus and Pliny. Pliny was, in fact, with all his admirable gifts, one of the principal and most amiable members of a highly cultivated mutual admiration society. He was a poet himself, though only a few lines of the poems praised by Augurinus have survived to undergo the judgement of a more critical age. Pliny has, however, given an interesting little sketch of his poetical career in the fourth letter of the seventh book. 'I have always had a taste for poetry,' he tells his friend Pontius; 'nay, I was only fourteen when I composed a tragedy in Greek. What was it like? you ask. I know not; it was called a tragedy. Later, when returning from my military service, I was weather-bound in the island of Icaria, and wrote elegiac poems in Latin about that island and the sea, which bears the same name. I have occasionally attempted heroic hexameters, but it is only quite recently that I have taken to writing hendecasyllables. You shall hear of their origin and of the occasion which gave them birth. Some writings of Asinius Gallus were being read aloud to me in my Laurentine villa; in these works he was comparing his father with Cicero; we came upon an epigram of Cicero dedicated to his freedman Tiro. Shortly after, about noon--for it was summer--I retired to take my siesta, and finding that I could not sleep, I began to reflect how the very greatest orators have taken delight in composing this style of verse, and have hoped to win fame thereby. I set my mind to it, and, quite contrary to my expectations after so long desuetude, produced in an extremely short space of time the following verses on that very subject which had provoked me to write.' Thirteen hexameter verses follow of a mildly erotic character. They are not peculiarly edifying, and are certainly very far from being poetry. He continues: 'I then turned my attention to expressing the same thoughts in elegiac verse; I rattled these off at equal speed, and wrote some additional lines, being beguiled into doing so by the fluency with which I wrote the metre. On my return to Rome I read the verses to my friends. They approved. Then in my leisure moments, especially when travelling, I attempted other metres. Finally, I resolved to follow the example of many other writers and compose a whole separate volume in the hendecasyllabic metre; nor do I regret having done so. For the book is read, copied, and even sung; even Greeks chant my verses to the sound of the _cithara_ or the lyre; their passion for the book has taught them to use the Latin tongue.' It was this volume of hendecasyllables about which Pliny displays such naïve enthusiasm that led Augurinus to compare Pliny to Calvus and Catullus. Pliny's success had come to him comparatively late in life; but it emboldened him to the composition of another volume of poems[453] in various metres, which he read to his friends. He cites one specimen in elegiacs[454] which awakens no desire for more, for it is fully as prosy as the hexameters to which we have already referred. Of the hendecasyllables nothing survives, but Pliny tells us something as to their themes and the manner of their composition.[455] 'I amuse myself by writing them in my leisure moments at the bath or in my carriage. I jest in them and make merry, I play the lover, I weep, I make lamentation, I vent my anger, or describe something or other now in a pedestrian, now in a loftier vein.' As this little catalogue would suggest, these poems were not always too respectable. The good Pliny, like Martial, thinks it necessary to apologize[456] for his freedom in conforming to the fashionable licence of his age by protesting that his muse may be wanton, but his life is chaste. We can readily believe him, for he was a man of kindly heart and high ideals, whose simple vanity cannot obscure his amiability. But it is difficult to believe that the loss of his poetry is in any way a serious loss to the world.[457] We have given Pliny the poet more space than is his due; our excuse must be the interest of his engaging self-revelations. In spite of Pliny's enthusiasm for his poet friends, there is no reason to suppose that the reign of Trajan saw the production of any poetry, save that of Juvenal, which even approached the first rank. With the accession of Hadrian we enter on a fresh era, characterized by the rise of a new prose style and the almost entire disappearance of poetry. Rome had produced her last great poet. The _Pervigilium Veneris_ and a few slight but beautiful fragments of Tiberianus are all that illumine the darkness till we come upon the interesting but uninspired elegiacs of Rutilius Namatianus, the curiously uneven and slipshod poetry of Ausonius, and the graceful, but cold and lifeless perfection of the heroic hexameters of Claudian. II SULPICIA Poetesses were not rare at Rome during the first century of our era; the _scribendi cacoethes_ extended to the fair sex sufficiently, at any rate, to evoke caustic comment both from Martial[458] and Juvenal.[459] By a curious coincidence, the only poetesses of whose work we have any record are both named Sulpicia. The elder Sulpicia belongs to an earlier age; she formed one of the Augustan literary circle of which her uncle Messala was the patron, and left a small collection of elegiac poems addressed to her lover, and preserved in the same volume as the posthumous poems of Tibullus, to whose authorship they were for long attributed.[460] The younger Sulpicia was a contemporary of the poet Martial, and, like her predecessor, wrote erotic verse. Frank and outspoken as was the earlier poetess, in this respect at least her namesake far surpassed her. For the younger Sulpicia's plain-speaking, if we may judge from the comments of ancient writers[461] and the one brief fragment of her love-poems that has survived,[462] was of a very different character and must at least have bordered on the obscene. But her work attracted attention; her fame is associated with her love for Calenus, a love that was long[463] and passionate. She continued to be read even in the days of Ausonius and Sidonius Apollinaris. Martial compares her with Sappho, and her songs of love seem to have rung true, even though their frankness may have been of a kind generally associated with passions of a looser character.[464] If, as a literal interpretation of Martial[465] would lead us to infer, Calenus was her husband, the poems of Sulpicia confront us with a spectacle unique in ancient literature--a wife writing love-poems to her husband. Her language came from the heart, not from book-learning; she was a poetess such as Martial delighted to honour. omnes Sulpiciam legant puellae, uni quae cupiunt viro placere; omnes Sulpiciam legant mariti, uni qui cupiunt placere nuptae. non haec Colchidos adserit furorem, diri prandia nec refert Thyestae; Scyllam, Byblida nec fuisse credit: sed castos docet et probos amores, lusus delicias facetiasque. cuius carmina qui bene aestimarit, nullam dixerit esse nequiorem, nullam dixerit esse sanctiorem[466]. Read your Sulpicia, maidens all, Whose husband shall your sole love be; Read your Sulpicia, husbands all, Whose wife shall reign, and none but she. No theme for her Medea's fire, Nor orgy of Thyestes dire; Scylla and Byblis she'd deny, Of love she sang and purity, Of dalliance and frolic gay; Who should have well appraised her lay Had said none were more chaste than she, Yet fuller none of amorous glee. A. E. STREET. Although the thought of what _procacitas_[467] may have meant in a lady of Domitian's reign raises something of a shudder, and although it is to be feared that Martial, when he goes on to say (loc. cit.) tales Egeriae iocos fuisse udo crediderim Numae sub antro, Such sport I ween Egeria gave To Numa in his spring-drenched cave. A. E. STREET. had that in his mind which would have scandalized the pious lawgiver of Rome, we may yet regret the loss of poems which, if Martial's language is not merely the language of flattery, may have breathed a fresher and freer spirit than is often to be found in the poets of the age. Catullus and Sappho would seem to have been Sulpicia's models, but her poems have left so little trace behind them that it is impossible to speak with certainty. As to their metre we are equally ill-informed. The fragment of two lines quoted above is in iambic _senarii_. If we may believe the evidence[468] of a satirical hexameter poem attributed to Sulpicia, she also wrote in hendecasyllables and scazons. The genuineness of this poem is, however, open to serious doubt. It consists of seventy hexameters denouncing the expulsion of the philosophers by Domitian, and is known by the title of _Sulpiciae satira_.[469] That it purports to be by the poetess beloved of Calenus is clear from an allusion to their passion.[470] Serious doubts have, however, been cast upon its genuineness. It is urged that the work is ill-composed, insipid, and tasteless, and that it contains not a few marked peculiarities in diction and metre, together with more than one historical inaccuracy. The inference suggested is that the poem is not by Sulpicia, but at least two centuries later in date. It may readily be admitted that the poem is almost entirely devoid of any real merit, that its diction is obscure and slovenly, its metre lame and unimpressive. But the critics of the poem are guilty of great exaggeration.[471] Many of its worst defects are undoubtedly due to the exceedingly corrupt state of the text; further, it is hard to see what interest a satire directed against Domitian would possess centuries after his death, nor is it easy to imagine what motive could have led the supposed forger to attribute his work to Sulpicia. The balance of probability inclines, though very slightly, in favour of the view that the work is genuine. This is unfortunate; for the perusal of this curious satire on the hypothesis of its genuineness appreciably lessens our regret for the loss of Sulpicia's love poetry and arouses serious suspicion as to the veracity of Martial. It must, however, in justice be remembered that it does not follow that Sulpicia was necessarily a failure as a lyric writer because she had not the peculiar gift necessary for satire. The absence of the training of the rhetorical schools from a woman's education might well account for such a failure. At the worst, Sulpicia stands as an interesting example of the type of womanhood at which Juvenal levelled some of his wildest and most ill-balanced invective. CHAPTER VIII VALERIUS FLACCUS The political tendency towards retrenchment and reform that marks the reign of Vespasian finds its literary parallel in a reaction against the rhetoric of display that culminated in Seneca and Lucan. This movement is most strongly marked in the prose of Quintilian and the _Dialogus_ of Tacitus, but finds a faint echo in the world of poets as well. The three epic poets of the period--Valerius Flaccus, Statius, and Silius Italicus--though they, too, have suffered much from their rhetorical training, are all clear followers of Vergil. They, like their predecessors, find it hard to say things naturally, but they do not to the same extent go out of their way with the deliberate intention of saying things unnaturally.[472] We may condemn them as phrase-makers, though many a modern poet of greater reputation is equally open to the charge. But their phrase-making has not the flamboyant quality of the Neronian age. If it is no less wearisome, it is certainly less offensive. They do not lack invention; their mere technical skill is remarkable; they fail because they lack the supreme gifts of insight and imagination. Valerius Flaccus chose a wiser course than Lucan and Silius Italicus. He turned not to history, but to legend, for his theme; and the story of the Argonauts, on which his choice lighted, possessed one inestimable advantage. Well-worn and hackneyed as it was, it possessed the secret of eternal youth. 'Age could not wither it nor custom stale its infinite variety.' The poorest of imitative poetasters could never have made it wholly dull, and Valerius Flaccus was more than a mere poetaster. Of his life and position little is known. His name is given by the MSS. as Gaius Valerius Flaccus Setinus Balbus.[473] The name Setinus suggests that he may have been a native of Setia. As there were three Setias, one in Italy and two in Spain, this clue gives us small help. It has been suggested[474] that the peculiarities of his diction are due to his being of Spanish origin. But we have no evidence as to the nature of Spanish Latin, while the authors of known Spanish birth, who found fame in the Silver Age--Seneca, Lucan, Martial, Quintilian, Columella--show no traces of their provenance. No more helpful is the view that he is one Flaccus of Patavium, the poet-friend to whom two of Martial's epigrams are addressed.[475] For Martial's acquaintance was poor and is exhorted to abandon poetry as unlucrative, whereas Valerius Flaccus had some social standing and, not improbably, some wealth. From the opening of the _Argonautica_ we learn that he held the post of _quindecimvir sacris faciundis_.[476] But there our knowledge of the poet ends, save for one solitary allusion in Quintilian, the sole reference to Valerius in any ancient writer. In his survey of Latin literature[477] he says _multum in Valerio Flacco nuper amisimus_. The work of Quintilian having been published between the years 93 and 95 A.D., the death of Valerius Flaccus may be placed about 90 A.D. The poem seems to have been commenced shortly after the capture of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. At the opening of the first book[478] Valerius addresses Vespasian in the conventional language of courtly flattery with appropriate reference to his voyages in northern seas during his service in Britain, a reference doubly suitable in a poem which is largely nautical and geographical. He excuses himself from taking the obvious subject of the Jewish war on the ground that that theme is reserved for the inspired pen of Domitian. It is for him to describe Titus, his brother, dark with the dust of war, launching the fires of doom and dealing destruction from tower to tower along the ramparts of Jerusalem.[479] The progress of the work was slow. By the time the third book is reached we find references to the eruption of Vesuvius that buried Pompeii and Herculaneum in 79 A.D.,[480] while in the two concluding books there seem to be allusions to Roman campaigns in the Danube lands, perhaps those undertaken by Domitian in 89 A.D.[481] At line 468 of the eighth book the poem breaks off suddenly. It is possible that this is due to the ravages of time or to the circumstances of the copyist of our archetype, but consideration of internal evidence points strongly to the conclusion that Valerius died with his work uncompleted. Not only do the words of Quintilian (l.c.) suggest a poet who left a great work unfinished, but the poem itself is full of harshnesses and inconsistencies of a kind which so slow and careful a craftsman would assuredly have removed had the poem been completed and received its final revision.[482] These blemishes leave us little room for doubt. The poem that has come down to us is a fragment lacking the _limae labor_. Like the _Thebais_ of Statius and the _Aeneid_ itself, the work was probably planned to fill twelve books. The poem breaks off with the marriage of Medea and Jason on the Isle of Peuce at the mouth of the Danube, where they are overtaken by Medea's brother Absyrtus, who has come in anger to reclaim his sister and take vengeance on the stranger who has beguiled her. It is clear that the Argonauts[483] were, as in Apollonius Rhodius, to escape up the Danube and reach another sea. In Apollonius they descended from the head waters of the Danube by some mythical river to the Adriatic; it is in the Adriatic that Absyrtus is encountered and slain; it is in Phaeacia that Jason and Medea are married. In Valerius both these incidents take place in the Isle of Peuce, at the Danube's mouth. The inference is that Valerius contemplated a different scheme for his conclusion. It has been pointed out[484] that a mere 'reproduction of Apollonius' episodes could not have occupied four books'; and it is suggested that Valerius definitely brought his heroes into relation to the various Italian places[485] connected with the Argonautic legend, while he may even, as a compliment to Vespasian,[486] have brought them back 'by way of the North Sea past Britain and Gaul'. This ingenious conjectural reconstruction has some probability, slight as is the evidence on which it rests. Valerius was almost bound to give his epic a Roman tinge. More convincing, however, is the suggestion of the same critic[487] that the poem was designed to exceed the scope of the epic of Apollonius and to have included the death of Pelias, the malignant and usurping uncle, who, to get rid of Jason, compels him to the search of the golden fleece. To the retribution that came upon him there are two clear references[488] and only the design to describe it could justify the introduction of the suicide of Jason's parents at the outset of the first book, a suicide to which they are driven to avoid death at the hands of Pelias. The scope of the unwritten books is, however, of little importance in comparison with the execution of the existing portion of the poem. The Argonaut Saga has its weaknesses as a theme for epic. It is too episodic, it lacks unity and proportion. Save for the struggle in Colchis and the loves of Jason and Medea, there is little deep human interest. These defects, however, find their compensation in the variety and brilliance of colour, and, in a word, the romance that is inseparable from the story. The scene is ever changing, each day brings a new marvel, a new terror. Picturesqueness atones for lack of epic grandeur. For that reason the theme was well suited to the Silver Age, when picturesqueness and rich invention of detail predominated at the expense of poetic dignity and kindling imagination. In many ways Valerius does justice to his subject, in spite of the initial difficulty with which he was confronted. Apollonius Rhodius had made the story his own; Varro of Atax had translated Apollonius: both in its Greek and Latin forms the story was familiar to Roman readers. It was hard to be original. Much as Valerius owes to his greater predecessor, he yet succeeds in showing no little originality in his portrayal of character and incident, and in a few cases in his treatment of plot.[489] In one particular indeed he has markedly improved on his model; he has made Jason, the hero of his epic, a real hero; conventional he may be, but he still is a leader of men. In Apollonius, on the other hand, he plays a curiously inconspicuous part; he is, in fact, the weakest feature of the poem; he is in despair from the outset, and at no point shows genuine heroic qualities; he is at best a peerless wooer and no more. Here, however, he is exalted by the two great battles of Cyzicus and Colchis; it is in part his prowess in the latter battle that wins Medea's heart. In this connexion we may also notice a marked divergence from Apollonius as regards the plot. Aeetes has promised Jason the fleece if he will aid him against his brother Perses, who is in revolt against him with a host of Scythians at his back. Jason aids him, does prodigies of valour, and wins a glorious victory. Aeetes refuses the reward. This act of treachery justifies Jason in having recourse to Medea's magic arts and in employing her to avenge him on her father. In Apollonius we find a very different story. The sons of Phrixus, who, to escape the wrath of Aeetes, have thrown in their lot with the Argonauts, urge Jason to approach Medea; they themselves work upon the feelings of their mother, Chalciope, till she seeks her sister Medea--already in love with Jason and only too ready to be persuaded--and induces her to save her nephews, whose fate is bound up with that of the strangers. This incident is wholly absent from Valerius Flaccus, with the result that the loves of Jason and Medea assume a somewhat different character. Jason's conduct becomes more natural and dignified. Medea, on the other hand, is shown in a less favourable light. In the Greek poet she has for excuse the desire to save her sister from the loss of her sons, which gives her half a right to love Jason. In the Latin epic she is without excuse, unless, indeed, the hackneyed supernatural machinery,[490] put in motion to win her for Jason, can be called an excuse. This crude employment of the supernatural leaves Valerius small room for the subtle psychological analysis wherein the Greek excels, and this, coupled with the love of the Silver Age for art magic, tends to make Medea--as in Seneca--a sorceress first, a woman after. In Apollonius she is barbaric, unsophisticated, a child of nature; in Valerius she is a figure of the stage, not without beauty and pathos, but essentially melodramatic. But Apollonius had concentrated all his powers upon Medea, and dwarfs all his other characters, Jason not excepted. It is Medea alone that holds our interests. The little company of heroes embarked on unsailed seas and beset with strange peril are scarcely more than a string of names, that drop in and out, as though the work were a ship's log rather than an epic. In Valerius, though he attempts no detailed portraiture, they are men who can at least fight and die. He has, in a word, a better general conception as to how the story should be told; he is less perfunctory, and strives to fill in his canvas more evenly, whereas Apollonius, although by no means concise, leaves much of his canvas covered by sketches of the slightest and most insignificant character. In the Greek poem, though half the work is consumed in describing the voyage to Colchis, the first two books contain scarcely anything of real poetic interest, if we except the story of Phineus and the Harpies, a few splendid similes, and two or three descriptive passages, as brief as they are brilliant. In Valerius, on the contrary, there is abundance of stirring scenes and rich descriptive passages before the Argonauts reach their goal. His superiority is particularly noticeable at the outset of the poem. Apollonius plunges _in medias res_ and fails to give an adequate account of the preliminaries of the expedition. He has no better method of introducing us to his heroes than by giving us a dreary catalogue of their names. Valerius, too, has his catalogue, but later; we are not choked with indigestible and unpalatable fare at the very opening of the feast. And though both authors take five hundred lines to get their heroes under way, Valerius tells us far more and in far better language; Apollonius does not find his stride till the second book, and forgets that it is necessary to interest the reader in his characters from the very beginning. But though in these respects Valerius has improved on his predecessor, and though his work lacks the arid wastes of his model, he is yet an author of an inferior class, and comes ill out of the comparison. For he has little of the rich, almost oriental, colouring of Apollonius at his best, lacks his fire and passion, and fails to cast the same glamour of romance about his subject. While the Dido and Aeneas of Vergil are in some respects but a pale reflection of the Medea and Jason of Apollonius, the loves of Jason and Medea in Valerius are fainter still. His heroine is not the tragic figure that stands out in lines of fire from the pages of Apollonius. His lovers' speeches have a certain beauty and tenderness of their own, but they lack the haunting melody and the resistless passion that make the Rhodian's lines immortal. And while to a great extent he lacks the peculiar merits of the Greek,[491] he possesses his most serious blemish, the blemish that is so salient a characteristic of both Alexandrian and Silver Latin literature, the passion for obscure learning. A good example is the huge, though most ingenious, catalogue of the tribes of Scythia at the opening of the sixth book, with its detailed inventory of strange names and customs, and its minute descriptions of barbaric armour. His love of learning lands him, moreover, in strange anachronisms. We are told that the Colchians are descended from Sesostris;[492] the town of Arsinoe is spoken of as already in existence; Egypt is already connected with the house of Lagus.[493] In addition, Valerius possesses many of the faults from which Apollonius is free, but with which the post-Augustan age abounds. The dangerous influence of Seneca has, it is true, decayed; we are no longer flooded with epigram or declamatory rhetoric. Rhetoric there is, and rhetoric that is not always effective;[494] but it is rather a perversion of the rhetoric of Vergil than the descendant of the brilliant rant of Lucan and Seneca. From the gross lack of taste and humour that characterizes so many of his contemporaries he is comparatively free, though his description of the historic 'crab' caught by Hercules reaches the utmost limit of absurdity: laetus et ipse Alcides: Quisnam hos vocat in certamina fluctus? dixit, et, intortis adsurgens arduus undis, percussit subito deceptum fragmine pectus, atque in terga ruens Talaum fortemque Eribotem et longe tantae securum Amphiona molis obruit, inque tuo posuit caput, Iphite, transtro. (iii. 474-80.) Alcides gladdened in his heart and cried: 'Who challenges these waves to combat?' and as he rose against those buffeting waves, sudden with broken oar he smote his baffled breast, and, falling headlong back, o'erthrows Talaus and brave Eribotes and far-off Amphion, that never feared so vast a bulk should fall on him, and laid his head against thy thwart, O Iphitus. This unheroic episode is a relic of the comic traditions associated with Hercules, traditions which obtrude themselves from time to time in serious and even tragic surroundings.[495] Apollonius describes the same incident[496] with the quiet humour that so strangely tinges the works of the pedants of Alexandria. Valerius, on the other hand, has lost touch with the broad comedy of these traditions, and his attempt to be humorous only succeeds in making him ridiculous.[497] His worst fault, however, lies in his obscurity and preciosity of diction. The error lies not so much in veiling simple facts under an epigram, as in a vain attempt to imitate the 'golden phrases' of Vergil. The strange conglomeration of words with which Valerius so often vexes his readers resembles the 'chosen coin of fancy' only as the formless designs of the coinage of Cunobelin resemble the exquisite staters of Macedon from which they trace their descent. It requires more than a casual glance to tell that (i. 411) it quem fama genus non est decepta Lyaei Phlias inmissus patrios de vertice crines means that Phlias was 'truly reported the son of Bacchus with streaming locks like to his sire's'; or that (vi. 553) Argus utrumque ab equis ingenti porrigit arvo signifies no more than that the victims of Argus covered a large space of ground when they fell.[498] How miserable is such a phrase compared with the [Greek: keito megas megal_osti] of Homer! And though there is less serious obscurity, nothing can be more awkward than the not infrequent inversion of the natural order of words that we find in phrases such as _nec pereat quo scire malo_ (vii. 7).[499] Of mere preciosity and phrase-making without any special obscurity examples abound.[500] Pelion sinks below the horizon (ii. 6)-- iamque fretis summas aequatum Pelion ornos. A fight at close quarters receives the following curious description (ii. 524)-- iam brevis et telo volucri non utilis aer. A spear flying through the air and missing its mark is a _volnus raptum per auras_ (iii. 196). More startling than these is the picture of a charge of trousered barbarians (vi. 702)-- improba barbaricae procurrunt tegmina plantae. One more peculiarity remains to be noticed. Here and there in the _Argonautica_ we meet with a strange brevity and compression resulting not from the desire to produce phrases of curious and original texture, but rather from a praiseworthy though misdirected endeavour to be concise. The most remarkable example is found in the first book, where Mopsus, the official prophet of the expedition, falls into a trance and beholds a vision of the future (211): heu quaenam aspicio! nostris modo concitus ausis aequoreos vocat ecce deos Neptunus et ingens concilium. fremere et legem defendere cuncti hortantur. sic amplexu, sic pectora fratris, Iuno, tene; tuque o puppem ne desere, Pallas: nunc patrui nunc flecte minas. cessere ratemque accepere mari. per quot discrimina rerum expedior! subita cur pulcher harundine crines velat Hylas? unde urna umeris niueosque per artus caeruleae vestes? unde haec tibi volnera, Pollux? quantus io tumidis taurorum e naribus ignis! tollunt se galeae sulcisque ex omnibus hastae et iam iamque umeri. quem circum vellera Martem aspicio? quaenam aligeris secat anguibus auras caede madens? quos ense ferit? miser eripe parvos, Aesonide. cerno et thalamos ardere iugales. Alas! what do I see! Even now, stirred by our daring, lo! Neptune calls the gods to a vast conclave. They murmur, and one and all urge him to defend his rights. Hold as thou holdest now, Juno, hold thy brother in thine embrace: and thou, Pallas, forsake not our ship: now, even now, appease thy brother's threats. They have yielded: they give Argo entrance to the sea. Through what perils am I whirled along! Why does fair Hylas veil his locks with a sudden crown of reeds? Whence comes the pitcher on his shoulder and the azure raiment on his limbs of snow? Whence, Pollux, come these wounds of thine? Ah! what a flame streams from the widespread nostrils of the bulls. Helmets and spears rise from every furrow, and now see! shoulders too! What warfare for the fleece do I see? Who is it cleaves the air with winged snakes, reeking with slaughter? Whom smites she with the sword? Ah! son of Aeson, hapless man, save thy little ones. I see, too, the bridal chamber all aflame. These lines form a kind of abridgement or _précis_ of the whole _Argonautica_, or even more, for we can hardly believe that the scheme of it included the murder of Medea's children and her vengeance on the house of Creon[501]. They are also far too obscure to be interesting to any save a highly-trained literary audience, while their extreme compression could only be justified by their having been primarily designed for recitation in a dramatic and realistic manner with suitable pauses between the different visions.[502] A yet worse and less excusable example of this peculiar brevity is the jerky and prosaic enumeration of Medea's achievements in the black art (vi. 442)-- mutat agros fluviumque vias; suus alligat ingens cuncta sopor, recoquit fessos aetate parentes, datque alias sine lege colus. She changes crops of fields and course of rivers. [At her bidding] deep clinging slumber binds all things; fathers outworn with age she seethes to youth again, and to others she gives new span of life against fate's ordinance. The attempt to be concise and full[503] at one and the same time fails, and fails inevitably. But for all these faults Valerius Flaccus offends less than any of the Silver Latin writers of epic. He rants less and he exaggerates less; above all, he has much genuine poetic merit. He has been strangely neglected, both in ancient[504] and modern times, and unduly depreciated in the latter. There has been a tendency to rank him with Silius Italicus, whereas it would be truer criticism to place him close to Statius, and not far below Lucan. He is more uneven than the former, has a far less certain touch, and infinitely less command of his instrument. He has less mastery of words, but a more kindling and penetrating imagination. His outlines are less clear, but more suggestive. He has less rhetoric; beneath an often obscure diction he reveals a greater simplicity and directness of thought, and he has been infinitely more happy in his theme. Only the greatest of poets could achieve a genuine success with the Theban legend, only the worst of poets could reduce the voyage of the Argonauts to real dullness. On the other hand, in an age of _belles-lettres_ such as the Silver Age, and by the majority of scholars, whose very calling leads them to set a perhaps abnormally high value on technical skill, Statius is almost certain to be preferred to Valerius. About the relative position of Lucan there is no doubt. He is incomparably the superior of Valerius, both in genius and intellect. But Valerius never sins against taste and reason to the same extent, and though he has less fire, possesses a finer ear for music and rhythm, and more poetic feeling as distinct from rhetoric. Vergil was his master; it has been said with a little exaggeration that Valerius stands in the same relation to Vergil as Persius to Horace. This statement conveys but a half-truth. Valerius is as superior to Persius in technique as he is inferior in moral force and intellectual power. He is, however, full of echoes from Vergil,[505] and if his verse has neither the 'ocean roll' of the greater poets, nor the same tenderness, he yet has something of the true Vergilian glamour. But he has weakened his hexameter by succumbing to the powerful influence of Ovid. His verse is polished and neat to the verge of weakness. Like Ovid, he shows a preference for the dactyl over the spondee, shrinks from elision, and does not understand how to vary his pauses.[506] Too many lines close with a full-stop or colon, and where the line is broken, the same pause often recurs again and again with wearisome monotony. In this respect Valerius, though never monotonously ponderous like Lucan, compares ill with Statius. As a compensation, his individual lines have a force and beauty that is comparatively rare in the _Thebais_. The poet who could describe a sea-cave thus (iv. 179)-- non quae dona die, non quae trahat aetheris ignem; infelix domus et sonitu tremibunda profundi, That receiveth never daylight's gifts nor the light of the heavenly fires, the home of gloom all a-tremble with the sound of the deep. is not to be despised as a master of metre. And whether for picturesqueness of expression or for beauty of sound, lines such as (iii. 596) rursus Hylan et rursus Hylan per longa reclamat avia; responsant silvae et vaga certat imago, 'Hylas', and again 'Hylas', he calls through the long wilderness; the woods reply, and wandering echo mocks his voice. or (i. 291) quis tibi, Phrixe, dolor, rapido cum concitus aestu respiceres miserae clamantia virginis ora extremasque manus sparsosque per aequora crines! Phrixus, what grief was thine when, swept along by the swirling tide, thou lookedst back on the hapless maiden's face as she cried for thine aid, her sinking hands, her hair streaming o'er the deep. are not easily surpassed outside the pages of Vergil. But it is above all on his descriptive power that his claim to consideration rests.[507] For it is there that he finds play for his most remarkable gifts, his power of suggestion of mystery, and his keen sense of colour. These gifts find their most striking manifestation in his description of the Argonauts' first night upon the waters. They were the first that ever burst Into that silent sea. All is strange to them. Each sight and sound has its element of terror: auxerat hora metus, iam se vertentis Olympi ut faciem raptosque simul montesque locosque ex oculis circumque graves videre tenebras. ipsa quies rerum mundique silentia terrent astraque et effusis stellatus crinibus aether. ac velut ignota captus regione viarum noctivagum qui carpit iter non aure quiescit, non oculis, noctisque metus niger auget utrimque campus et occurrens umbris maioribus arbor, haud aliter trepidare viri (ii. 38). The dark hour deepened their fears when they saw heaven's vault wheel round, and the peaks and fields of earth snatched from their view, and all about them the horror of darkness. The very stillness of things and the deep silence of the world affright them, the stars and heaven begemmed with streaming locks of gold. And as one benighted in a strange place 'mid paths unknown pursues his devious journey through the night and finds rest neither for eye nor ear, but all about him the blackness of the plain, and the trees that throng upon him seen greater through the gloom, deepen his terror of the dark--even so the heroes trembled. There are few more vivid pictures in Latin poetry than that of the benighted wanderer lost on some wide plain studded with clumps of trees that seem to throng upon him in the gloom, seen greater through the darkness. Not less imaginative, though less clear cut and precise, is his picture of the underworld in the third book: est procul ad Stygiae devexa silentia noctis Cimmerium domus et superis incognita tellus, caeruleo tenebrosa situ, quo flammea numquam Sol iuga sidereos nec mittit Iuppiter annos. stant tacitae frondes inmotaque silva comanti horret Averna iugo; specus umbrarumque meatus subter et Oceani praeceps fragor arvaque nigro vasta metu et subitae post longa silentia voces (iii. 398). Far hence by the deep sunken silence of the Stygian night lies the Cimmerians' home, a land unknown to denizens of upper air, all dark with gloomy squalor. Thither the sun hath never driven his flaming car nor Jupiter sent forth his starry seasons. Silent are the leaves of its groves, and all along its leafy hill bristles unmoved Avernus' wood: thereunder are caverns, and the shades go to and fro; there Ocean plunges roaring to its fall, there are plains with dark fear desolate, and after long silences sudden voices thunder out. It is a more theatrical underworld than that of Vergil, and the picture is not clearly conceived, but its very vagueness is impressive. The poet gives us, as it were, the scene for the enactment of some dim dream of terror. He is equally at home in describing the happy calm of Elysium. Though the picture lacks originality, it has no lack of beauty: hic geminae infernum portae, quarum altera dura semper lege patens populos regesque receptat; ast aliam temptare nefas et tendere contra; rara et sponte patet, siquando pectore ductor volnera nota gerens, galeis praefixa rotisque cui domus aut studium mortales pellere curas, culta fides, longe metus atque ignota cupido; seu venit in vittis castaque in veste sacerdos. quos omnes lenis plantis et lampada quassans progenies Atlantis agit. lucet via late igne dei, donec silvas et amoena piorum deveniant camposque, ubi sol totumque per annum durat aprica dies thiasique chorique virorum carminaque et quorum populis iam nulla cupido (i. 833). Here lie the twin gates of Hell, whereof the one is ever open by stern fate's decree, and through it march the peoples and princes of the world. But the other may none essay nor beat against its bars. Barely it opens and untouched by hand, if e'er a chieftain comes with glorious wounds upon his breast, whose halls were decked with helm and chariots, or who strove to cast out the woes of mankind, who honoured truth and bade farewell to fear and knew no base ambition. Then, too, it opens when some priest comes wearing sacred wreath and spotless robe. All such the child of Atlas leads along with gentle tread and waving torch. Far shines the road with the fire of the god until they come to the groves and plains, the pleasant mansions of the blest, where the sun ceases not, nor the warm daylight all the year long, nor dancing companies of heroes, nor song, nor all the innocent joys that the peoples of the earth desire no more. Many lines might be quoted that startle us with their unforeseen vividness or some unexpected blaze of colour; when the fleece of gold is taken from the tree where it had long since shone like a beacon through the dark, the tree sinks back into the melancholy night, tristesque super coiere tenebrae (viii. 120). At their bridal on the desolate Isle of Peuce under the shadow of approaching peril, Jason and Medea gleam star-like amid the company of heroes (viii. 257): ipsi inter medios rosea radiante iuventa altius inque sui sternuntur velleris auro. Themselves in their comrades' midst, bright with the rosy glow of youth, above them all, lie on the fleece of gold that they had made their own. This characteristic is most evident in the similes over which Valerius, like other poets of the age, would seem to have expended particular labour. He scatters them over his pages with too prodigal a hand, and they suffer at times from over-elaboration and ingenuity.[508] Desire for originality has led him to such startling comparisons as that between a warrior drawn from his horse and a bird snared by the limed twig of the fowler,[509] surely as inappropriate a simile as was ever framed. More distressing still is the maudlin pathos of the simile which likens Medea to a dog on the verge of madness.[510] But such gross aberrations are rare; against them may be set some of the freshest and most beautiful similes in the whole range of Latin poetry. The silence that follows on the wailing of the women of Cyzicus is like the silence of Egypt when the birds that wintered there have flown to more temperate lands. 'And now they had paid due honour to their ashes; with weary feet, wives with their babes wandered away and the waves had rest, the waves long torn by their wakeful lamentation, even as when the birds in mid-spring have returned to the north that is their home, and Memphis and their yearly haunt by sunny Nile are dumb once more'-- qualiter Arctos ad patrias avibus medio iam vere revectis Memphis et aprici statio silet annua Nili (iii. 358). The beauty of Medea among her Scythian maidens is likened to that of Proserpine leading her comrades over Hymettus' hill or wandering with Pallas and Diana in the Sicilian mountains-- altior ac nulla comitum certante, prius quam palluit et viso pulsus decor omnis Averno (v. 346). Taller than all her comrades and fairer than them all or ever she turned pale, and at the sight of Hell all beauty was banished from her face. The relief of the Argonauts, when at last they reach haven after their fearful passage of the Symplegades, is like that of Theseus and Hercules, when they have forced a way through the gates of hell to the light of day once more.[511] Most remarkable of all is the strange accumulation of similes that describe the meeting of Jason and Medea. Medea is going through the silent night chanting a song of magic, whereat all nature trembles. At last, when she has come 'to the shadowy place of the triune goddess', Jason shines forth before her in the gloom, 'as when in deepest night panic bursts on herd and herdsman, or shades meet blind and voiceless in the deep of Chaos; even so, in the darkness of the night and of the grove, the two met astonied, like silent pines or motionless cypress, ere yet the whirling breath of the south wind has caught and mingled their boughs'[512]-- obvius ut sera cum se sub nocte magistris inpingit pecorique pavor, qualesve profundum per chaos occurrunt caecae sine vocibus umbrae; haut secus in mediis noctis nemorisque tenebris inciderant ambo attoniti iuxtaque subibant, abietibus tacitis aut immotis cyparissis adsimiles, rapidus nondum quas miscuit Auster (vii. 400). These similes suffer from sheer accumulation.[513] Taken individually they are worthy of many a greater poet. In his speeches Valerius is less successful, though rarely positively bad. But with few exceptions they lack force and interest. At times, however, his rhetoric is effective, as in the speech of Mopsus (iii. 377), where he sets forth the punishment of blood-guiltiness, or in the fierce invective in which the Scythian, Gesander, taunts a Greek warrior with the inferiority of the Greek race (vi. 323 sqq.). This latter speech is closely modelled on Vergil (_A._ ix. 595 sqq.), and although it is somewhat out of place in the midst of a battle, is not wholly unworthy of its greater model. But it is to the speeches of Jason and Medea that we naturally turn to form the estimate of the poet's mastery of the language of passion. These speeches serve to show us how far he falls below Vergil (_A._ iv) and Apollonius (bk. iii). They offer a noble field for his powers, and it cannot be said that he rises to the full height of the occasion. On the other hand, he does not actually fail. There is a note of deep and moving appeal in all that Medea says as she gradually yields to the power of her passion, and the thought of her father and her home fades slowly from her mind. quid, precor, in nostras venisti, Thessale, terras? unde mei spes ulla tibi? tantosque petisti cur non ipse tua fretus virtute labores? nempe, ego si patriis timuissem excedere tectis, occideras; nempe hanc animam sors saeva manebat funeris. en ubi Iuno, ubi nunc Tritonia virgo, sola tibi quoniam tantis in casibus adsum externae regina domus? miraris et ipse, credo, nec agnoscunt hae nunc Aeetida silvae. sed fatis sum victa tuis; cape munera supplex nunc mea; teque iterum Pelias si perdere quaeret, inque alios casus alias si mittet ad urbes, heu formae ne crede tuae. '"Why,"' she cries (vii. 438), '"why, I beseech thee, Thessalian, camest thou ever to this land of ours? Whence hadst thou any hope of me? And why didst thou seek these toils with faith in aught save thine own valour? Surely hadst thou perished, had I feared to leave my father's halls--aye, and so surely had I shared thy cruel doom. Where now is thy helper Juno, where now thy Tritonian maid, since I, the queen of an alien house, have come to help thee in thy need? Aye, even thyself thou marvellest, methinks, nor any more does this grove know me for Aeetes' daughter. Nay, 'twas thy cruel fate overcame me; take now, poor suppliant, these my gifts, and, if e'er again Pelias seek to destroy thee and send thee forth to other cities, ah! put not too fond trust in thy beauty!"' Yet again, before she puts the saving charms into his hands, she appeals to him (452): si tamen aut superis aliquam spem ponis in istis, aut tua praesenti virtus educere leto si te forte potest, etiam nunc deprecor, hospes, me sine, et insontem misero dimitte parenti. dixerat; extemploque (etenim matura ruebant sidera, et extremum se flexerat axe Booten) cum gemitu et multo iuveni medicamina fletu non secus ac patriam pariter famamque decusque obicit. ille manu subit, et vim conripit omnem. inde ubi facta nocens, et non revocabilis umquam cessit ab ore pudor, ... ... ... ... ... ... ... pandentes Minyas iam vela videbat se sine. tum vero extremo percussa dolore adripit Aesoniden dextra ac submissa profatur: sis memor, oro, mei, contra memor ipsa manebo, crede, tui. quando hinc aberis, die quaeso, profundi quod caeli spectabo latus? sed te quoque tangat cura mei quocumque loco, quoscumque per annos; atque hunc te meminisse velis, et nostra fateri munera; servatum pudeat nec virginis arte. hei mihi, cur nulli stringunt tua lumina fletus? an me mox merita morituram patris ab ira dissimulas? te regna tuae felicia gentis, te coniunx natique manent; ego prodita obibo. '"If thou hast any hope of safety from these goddesses, that are thine helpers, or if perchance thine own valour can snatch thee from the jaws of death, even now, I pray thee, stranger, let me be, and send me back guiltless to my unhappy sire." She spake, and straightway--for now the stars outworn sank to their setting, and Bootes in the furthest height of heaven had turned him towards his rest--straightway she gave the charms to the young hero with wailing and with lamentation, as though therewith she cast away her country and her own fair fame and honour.' And then, 'when her guilt was accomplished and the blush of shame had passed from her face for evermore,' she saw as in a vision (474) 'the Minyae spreading their sails for flight without her. Then in truth bitter anguish laid hold of her spirit, and she grasped the right hand of the son of Aeson and humbly spake: "Remember me, I pray, for I, believe me shall forget thee never. When thou art hence, where on all the vault of heaven shall I bear to gaze? Ah! do thou too, where'er thou art, through all the years ne'er let the thought of me slip from thy heart. Remember how thou stood'st to-day, tell of the gifts I gave, and feel no shame that thou wast saved by a maiden's guile. Alas! why stream no tears from thine eyes? Knowest thou not that the death I have deserved waits me at my father's hand? For thee there waits a happy realm among thine own folk, for thee wife and child; but I must perish deserted and betrayed."'[514] All this lacks the force and passion of the corresponding scene in Apollonius. This Medea could never have cried, 'I am no Greek princess, gentle-souled,'[515] nor have prayed that a voice from far away or a warning bird might reach him in Iolcus on the day when he forgot her, or that the stormwind might bear her with reproaches in her eyes to stand by his hearth-stone and chide him for his forgetfulness and ingratitude. The Medea of Apollonius has been softened and sentimentalized by the Roman poet. Valerius knows no device to clothe her with power, save by the narration of her magic arts (vii. 463-71; viii. 68-91). Yet she has a charm of her own; and it needed true poetic feeling to draw even the Medea of Valerius Flaccus. In no age would Valerius have been a great poet, but under happier circumstances he would have produced work that would have ranked high among literary epics. As it is, there is no immeasurable distance between the _Argonautica_ and works such as the _Gerusalemme liberata_, or much of _The Idylls of the King_. He is a genuine poet whose genius was warped by the spirit of the age, stunted by the inherent difficulties besetting the Roman writer of epic, overweighted by his admiration of his two great predecessors, Ovid and Vergil. He is obscure, he is full of echoes, he staggers beneath a burden of useless learning, he overcrowds his canvas and strives in vain to put the breath of life into bones long dry; in addition, his epic suffers from the lack of the reviser's hand. And yet, in spite of all, his characters are sometimes more than lay-figures, and his scenes more than mere stage-painting. He has the divine fire, and it does not always burn dim. Others have greater cunning of hand, greater force of intellect, and have won a higher place in the hierarchy of poets. He--though, like them, he lacks the 'fine madness that truly should possess a poet's brain'--yet gives us much that they cannot give, and sees much that they cannot see. With Quintilian, though with altered meaning, we too may say _multum in Valerio Flacco amisimus_. CHAPTER IX STATIUS Our information as to the life of P. Papinius Statius is drawn almost exclusively from his minor poems entitled the _Silvae_. He was born at Naples, his father was a native of Velia, came of good family,[516] and by profession was poet and schoolmaster. The father's school was at Naples,[517] and, if we may trust his son, was thronged with pupils from the whole of Southern Italy.[518] He had been victorious in many poetic contests both in Naples and in Greece.[519] He had written a poem on the burning of the Capitol in 69 A.D., had planned another on the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 A.D., but apparently died with the work unfinished.[520] It was to his father that our poet attributed all his success as a poet. It was to him he owed both education and inspiration, as the _Epicedion in patrem_ bears pathetic witness (v. 3. 213): sed decus hoc quodcumque lyrae primusque dedisti non volgare loqui et famam sperare sepulcro. Thou wert the first to give this glory, whate'er it be, that my lyre hath won; thine was the gift of noble speech and the hope that my tomb should be famous. The _Thebais_ was directly due to his prompting (loc. cit., 233): te nostra magistro Thebais urgebat priscorum exordia vatum; tu cantus stimulare meos, tu pandere facta heroum bellique modos positusque locorum monstrabas. At thy instruction my Thebais trod the steps of elder bards; thou taughtest me to fire my song, thou taughtest me to set forth the deeds of heroes and the ways of war and the position of places. The poet-father lived long enough to witness his son well on the way to established fame. He had won the prize for poetry awarded by his native town, the crown fashioned of ears of corn, chief honour of the Neapolitan Augustalia.[521] Early in the reign of Domitian he had received a high price from the actor Paris for his libretto on the subject of Agave,[522] and he had already won renown by his recitations at Rome,[523] recitations in all probability of portions of the _Thebais_[524] which he had commenced in 80 A.D.[525] But it was not till after his father's death that he reached the height of his fame by his victory in the annual contest instituted by Domitian at his Alban palace,[526] and by the completion and final publication in 92 A.D. of his masterpiece, the _Thebais_.[527] This poem was the outcome of twelve years' patient labour, and it was on this that he based his claim to immortality.[527] He had now made himself a secure position as the foremost poet of his age. His failure to win the prize at the quinquennial Agon Capitolinus in 94 A.D. caused him keen mortification, but was in no way a set-back to his career.[528] By this time he had already begun the publication of his _Silvae_. The first book was published not earlier than 92 A.D.,[529] the second and third between that date and 95 A.D. The fourth appeared in 95 A.D.,[530] the fifth is unfinished. There is no allusion to any date later than 95 A.D., no indication that the poet survived Domitian (d. 96 A.D.). These facts, together with the fragmentary state of his ambitious _Achilleis_, begun in 95 A.D.,[531] point to Statius having died in that year, or at least early in 96 A.D. He left behind him, beside the works already mentioned, a poem on the wars of Domitian in Germany,[532] and a letter to one Maximus Vibius, which may have served as a preface to the _Thebais_.[533] He had spent the greater portion of his life either at Rome, Naples, or in the Alban villa given him by Domitian. In his latter years he seems to have resided almost entirely at Rome, though he must have paid not infrequent visits to the Bay of Naples.[534] But in 94 A.D., whether through failing health or through chagrin at his defeat in the Capitoline contest, he retired to his native town.[535] He had married a widow named Claudia,[536] but the union was childless; towards the end of his life he adopted the infant son of one of his slaves,[537] and the child's premature death affected him as bitterly as though it had been his own son that died. Of his age we know little; but in the _Silvae_ there are allusions to the approach of old age and the decline of his physical powers.[538] He can scarcely have been born later than 45 A.D., and may well have been born considerably earlier. His life, as far as we can judge, was placid and uneventful. The position of his father seems to have saved him from a miserable struggle for his livelihood, such as vexed the soul of Martial.[539] There is nothing venal about his verse. If his flattery of the emperor is fulsome almost beyond belief, he hardly overstepped the limits of the path dictated by policy and the custom of the age; his conduct argues weakness rather than any deep moral taint. In his flattery towards his friends and patrons his tone is, at its worst, rather that of a social inferior than of a mere dependent.[540] And underlying all the preciosity and exaggeration of his praises and his consolations, there is a genuine warmth of affection that argues an amiable character. And this warmth of feeling becomes unmistakable in the _epicedia_ on his father and his adopted son, and again in the poem addressed to his wife. The feeling is genuine, in spite of the suggestion of insincerity created by the artificiality of his language. No less noteworthy is his enthusiasm for the beauties of his birthplace, which shines clear through all the obscure legends beneath which he buries his topography.[541] These qualities, if any, must be set against his lack of intellectual power; his mind is nimble and active, but never strong either in thought or emotion: of sentiment he has abundance, of passion none. Considering the corruption of the society of which he constituted himself the poet, and of which there are not a few glimpses in the _Silvae_, despite the tinselled veil that is thrown over it, the impression of Statius the man is not unpleasing: it is not necessary to claim that it is inspiring. Of Statius the poet it is harder to form a clear judgement. His masterpiece, the _Thebais_, from the day of its publication down to comparatively recent times, possessed an immense reputation.[542] Dante seems to regard him as second only to Vergil; and it was scarcely before the nineteenth century that he was dethroned from his exalted position. Before the verdict of so many ages one may well shrink from passing an unfavourable criticism. That he had many of the qualifications of a great poet is undeniable; his technical skill is extraordinary; his variety of phrase is infinite; his colouring is often brilliant. And even his positive faults, the faults of his age, the crowding of detail, the rhetoric, the bombast, offend rather by their quantity than quality. Alone of the epic[543] writers of his age he rarely raises a derisive laugh from the irreverent modern. Again, his average level is high, higher than that of any post-Ovidian poet. And yet that high level is due to the fact that he rarely sinks rather than that he rises to sublime heights. His brilliant metre, always vivacious and vigorous, seldom gives us a line that haunts the memory; and therefore, though its easy grace and facile charm may for a while attract us, we soon weary of him. He lacks warmth of emotion and depth of colour. In this respect he has been not inaptly compared to Ovid. Ovid said of Callimachus _quamvis ingenio non valet, arte valet_.[544] Ovid's detractors apply the epigram to Ovid himself. This is unjust, but so far as such a comprehensive dictum can be true of any distinguished writer, it is true of Statius. Scarcely inferior to Ovid in readiness and fertility, he ranks far below the earlier writer in all poetic essentials. Ovid's gifts are similar but more natural; his vision is clearer, his imagination more penetrating. 'The paces of Statius are those of the _manège_, not of nature';[545] he loses himself in the trammels of his art. He lacks, as a rule, the large imagination of the poet; and though his detail may often please, the whole is tedious and disappointing. Merivale sums him up admirably:[546] 'Statius is a miniature painter employed on the production of a great historic picture: every part, every line, every shade is touched and retouched; approach the canvas and examine it with glasses, every thread and hair has evidently received the utmost care and taken the last polish; but step backwards and embrace the whole composition in one gaze, and the general effect is confused from want of breadth and largeness of treatment.' He was further handicapped by his choice of a subject.[547] The Theban legend is unsuitable for epic treatment for more reasons than one. In the first place the story is unpleasant from beginning to end. Horror accumulates on horror, crime on crime, and there are but three characters which evoke our sympathy, Oedipus, Jocasta, and Antigone. These characters play only subsidiary parts in the story of the expedition of the Seven against Thebes, round which the Theban epic turns. The central characters are almost of necessity the odious brothers Eteocles and Polynices: Oedipus appears only to curse his sons. Antigone and Jocasta come upon the scene only towards the close in a brief and futile attempt to reconcile the brothers. The deeds and deaths of the Argive chiefs may relieve the horror and at times excite our sympathy, but we cannot get away from the fact that the story is ultimately one of almost bestial fratricidal strife, darkened by the awful shadow of the woes of the house of Labdacus. The old Greek epic assigned great importance to the character of Amphiaraus[548] persuaded by his false wife, Eriphyla, to go forth on the enterprise that should be his doom; it has even been suggested that he formed the central character of the poem. If this suggestion be true--and its truth is exceedingly doubtful--we are confronted with what was in reality only a false shift, the diversion of the interest from the main issues of the story to a side issue. The _Iliad_ cannot be quoted in his defence; there we have an episode of a ten years' siege, which in itself possesses genuine unity and interest. But the Theban epic comprises the whole story of the expedition of the seven chieftains, and it is idle to make Amphiaraus the central figure. In any case the prominence given to the fortunes of the house of Labdacus by the great Greek dramatists, and the genius with which they brought out the genuinely dramatic issues of the legend, had made it impossible for after-comers to take any save the Labdacidae for the chief actors in their story. And so from Antimachus onward Polynices and Eteocles are the tragic figures of the epic. To give unity to this story all our attention must be concentrated on Thebes. The enlistment of Adrastus in the cause of Polynices must be described, and following this the gathering of the hosts of Argos. But when once the Argive demands are rejected by Thebes, the poet's chief aim must be to get his army to Thebes with all speed, and set it in battle array against the enemy. Once at Thebes, there is plenty of room for tragic power and stirring narrative. First comes the ineffectual attempt of Jocasta to reconcile her scarce human sons; then comes the battle, with the gradual overthrow of the chieftains of Argos, the turning of the scale of battle in favour of Thebes by the sacrifice of Menoeceus, and last the crowning combat between the brothers. There, from the artistic standpoint, the story finds its ending. It could never have been other than forbidding, but it need not have lacked power. Unfortunately, precedent did not allow the story to end there. The Thebans forbid burial to the Argive dead; Antigone transgresses the edict by burying her brother Polynices, and finds death the reward of her piety; Theseus and the Athenians come to Adrastus' aid, defeat the Thebans, and bury the Argive dead, while as a sop to Argive feeling they are promised their revenge in after years, when the children of the dead have grown to man's estate. If it were felt that the deadly struggle between the two brothers closed the epic on a note of unrelieved gloom and horror, there was perhaps something to be said for introducing the story of Antigone's self-sacrifice, and closing on a note of tragic beauty. Unhappily, the story of Antigone involved the introduction of material sufficient for one, if not two fresh epics in the legend of the Athenian War and the triumphant return of Argos to the conflict. Antimachus[549] fell into the snare. His vast _Thebais_ told the whole story from the arrival of Polynices at Argos to the victory of the Epigoni. Nor was he content with this alone, but must needs clog the action of his poem with long descriptions of the gathering of the host at Argos, and of their adventures on the march to Thebes. And so it came about that he consumed twenty-four books in getting his heroes to Thebes! The precedent of Antimachus proved fatal to Statius. He did not, it is true, run to such prolixity as his Greek predecessor; he eliminated the legend of the Epigoni altogether, only alluding to it once in vague and general terms; he succeeded in getting the story, down to the burial of the Argive dead, within the compass of twelve books of not inordinate length. But it is possible to be prolix without being an Antimachus, and the prolixity of Statius is quite sufficient. The Argives do not reach Thebes till half-way through the seventh book,[550] the brothers do not meet till half-way through the eleventh book. The result is that the compression of events in the last 300 lines of the eleventh book and in the last book is almost grotesque; for these 1,100 lines contain the death of Jocasta, the banishment of Oedipus, the flight of the Argives, the prohibition to bury the Argive dead, the arrival of the wives of the vanquished, the devotion of Antigone and Argia, the wife of Polynices, their detection and sentencing to death, the arrival of the Athenians under Theseus, the defeat and death of Creon, and the burial of the fallen. The effect is disastrous. As we have seen, this appendix to the main story of the feud between the brothers cannot form a satisfactory conclusion to the story. Treated with the perfunctory compression of Statius, it becomes flat and ineffective; even the reader who finds Statius at his best attractive is tempted to throw down the _Thebais_ in disgust. It is perhaps in his concluding scenes that we see Statius at his worst, but his capacity for irrelevance and digression is an almost equally serious defect. That he should use the conventional supernatural machinery is natural and permissible, though tedious to the modern reader, who finds it hard to sympathize with outworn literary conventions. But there are few epics where divine intervention is carried to a greater extent than in the _Thebais_.[551] And not content with the intervention of the usual gods and furies, on two occasions Statius brings down frigid abstractions from the skies in the shape of Virtus[552] and Pietas.[553] Again, while auguries and prophecies play a legitimate part in such a work, nothing can justify, and only the passion of the Silver Age for the supernatural can explain, the protraction of the scenes of augury at Thebes and Argos to 114 and 239 lines respectively. Equally disproportionate are the catalogues of the Argive and the Theban armies, making between them close on 400 lines.[554] Nor is imitation of Vergil the slightest justification for introducing a night-raid in which Hopleus and Dymas are but pale reflections of Nisus and Euryalus,[555] for expending 921 lines over the description of the funeral rites and games in honour of the infant Opheltes,[556] or putting the irrelevant history of the heroism of Coroebus in the mouth of Adrastus, merely that it may form a parallel to the tale of Hercules and Cacus told by Evander.[557] Worst of all is the enormous digression,[558] consuming no less than 481 lines, where Hypsipyle narrates the story of the Lemnian massacre. And yet this is hardly more than a digression in the midst of a digression. The Argive army are marching on Thebes. Bacchus, desirous to save his native town, causes a drought in the Peloponnese. The Argives, on the verge of death, and maddened with thirst, come upon Hypsipyle, the nurse of Opheltes, the son of Lycurgus, King of Nemea. Hypsipyle leaves her charge to show them the stream of Langia, which alone has been unaffected by the drought, and so saves the Argive host. She then at enormous length narrates to Adrastus the story of her life, how she was daughter of Thoas, King of Lemnos, and how, when the women of Lesbos slew their mankind, she alone proved false to their hideous compact, and saved her father. After describing the arrival of the Argonauts at Lemnos, and her amour with Jason, to whom she bore two sons, she tells how she was banished from Lesbos on the discovery that Thoas, her father, still lived, how she was captured by pirates, and twenty long years since sold into slavery to Lycurgus. This prodigious narration finished, it is discovered that a serpent sacred to Jupiter has killed Opheltes. Lycurgus, hearing the news, would have slain Hypsipyle, but she is protected by the Argives whom she has saved. Then follows the burial of Opheltes--henceforth known as Archemorus--and his funeral games. Now it is not improbable that the story of Opheltes and Hypsipyle occurred in the old cyclic poem.[559] But that scarcely justifies Statius in devoting the whole of the fifth and sixth books and some 200 lines of the fourth to the description of an episode so alien to the main interest of the poem. But if we cannot justify these copious digressions and irrelevances we can explain them. The _Thebais_ was written primarily for recitation; many of these episodes which are hopelessly superfluous to the real story are admirably designed for the purpose of recitation. The truth is that Statius had many qualifications for the writing of _epyllia_, few for writing epic on a large scale. He has therefore sacrificed the whole to its parts, and relies on brilliance of description to catch the ear of an audience, rather than on sustained epic dignity and ordered development of his story. But although he cannot give real unity to his epic, he succeeds, by dint of his astonishing fluency and his mastery over his instrument, in giving a specious appearance of unity. The sutures of his story are well disguised and his inconsistencies of no serious importance. He fails as an epic writer, but he fails gracefully. It is, however, possible for an epic to be structurally ineffective and yet possess high poetic merit. Statius' episodes do not cohere; how far have they any splendour in their isolation? The answer to the question must be on the whole unfavourable. The reasons for this are diverse. In the first place the characters for the most part fail to live. Statius can give us a vivid impression of the outward semblance of a man; we see Parthenopaeus and Atys, we see Jocasta and Antigone, we see the struggle of Eteocles and Polynices vividly enough. But we see them as strangers, standing out, it is true, from the crowd in which they move, but still wholly unknown to us. We cannot differentiate Polynices and Eteocles save that the latter, from the very situation in which he finds himself, is necessarily the more odious of the two; Polynices would have shown himself the same, had the fall of the lot given him the first year of kingship. Jocasta and Antigone, Creon and Menoeceus, Hypsipyle and Lycurgus, play their parts correctly enough, but they do not live, nor people our brain with moving images. We are told that they behaved in such and such a way under such and such circumstances; we are told, and admit, that such conduct implies certain moral qualities, but Statius does not make us feel that his characters possess such qualities. The reason for this lies partly in the fact that they all speak the same brilliant rhetoric,[560] partly in the fact that Statius lacks the direct sincerity of diction that is required for the expression of strong and poignant emotion. Anger he can depict; anger suffers less than other emotions from rhetoric. Hence it is that he has succeeded in drawing the character of Tydeus, whose brutality is redeemed from hideousness by the fact that it is based on the most splendid physical courage, and fired by strong loyalty to his comrade and sometime foe Polynices. His accents ring true. When he has gone to Thebes to plead Polynices' cause, and his demands have been angrily refused by Eteocles, who concludes by saying (ii. 449), nec ipsi, si modo notus amor meritique est gratia, patres reddere regna sinent, Nor will the fathers of the city, if they but know the love I bear them or if they have aught of gratitude, allow me to give back the kingship. Tydeus will hear no more, but breaks in with a cry of fury (ii. 452): 'reddes,' ingeminat 'reddes; non si te ferreus agger ambiat aut triplices alio tibi carmine muros Amphion auditus agat, nil tela nec ignes obstiterint, quin ausa luas nostrisque sub armis captivo moribundus humum diademate pulses. tu merito; ast horum miseret, quos sanguine viles coniugibus natisque infanda ad proelia raptos proicis excidio, bone rex. o quanta Cithaeron funera sanguineusque vadis, Ismene, rotabis! haec pietas, haec magna fides! nec crimina gentis mira equidem duco: sic primus sanguinis auctor incestique patrum thalami; sed fallit origo: Oedipodis tu solus eras, haec praemia morum ac sceleris, violente, feres! nos poscimus annum; sed moror.' haec audax etiamnum in limine retro vociferans iam tunc impulsa per agmina praeceps evolat. 'Thou shalt give it back,' he cries, 'thou shalt give it back. Though thou wert girdled with a wall of bronze, or Amphion's voice be heard and with a new song raise triple bulwarks about thee; fire and sword should not save thee from the doom of thy daring, and, struck down by our swords, thy diadem should smite the ground as thou fallest dying, our captive. Thus shouldst _thou_ have thy desert; but _these_ I pity, whose blood thou ratest lightly, and whom thou snatchest from their children and their wives to give them over to death, thou virtuous king. What vast slaughter, Cithaeron, and thou, Ismenus, shalt thou see whirl down thy blood-stained shallows. This is thy piety, this thy true faith! nor marvel I at the crimes of such a race: 'twas for this that thou hadst such an author of thy being, for this thy father's marriage-bed was stained with incest. But thou art deceived as to thine own birth and thy brother's; thou alone wast begotten of Oedipus, that shall be the reward for thy nature and thy crime, fierce man. We ask but for a year! But I tarry over long.' These words he shouted back at him while he still lingered on the threshold; then headlong burst through the crowd of foemen and sped away. As he is here, so is he always, unwavering in decision, prompt of speech and of action. Caught in ambush, ill-armed and solitary, by the treacherous Thebans, as he returns from his futile embassy, he never hesitates; he seizes the one point of vantage, crushes his foes, and when he speaks, speaks briefly and to the point. He spares the last of his fifty assailants and sends him back to Thebes with a message of defiance, brief, natural, and manly (ii. 697): quisquis es Aonidum, quem crastina munere nostro manibus exemptum mediis Aurora videbit, haec iubeo perferre duci: cinge aggere portas, tela nova, fragiles aevo circum inspice muros, praecipue stipare viros densasque memento multiplicare acies! fumantem hunc aspice late ense meo campum: tales in bella venimus. Whoe'er thou art of the Aonides, whom to-morrow's dawn shall see saved from the world of the dead by my boon, I bid thee bear this message to thy chief: 'Raise mounds about the gates, forge new weapons, look to your walls that crumble with years, and above all be mindful to marshal thick and multiply thine hosts! Behold this plain smoking with the work of my sword. Such men are we when we enter the field of battle.' On his return to Argos he bursts impetuously into the palace, crying fiercely for war.[561] When Lycurgus would slay Hypsipyle for her neglect of her nursling, he saves her.[562] She has preserved the Argive army, and Tydeus, if he never forgives an enemy, never forgets a friend. He alone defeats the entreaties of Jocasta[563] and launches the hosts of Argos into battle; and when his own doom is come, he dies as he had lived, _impiger, iracundus, inexorabilis_; he has no thought for himself; he cares nought for due burial (viii. 736): non ossa precor referantur ut Argos Aetolumve larem; nec enim mihi cura supremi funeris: odi artus fragilemque hunc corporis usum, desertorem animi. I ask not that my bones be borne home to Argos or Aetolia; I care not for my last rites of funeral; I hate these limbs and this frail tenement, my body, that fails my spirit in its hour of need. His one thought is for vengeance on the dead body of the man who has slain him[564] and for the victory of his comrades in arms. Only one other of the heroes has any real existence, the prophet Amphiaraus. Statius does not give him the prominence that he held in the original epic, and misses a noble opportunity by almost ignoring the dramatic story of Eriphyla and the necklace that won her to persuade her husband to go forth to certain death. But the heroic warrior priest of Apollo, who knows his doom and yet faces it fearlessly, could not fail to be a picturesque figure, and at least in the hour of his death Statius has done him full justice. Apollo, disguised as a mortal, mounts the chariot of Amphiaraus and drives him through the midst of the battle, dealing destruction on this side and that (vii. 770): tandem se famulo summum confessus Apollo 'utere luce tua longamque' ait, 'indue famam, dum tibi me iunctum mors inrevocata veretur. vincimur: immites scis nulla revolvere Parcas stamina; vade, diu populis promissa voluptas Elysiis, certe non perpessure Creontis imperia aut vetito nudus iaciture sepulcro.' ille refert contra, et paulum respirat ab armis: 'olim te, Cirrhaee pater, peritura sedentem ad iuga (quis tantus miseris honor?) axe trementi sensimus; instantes quonam usque morabere manes? audio iam rapidae cursum Stygis atraque Ditis flumina tergeminosque mali custodis hiatus. accipe commissum capiti decus, accipe laurus, quas Erebo deferre nefas. nunc voce suprema, si qua recessuro debetur gratia vati, deceptum tibi, Phoebe, larem poenasque nefandae coniugis et pulchrum nati commendo furorem.' desiluit maerens lacrimasque avertit Apollo. At length Apollo revealed himself to his servant. 'Use,' he said, 'the light of life that is left thee and win an age of fame while thy doom still unrepealed shrinks back in awe of me. The foemen conquer: thou knowest the cruel fates never unravel the threads they weave: go forward, thou, the promised darling of the peoples of Elysium; for surely thou shalt ne'er endure the tyranny of Creon, or lie naked, denied a grave.' He answered, pausing awhile from the fray: 'Long since, lord of Cirrha, the trembling axle told me that 'twas thou sat'st by my doomed steeds. Why honourest thou a wretched mortal thus? How long wilt thou delay the advancing dead? Even now I hear the course of headlong Styx, and the dark streams of death, and the triple barking of the accursed guard of hell. Take now thine honours bound about my brow, take now the laurel crown I may not bear down unto Erebus: now with my last utterance, if aught of thanks thou owest thy seer that now must pass away, to thee I trust my wronged hearth, the doom of my accursed wife, and the noble madness of my son (Alcmaeon).' Apollo leapt from the car in grief and strove to hide his tears. An earthquake shakes the plain; the warriors shrink from battle in terror at the thunder from under-ground; when (816)-- ecce alte praeceps humus ore profundo dissilit, inque vicem timuerunt sidera et umbrae. illum ingens haurit specus et transire parantes mergit equos; non arma manu, non frena remisit: sicut erat, rectos defert in Tartara currus respexitque cadens caelum campumque coire ingemuit, donec levior distantia rursus miscuit arva tremor lucemque exclusit Averno. Lo! the earth gaped sheer and deep with vast abyss, and the stars of heaven and the shades of the dead trembled with one accord: a vast chasm drew him down and swallowed his steeds as they made ready to leap the gulf: he loosed not the grip on rein or spear, but, as he was, carried his car steadfast to Tartarus, and, as he fell, gazed up to heaven and groaned to see the plain close above him, till a lighter shock once more united the gaping fields and shut out the light from hell. Here we see Statius at his highest level, whether in point of metre, diction, or poetic imagination. Of the other characters there is little to be said. For all the wealth of detail that Statius has lavished on them, they are featureless. Adrastus is a colourless and respectable old king, strongly reminiscent of Latinus. Capaneus and Hippomedon are terrific warriors of gigantic stature and truculent speech, but they are wholly uninteresting. Argia and Jocasta are too rhetorical, Antigone too slight a figure to be really pathetic; Oedipus can do little save curse, which he does with some rhetorical vigour; but the gift of cursing hardly makes a character. Parthenopaeus, however, is a pathetic figure; he is an Arcadian, the son of Atalanta, a mere boy whom a romantic ambition has hurried into war ere his years were ripe for it. His dying speech is touching, though it errs on the side of triviality and mere prettiness (ix. 877): at puer infusus sociis in devia campi tollitur (heu simplex aetas!) moriensque iacentem flebat equum; cecidit laxata casside vultus, aegraque per trepidos exspirat gratia visus, * * * * * ibat purpureus niveo de pectore sanguis. tandem haec singultu verba incidente profatur: 'labimur, i, miseram, Dorceu, solare parentem. illa quidem, si vera ferunt praesagia curae, aut somno iam triste nefas aut omine vidit. tu tamen arte pia trepidam suspende diuque decipito; neu tu subitus neve arma tenenti veneris, et tandem, cum iam cogere fateri, dic: "Merui, genetrix, poenas invita capesse; arma puer rapui, nec te retinente quievi, nec tibi sollicitae tandem inter bella peperci. vive igitur potiusque animis irascere nostris, et iam pone metus. frustra de colle Lycaei anxia prospectas, si quis per nubila longe aut sonus aut nostro sublatus ab agmine pulvis: frigidus et nuda iaceo tellure, nec usquam tu prope, quae vultus efflantiaque ora teneres. hunc tamen, orba parens, crinem"--dextraque secandum praebuit--"hunc toto capies pro corpore crinem, comere quem frustra me dedignante solebas. huic dabis exsequias, atque inter iusta memento, ne quis inexpertis hebetet mea tela lacertis dilectosque canes ullis agat amplius antris. haec autem primis arma infelicia castris ure, vel ingratae crimen suspende Dianae."' But the boy fell into his comrades' arms and they bore him to a place apart. Alas for his tender years! As he died, he wept for his fallen horse: his face drooped as they unbound his helmet, and a fading grace passed faintly o'er his quivering visage.... The purple blood flowed from his breast of snow. At length he spake these words through sobs that checked his utterance: 'My life is falling from me; go, Dorceus, comfort my unhappy mother: she indeed, if care and sorrow can give foreknowledge, has seen my woeful fate in dreams or through some omen; yet do thou with loving art keep her terrors in suspense and long hold back the truth; and come not upon her suddenly, nor when she hath a weapon in her hands; but when at last the truth must out, say: "Mother, I deserved my doom; I am punished, though my punishment break thy heart. I rushed to arms too young, and abode not at home when thou wouldst restrain me: nor had I any pity for thine anguish in the day of battle. Live on then, and keep thine anger for my headstrong courage and fear no more for me. In vain thou gazest from the Lycaean height, if any sound perchance may be borne from far to thine ear through the clouds, or thine eye have sight of the dust raised by our homeward march. I lie cold upon the bare earth, and thou art nowhere nigh to hold my head as my lips breathe farewell. Yet, childless mother, take this lock of hair"-- and in his right hand he stretched it out to be cut away--"take this poor lock in place of my whole body, this lock of that hair which thou didst tire in my despite. To it shalt thou give due burial and remember this also as my due; let no man blunt my spears with unskilful cast, nor any more drive the hounds I loved through any caverned glen. But this mine armour, whose first battle hath brought disaster, burn thou, or hang it to be a reproach to Dian's ingratitude."' When we have said that Parthenopaeus is almost too young to have been accepted as a leader, or have performed the feats of war assigned to him, we have said all that can be said against this beautiful speech. Parthenopaeus is for the _Thebais_ what Camilla is for the _Aeneid_, though he presents at times hints both of Pallas and Euryalus. But he is little more than a child, and fails to carry the conviction or awaken the deep emotion excited by the Amazon of Vergil.[565] Statius then, with a few striking exceptions, fails in his portrayal of life and character. On the whole--one says it with reluctance in view of his brilliant variety, his boundless invention, his wealth of imagery--the same is true of his descriptions. The picture is too crowded; he has not the unerring eye for the relevant or salient points of a scene. Skilful and faithful touches abound, but, as in the case of certain pre-Raphaelite pictures, extreme attention to detail causes him to miss the full scenic effect. He is not sufficiently the impressionist; he cannot suggest--a point in which he presents a strong contrast to Valerius Flaccus. And too many of his incidents, in spite of ingenious variation of detail, are but echoes of Vergil. The foot-race and the archery contest at the funeral games of Archemorus, together with the episode of Dymas and Hopleus,[566] to which we have already referred, are perhaps the most marked examples of this unfortunate characteristic. We are continually saying to ourselves as we read the _Thebais_, 'All this has been before!' We weary at times of the echoes of Homer in Vergil, and the combats that stirred us in the _Iliad_ make us drowsy in the _Aeneid_. Homer knew what fighting was from personal experience, or at least from being in touch with warriors who had killed their man. Vergil had come no nearer these things than 'in the pages of a book '. Statius is yet one remove further from the truth than Vergil. He is tied hand and foot by his intimate acquaintance with previous poetic literature. If he is less the victim of the schools of rhetoric than many post-Augustan writers, he is more than most the victim of the poetic training of the schools. But with all these faults there are passages which surprise us by their effectiveness. It would be hard to imagine anything more vigorous and exciting than the fight of Tydeus ambushed by his fifty foes. The opening passage is splendidly successful in creating the requisite atmosphere (ii. 527): coeperat umenti Phoebum subtexere palla Nox et caeruleam terris infuderat umbram. ille propinquabat silvis et ab aggere celso scuta virum galeasque videt rutilare comantes, qua laxant rami nemus adversaque sub umbra flammeus aeratis lunae tremor errat in armis. obstipuit visis, ibat tamen, horrida tantum spicula et inclusum capulo tenus admovet ensem. ac prior unde, viri, quidve occultatis in armis?' non humili terrore rogat. nec reddita contra vox, fidamque negant suspecta silentia pacem. Night began to shroud Phoebus with her humid pall and shed her blue darkness o'er the earth. He drew nigh the forest, and from a high knoll espied the gleam of warriors' shields and plumed helmets, where the boughs of the wood left a space, and in the shadow before him the quivering fire of the moonbeam played o'er their brazen armour. Dumbstruck at what he saw, he yet pursued his way, only he made ready for the fight his bristling javelins and the sword sheathed to its hilt. He was the first to speak: 'Whence come ye?' he asked, in fear, yet haughty still. 'And why hide ye thus armoured for the fray?' There came no answer, and their ominous silence told him no peace nor loyalty was there. The fight that follows, though it occupies more than 160 lines, is intensely rapid and vigorous; indeed it is the one genuinely exciting combat in Latin epic, and forms a refreshing contrast to the pseudo-Homeric or pseudo-Vergilian combats before the walls of Thebes. In no other portion of the _Thebais_ does Statius attain to such success, with the exception of the passage already quoted descriptive of the death of Amphiaraus. But there are other passages of sustained merit, such as the vigorous description of the struggle of Hippomedon with the waters of Ismenus and Asopus.[5671] While it is not particularly interesting to those acquainted with the corresponding passage in the _Iliad_, it would be unjust to deny the gifts of vigour and invention to the Latin poet's imitation. It is, however, rather in smaller and more minute pictures that Statius as a rule excels. The picture of the baby Opheltes left by his nurse is pretty enough (iv. 787): at puer in gremio vernae telluris et alto gramine nunc faciles sternit procursibus herbas in vultum nitens, caram modo lactis egeno nutricem plangore ciens iterumque renidens et teneris meditans verba inluctantia labris miratur nemorum strepitus aut obvia carpit aut patulo trahit ore diem nemorisque malorum inscius et vitae multum securus inerrat. But the child, lying face downward in the bosom of the vernal earth, now as he crawls in the deep herbage lays low the yielding grass; now cries for his loved nurse athirst for milk, and then, all smiles again, with infant lips frames words in stumbling speech, marvels at the sounds of the woods, gathers what lies before him, or open-mouthed drinks in the day; and knowing naught of the dangers of the woods, with ne'er a care in life, roams here and there. Fine, too, in a different way is the sinister picture of Eteocles left sole king in Thebes (i. 165): quis tunc tibi, saeve, quis fuit ille dies, vacua cum solus in aula respiceres ius omne tuum cunctosque minores et nusquam par stare caput? Ah! what a day was that for thee, fierce heart, when, sitting alone amid thy courtiers, thy brother gone from thee, thou sawest thyself enthroned above all men, with all things in thy power, without a peer. Less poetical, but scarcely less effective, is the description of the compact between the brothers (i. 138): alterni placuit sub legibus anni exsilio mutare ducem. sic iure maligno fortunam transire iubent, ut sceptra tenentem foedere praecipiti semper novus angeret heres. haec inter fratres pietas erat, haec mora pugnae sola nec in regem perduratura secundum. It was resolved that in alternate years the king should quit his throne for exile. Thus with baneful ordinance they bade fortune pass from one to the other, that he who held the sceptre on these brief terms should ever be vexed by the thought of his successor's coming. Such was the brothers' love, such the sole bond that kept them from conflict, a bond that should not last till the kingship changed. But far beyond all other portraits in Statius is the description of Jocasta as she approaches the Argive camp on her mission of reconciliation (vii. 474): ecce truces oculos sordentibus obsita canis exsangues Iocasta genas et bracchia planctu nigra ferens ramumque oleae cum velleris atri nexibus, Eumenidum velut antiquissima, portis egreditur magna cum maiestate malorum. Lo! Jocasta, her white hair streaming unkempt over her wild eyes, her cheeks all pale, her arms bruised by the beating of her anguished hands, bearing an olive-branch hung with black wool, came forth from the gates in semblance like to the eldest of the Eumenides, in all the majesty of her many sorrows. In this last line we have one of the very few lines in Statius that attain to real grandeur. In the lack of such lines, and in the lack of real breadth of treatment lies Statius' chief defect as a narrator. All that dexterity can do he does; but he lacks the supreme gifts, the selective eye and the penetrating imagination of the great poet. Of his actual diction and ornament little need be said. Without being precisely straightforward, he is not, as a rule, obscure. But his language gradually produces a feeling of oppression. He can be read in short passages without this feeling; the moment, however, the reader takes his verse in considerable quantities, the continued, though only slight, over-elaboration of the work produces a feeling of strain. Throughout there runs a vein of artificiality which ultimately gives the impression of insincerity. He can turn out phrases of the utmost nicety. Nothing can be more neatly turned than the description of the feelings of Antigone and Ismene on the outbreak of the war (viii. 614): nutat utroque timor, quemnam hoc certamine victum, quem vicisse velint: tacite praeponderat exsul; Their fears incline this way and that: whom would they have the conqueror in the strife, whom the vanquished? All unconfessed the exile has their prayers. or than the line describing the parting of the Lemnian women from the Argonauts, their second husbands (v. 478): heu iterum gemitus, iterumque novissima nox est. Alas! once more the hour of lamentation is near, once more is come the last night of wedded sleep. But this neatness often degenerates into preciosity, _bellator campus_ means a field suitable for battle (viii. 377). Nisus, the king of Megara, with the talismanic purple lock, becomes a _senex purpureus_ (i. 334); an embrace is described by the words _alterna pectora mutant_ (v. 722); a woman nearing her time is one _iustos cuius pulsantia menses vota tument_ (v. 115). We have already noted a similar tendency in Valerius Flaccus; such phrase-making is not a badge of any one poet, it is a sign of the times. In the case of Statius there is perhaps less obscurity and less positive extravagance than in any of his contemporaries, but whether as regards description or phrase-making, there is always a suspicion of his work being pitched--if the phrase is permissible--a tone too high. This is, perhaps, particularly noticeable in his similes. They are very numerous, and he has obviously expended great trouble over them. But, with very few exceptions, they are failures. The cause lies mainly in their lack of variety. There are, for instance, no less than sixteen similes drawn from bulls, twelve from lions, six from tigers.[568] None of these similes show any close observance of nature, and in any case the poetic interest of bulls, lions, and tigers is far from inexhaustible. It is less reprehensible that twenty similes should be drawn from storms, which have a more cogent interest and greater picturesque value. But even here Statius has overshot the mark. This lack of variety testifies to a real dearth of poetic imagination, and this failing is noticeable also in the execution. There is rarely a simile containing anything that awakens either imagination, emotion, or thought. Still, to give Statius his due, there _are_ exceptions, such as the simile comparing Parthenopaeus, seen in all his beauty among his comrades, to the reflections of the evening star outshining the reflections of the lesser stars in the waveless sea (vi. 578): sic ubi tranquillo perlucent sidera ponto vibraturque fretis caeli stellantis imago, omnia clara nitent, sed clarior omnia supra Hesperus exsertat radios, quantusque per altum aethera, caeruleis tantus monstratur in undis. So when the stars are glassed in the tranquil deep and the reflection of the starry sky quivers in the waves, all the stars shine clear, but clearer than all doth Hesperus send forth his rays; and as he gleams in the high heavens, even so bright do the blue waters show him forth. The comparison is. a little strained and far-fetched. The reflection of stars in the sea is not quite so noticeable or impressive as Statius would have us believe. But there is real beauty both in the conception and the execution of the simile. Of more indisputable excellence is the comparison in the eleventh book (443), where Adrastus, flying from Thebes in humiliation and defeat, is likened to Pluto, when he first entered on his kingdom of the underworld, his lordship over the strengthless dead-- qualis demissus curru laevae post praemia sortis umbrarum custos mundique novissimus heres palluit, amisso veniens in Tartara caelo. Even as the warden of the shades, the third heir of the world, when he entered on the realm that the unkind lot had given him, leapt from his car and turned pale, for heaven was lost and he was at the gate of hell. The picture is Miltonic, and Pluto is for a brief moment almost an anticipation of the Satan of _Paradise Lost_. The metre, like that of Valerius Flaccus, draws its primary inspiration from Vergil, but has been strongly influenced by the _Metamorphoses_ of Ovid. There are fewer elisions in Statius than in Vergil, and more dactyls.[569] He is, however, less dactylic than Valerius Flaccus and Ovid. In his management of pauses he is far more successful than any epic writer, with the exception of Vergil. As a result, he is far less monotonous than Ovid, Lucan, or Valerius. The one criticism that can be levelled against him is that his verse, while possessing rapidity and vigour, is not sufficiently adapted to the varying emotions that his story demands, and that it shows a consequent lack of nobility and stateliness. For the _Silvae_ his metre is admirably adapted. It is light and almost sprightly, and the poet can let himself go. He was not blind to the requirements of the epic metre even if he did not satisfy them, and in his lighter verse there is a notable increase of fluency and ease. The _Thebais_ is a work whose value it is difficult to estimate. Its undeniable merits are never quite such that we can accord it whole-hearted praise; its cleverness commands our wonder, while its defects are not such as to justify a sweeping condemnation. But it must be remembered that epic must be very good if it is to avoid failure, and it is probable that there are few works on which such skill and labour have been expended without any proportionate success. An attempt has been made in the preceding pages to indicate the main reasons for the failure of the _Thebais_. One more reason may perhaps be added here. Over and above the poet's lack of originality and the highest poetic imagination, over and above his distracting echoes and his artificiality, there is a lack of moral fire and insight about the poem. Statius gives us but a surface view of life. He had never plumbed the depths of human passion nor realized anything of the mystery of the world. His reader never derives from him the consciousness, that he so often derives from Vergil, of a 'deep beyond the deep, and a height beyond the height'. He has neither the virtues of the mystic nor of the realist. Ultimately, life is for him a pageant with intervals for sentimental threnodies and rhetorical declamation. The same qualities characterize the _Achilleis_ and still more the _Silvae_. The _Achilleis_ was to have comprised the whole life of Achilles. Only the first book and 167 lines of the second were composed. They tell how Thetis endeavoured to withhold Achilles from the Trojan War by disguising him as a girl and sending him to Scyros, how he became the lover of Deidamia, the king's daughter, was discovered by the wiles of Ulysses, and set forth on the expedition to Troy. The fragment is not unpleasant reading, but contains little that is noteworthy.[570] The style is simpler, less precious, and less rhetorical than that of the _Thebais_. But it lacks the vigour as well as many of the faults of the earlier poem. There is nothing to make us regret that the poet died before its completion; there is something to be thankful for in the fact that he did not live to challenge direct comparison with Homer. The _Silvae_, on the other hand, is a work of considerable interest. The meaning of the word _silva_, in the literary sense, is 'raw material' or 'rough draft'. It then came to be used to mean a work composed at high speed on the spur of the moment, differing in fact but little from an improvisation.[571] That these poems correspond to this definition will be seen from Statius' preface to book i: 'hos libellos, qui mihi subito calore et quadam festinandi voluptate fluxerunt.... Nullum ex illis biduo longius tractum, quaedam et in singulis diebus effusa.' There are thirty-two poems in all, divided into five books. The fifth is incomplete; and, if we may judge from the unfinished state of its preface, was published after the author's death. The poems are extremely varied in subject, and to a lesser degree in metre, hendecasyllables, alcaics, and sapphics being found as well as hexameters. They comprise poems in praise of the appearance and the achievements of Domitian,[572] consolations to friends and patrons for the loss of relatives or favourite slaves,[573] lamentations of the poet or his friends for the death of dear ones,[574] letters on various subjects,[575] thanksgivings for the safety of friends,[576] and farewells to them on their departure,[577] descriptions of villas and the like built by his acquaintances,[578] an epithalamium,[579] an ode commemorating the birthday of Lucan,[580] the description of a statuette of Hercules,[581] poems on the deaths of a parrot and a lion,[582] and a remarkable invocation to Sleep.[583] One and all, these poems show abnormal cleverness. These slighter subjects were far better suited to the poet's powers. His miniature painting was in place, his sprightly and dexterous handling of the hexameter and the hendecasyllable could be more profitably employed. Yet here, too, his artificiality is a serious blemish, his lamentations for the loss of the _pueri delicati_ of friends do not, and can hardly be expected to, ring true, and the same blemish affects even the poems where he laments his own loss. Further, the poems addressed to Domitian are fulsome to the verge of nausea;[584] the beauty of the emperor is such that all the great artists of the past would have vied with one another in depicting his features; his eyes are like stars; his equestrian statue is so glorious that at night (i. 1. 95) cum superis terrena placent, tua turba relicto labetur caelo miscebitque oscula iuxta. ibit in amplexus natus fraterque paterque et soror: una locum cervix dabit omnibus astris. When heaven takes its joy of earth, thy kin shall leave heaven and glide down to earth and kiss thee face to face. Thy son and sister, thy brother and thy sire, shall come to thy embrace; and about thy sole neck shall all the stars of heaven find a place. The poem on the emperor's sexless favourite, Earinus, can scarcely be quoted here. Without being definitely coarse, it succeeds in being one of the most disgusting productions in the whole range of literature. The emperor who can accept flattery of such a kind has certainly qualified for assassination. The lighter poems are almost distressingly trivial, and it is but a poor excuse to plead that such triviality was imposed by the artificial social life of the day and the jealous tyranny of Domitian. Moreover, the tendency to preciosity, which was kept in check in the _Thebais_ by the requirements of epic, here has full play. The death of a boy in his fifteenth year is described as follows (ii. 6, 70): vitae modo cardine adultae nectere temptabat iuvenum pulcherrimus ille cum tribus Eleis unam trieterida lustris. Come now to the turning-point where boyhood becomes manhood, he, the fairest of youths, was on the point of linking three olympiads (twelve years) with a space of three years. Writers of elegiac verse are addressed as (i. 2. 250) 'qui nobile gressu extremo fraudatis opus'. Ye that cheat the noble march of your verse of its last stride. A new dawn is expressed by an astounding periphrasis (iv. 6. 15): ab Elysiis prospexit sedibus alter Castor et hesternas risit Tithonia mensas. Castor in turn looked forth from the halls of Elysium and Tithonus' bride made merry over yesterday's feasts. [Castor and Pollux lived on alternate days.] There is, in fact, no limit in these poems to Statius' luxuriance in far-fetched and often obscure mythological allusions. In spite, however, of such cardinal defects as these, the _Silvae_ present a brilliant though superficial picture of the cultured society of the day and contain much that is pretty, and something that is poetic.[585] Take, for instance, the poem in which the poet writes to console Atedius Melior for the death of his favourite Glaucias, a _puer delicatus_. The work is hopelessly clever and hopelessly insincere. Statius exaggerates at once the charms of the dead boy and the grief of Atedius and himself. But at the conclusion he works up an old commonplace into a very pretty piece of verse. He has been describing the reception of Glaucias in the underworld (ii. 1. 208): hic finis rapto! quin tu iam vulnera sedas et tollis mersum luctu caput? omnia functa aut moritura vides: obeunt noctesque diesque astraque, nee solidis prodest sua machina terris. nam populos, mortale genus, plebisque caducae quis fleat interitus? hos bella, hos aequora poscunt; his amor exitio, furor his et saeva cupido, ut sileam morbos; hos ora rigentia Brumae, illos implacido letalis Sirius igni, hos manet imbrifero pallens Autumnus hiatu. quicquid init ortus, finem timet. ibimus omnes, ibimus: immensis urnam quatit Aeacus ulnis. ast hic quem gemimus, felix hominesque deosque et dubios casus et caecae lubrica vitae effugit, immunis fatis. non ille rogavit, non timuit meruitve mori: nos anxia plebes, nos miseri, quibus unde dies suprema, quis aevi exitus incertum, quibus instet fulmen ab astris, quae nubes fatale sonet. Such is the rest thy lost darling has won. Come, soothe thine anguish and lift up thy head that droops with woe. Thou seest all things dead or soon to die. Day and night and stars all pass away, nor shall its massive fabric save the world from destruction. As for the tribes of earth, this mortal race, and the death of multitudes all doomed to pass away, why bewail them? Some war, some ocean, demands for its prey: some die of love, others of madness, others of fierce desire, to say naught of pestilence: some winter's freezing breath, others the baleful Sirius' cruel fire, others again pale autumn, gaping with rainy maw, awaits for doom: all that hath birth must tremble before death: we all must go, must go: Aeacus shakes the urn of fate in his vast arms. But this child, whom we bewail, is happy, and has escaped the power of men and gods, the strokes of chance, and the slippery paths of our dark life: fate cannot touch him: he did not ask, nor fear, nor deserve to die. But we poor anxious rabble, we miserable men, know not whence our last day shall come, what shall be the end of life, for whom the thunderbolt shall bring death from the starry sky, nor what cloud shall roar forth our doom. There is nothing great about such work, but it is a neat and elegant treatment of a familiar theme, while the phrase _non ille rogavit, non timuit meruitve mori_ has a pathos worthy of a better cause.[586] Far more suited, however, to the genius of Statius, with its lack of inspiration, its marvellous polish, and its love of minutiae, are the descriptions of villas, temples, baths, and works of art in which he so frequently indulges. The poem on the statuette of Hercules (ii. 6) is a wonder of cunning craftsmanship, the poems on the baths of Etruscus, the villa of Vopiscus at Tibur, and of Pollius at Surrentum, for all their exaggeration and affectation, reveal a genuine love for the beauties of art and nature. It is true that he shows a preference for nature trimmed by the hand of man, but his pleasure is genuine and its expression often delicate. Who would not delight to live in a house such as Pollius had built at Sorrento (ii. 2. 45)?-- haec domus ortus aspicit et Phoebi tenerum iubar; illa cadentem detinet exactamque negat dimittere lucem, cum iam fessa dies et in aequora montis opaci umbra cadit vitreoque natant praetoria ponto. haec pelagi clamore fremunt, haec tecta sonoros ignorant fluctus terraeque silentia malunt. * * * * * quid mille revolvam culmina visendique vices? sua cuique voluptas atque omni proprium thalamo mare, transque iacentem Nerea diversis servit sua terra fenestris. One chamber looks to the east and the young beam of Phoebus; one stays him as he falls and will not part with the expiring light, when the day is outworn and the shadow of the dark mount falls athwart the deep, and the great castle swims reflected in the glassy sea. These chambers are full of the sound of ocean, those know not the roaring waves, but rather love the silence of the land.... Why should I recount thy thousand roofs and every varied view? Each has a joy that is its own: each chamber has its own sea, and each several window its own tract of land seen across the sea beneath. We cannot, perhaps, share his enthusiasm in the minute description that follows of the coloured marbles used in the decoration of the house, and his panegyric of Pollius leaves us cold, but we quit the poem with a pleasant impression of the Bay of Naples and of the poet who loved it so well. It recalls in its way the charming, if over-elaborate and exaggerated, landscapes of the younger Pliny in his letters on the source of the Clitumnus and on his Tuscan and Laurentine villas.[587] But it is in two poems of a very different kind that the _Silvae_ reach their high-water mark. The _Genethliacon_ _Lucani_, despite its artificial form and the literary conventions with which it is overloaded, reveals a genuine enthusiasm for the dead poet, and is couched in language of the utmost grace and verse of extraordinary melody; the hendecasyllables of Statius lack the poignant vigour of the Catullan hendecasyllables, but they have a music of their own which is scarcely less remarkable.[588] The lament of Calliope for her lost nursling will hold its own with anything of a similar kind produced by the Silver Age (ii 7. 88): 'o saevae nimium gravesque Parcae! o numquam data longa fata summis! cur plus, ardua, casibus patetis? cur saeva vice magna non senescunt? sic natum Nasamonii Tonantis post ortus obitusque fulminatos angusto Babylon premit sepulcro. sic fixum Paridis manu trementis Peliden Thetis horruit cadentem. sic ripis ego murmurantis Hebri non mutum caput Orpheos sequebar sic et tu (rabidi nefas tyranni!) iussus praecipitem subire Lethen, dum pugnas canis arduaque voce das solatia grandibus sepulcris, (o dirum scelus! o scelus!) tacebis.' sic fata est leviterque decidentes abrasit lacrimas nitente plectro. 'Ah! fates severe and all too cruel! O life that for our noblest ne'er is long! Why are earth's loftiest most prone to fall? Why by hard fate do her great ones ne'er grow old? Even so the Nasamonian Thunderer's son like lightning rose, like lightning passed away, and now is laid in a narrow tomb at Babylon. So Thetis shuddered, when the son of Peleus fell transfixed by Paris' coward hand. So I, too, by the banks of murmuring Hebrus followed the head of Orpheus that could not cease from song. So now must thou--out on the mad tyrant's crime!--go down untimely to the wave of Lethe, and while thou singest of war and with lofty strain givest comfort to the sepulchres of the mighty,--O infamy, O monstrous infamy!--art doomed to sudden silence.' So spake she, and with gleaming quill wiped away the tears that gently fell. But more beautiful as pure poetry, and indeed unique in Latin, is the well-known invocation to Sleep (v. 4): crimine quo merui iuvenis,[589] placidissime divum, quove errore miser, donis ut solus egerem, Somne, tuis? tacet omne pecus volucresque feraeque et simulant fessos curvata cacumina somnos, nec trucibus fluviis idem sonus; occidit horror aequoris, et terris maria acclinata quiescunt. septima iam rediens Phoebe mihi respicit aegras stare genas; totidem Oetaeae Paphiaeque revisunt lampades et totiens nostros Tithonia questus praeterit et gelido spargit miserata flagello. unde ego sufficiam? non si mihi lumina mille quae sacer alterna tantum statione tenebat Argus et haud umquam vigilabat corpore toto. at nunc heus! aliquis longa sub nocte puellae bracchia nexa tenens ultro te, Somne, repellit: inde veni! nec te totas infundere pennas luminibus compello meis (hoc turba precetur laetior): extremo me tange cacumine virgae (sufficit) aut leviter suspenso poplite transi. By what crime, O Sleep, most gentle of gods, or by what error, have I, that am young, deserved--woe's me!--that I alone should lack thy blessing? All cattle and birds and beasts of the wild lie silent; the curved mountain ridges seem as though they slept the sleep of weariness, and wild torrents have hushed their roaring. The waves of the deep have fallen and the seas, reclined on earth's bosom, take their rest. Yet now Phoebe returning gazes for the seventh time on my sleepless weary eyes. For the seventh time the lamps of Oeta and Paphos (i.e. Hesperus and Venus) revisit me, for the seventh time Tithonus' bride sweeps over my complaint and all her pity is to touch me with her frosty scourge. How may I find strength to endure? I needs must faint, even had I the thousand eyes which divine Argos kept fixed upon his prey in shifting relays (so only could he wake, nor watched he ever with all his body). But now--woe's me!--another, his arms locked about his love, spurneth thee from him all the long night. Leave him, O Sleep, for me. I bid thee not sweep upon my eyes with all the force of thy fanning pinions. That is the prayer of happier souls than I. Touch me only with the tip of thy wand--that shall suffice--or lightly pass over my head with hovering feet. Here Statius far surpasses himself. Had all else that he wrote been merely mediocre, this one short poem would have given him a claim on the grateful memory of posterity. The note it strikes is one that has never been heard before in Latin poetry and is never heard again. We have wavered before as to Statius' title to the name of true poet; this should turn the balance in his favour. Great he is not for a moment to be called; Lucan, with all his faults, stands high above him; Valerius Flaccus, aided largely by his happier choice of subject, is in some respects his superior; but for finish, dexterity, and fluency, Statius is unique among the post-Augustans. Just as an actor who has acquired a perfect mastery of all the tricks and technique of the stage may sometimes cheat us into believing him to be a great actor, though in reality neither intellect, presence, nor voice qualify him for such high praise, so it is with Statius. His facility and cunning workmanship hold us amazed, and at times the reader is on the verge of yielding up his saner judgement before such charm. But the revulsion of feeling comes inevitably. Statius had not learned the art of concealing his art. The unreality of his work soon makes itself felt, and his skill becomes in time little better than a weariness and a mockery. CHAPTER X SILIUS ITALICUS Titus Catius Silius Italicus[590] is best known to us as the author of the longest and worst of surviving Roman epics. But by a strange irony of fate we have a fuller knowledge of his life and character than is granted us in the case of any other poet of the Silver Age, with the exception of Seneca and Persius. His social position, his personal character, his cultured and artistic tastes, rather than any merit possessed by his verse, have won him a place in the picture-gallery of Pliny the younger.[591] We would gladly sacrifice the whole of the 'obituary notice' transmitted to us by the kindly garrulity of Pliny, for a few more glimpses into the life of Juvenal, or even of Valerius Flaccus, but the picture is interesting and even attractive, and awakens feelings of a less unfriendly nature than are usually entertained for the plodding poetaster who had the misfortune to write the seventeen books of _Punica_. Silius was born in the year 25 or 26 A.D.[592]; of his family and place of birth we know nothing.[593] He first appears in the unpleasing guise of a 'delator' in the reign of Nero, in the last year of whose principate he filled the position of consul (68 A.D.). In the 'year of the four emperors' (69 A.D.) he is found as the friend and counsellor of Vitellius;[594] his conduct, we are told, was wise and courteous. He subsequently won renown by his admirable administration of the province of Asia, and then retired from the public gaze to the seclusion of a life of study.[595] The amiability and virtue which marked the leisure of his later years wiped out the dark stain that had besmirched his youth. 'Men hastened to salute him and to do him honour. When not engaged in writing, he would pass the day in learned converse with the friends and acquaintances--no mere fortune-hunters--who continually thronged the chambers where he would lie for long hours upon his couch. His verses, which he would sometimes submit to the judgement of the critics by giving recitations, show diligence rather than genius. The increasing infirmities of age led him to forsake Rome for Campania; not even the accession of a new princeps induced him to quit his retirement. It is not less creditable to Caesar to have permitted than to Silius to have ventured on such a freedom. He was a connoisseur even to the verge of extravagance. He had several country houses in the same district, and often abandoned those which he already possessed, if some new house chanced to catch his fancy. He had a large library, and a fine collection of portraits and statues, and was an enthusiastic admirer of works of art which he was not fortunate enough to possess. He kept Vergil's birthday with greater care than his own, especially when he was at Naples, where he would visit the poet's tomb with all the veneration due to the temple of a god.' He died[596] in his Neapolitan villa of self-chosen starvation. His health had failed him. He was afflicted by an incurable tumour, and ran to meet death with a fortitude that nothing could shake. 'His life was happy and prosperous to his last hour; his one sorrow was the death of his younger son; the elder (and better) of his sons, who survives him, has had a distinguished career, and has even reached the consulate.' From Epictetus[597] we gather, what we might infer from the manner of his death, that he was a Stoic. From Martial,[598] who addresses him in the interested language of flattery as the leading orator of his day, and as the maker of immortal verse, we learn that he was the proud possessor of the Tusculan villa of Cicero, and that he actually owned the tomb of the poet whom he loved so well. Silius' life is more interesting than his verse. Like Lucan, he elected to write historical epic, and in his choice of a subject was undoubtedly wiser than his younger contemporary. For instead of selecting a period so dangerously recent as the civil strife in which the republic perished, he went back to the Second Punic War, to a time sufficiently remote to permit of greater freedom of treatment and to enable him to avoid the peril of unduly republican ecstasies. In making this choice he was in all probability influenced by his reverence for Vergil. He, too, would sing of Rome's rise to greatness, would write a truly national epic on the great theme which Vergil so inimitably foreshadowed in the dying words of the Carthaginian queen, would link the most stirring years of Rome's history with the past, just as Vergil had linked the epic of Rome's founder to the greatness of the years that were to come. Ennius had been before him, but he might well aspire to remodel and develop the rude annalistic work of the earlier poet.[599] The brilliant history of Livy, with its vivid battle-scenes and its sonorous speeches, was a quarry that might provide him with the richest material. Unhappily, less wise than Lucan, he made the fatal mistake of adopting the principles set forth by Eumolpus, the dissolute poet in the novel of Petronius.[600] The intrusion of the mythological method into historical epic is disastrous. It is barely tolerable in the pseudo-historical epic of Tasso. In the military narrative of Silius it is monstrous and insufferable. His reverence for Vergil led him to control, or attempt to control, every action of the war by divine intervention. Juno reappears in her old rôle as the implacable enemy of Rome. It is she that kindles Hannibal's hatred for Rome, causes the outbreak of the war,[601] and, disguised as the lake-god Trasimenus, spurs him on to Rome.[602] It is at her instigation that Anna Perenna kindles him to fresh effort by the news that Fabius Cunctator is no longer in command against him,[603] that Somnus moderates his designs after Cannae.[604] It is Juno that conceals the Carthaginian forces in a cloud at Cannae,[605] and that rescues Hannibal from the fury of Scipio at Zama.[606] Against Juno is arrayed Venus, the protector of the sons of Aeneas. She persuades her husband Vulcan to dry up the Trebia, whose flood threatens the Romans with yet greater disaster than they have already suffered,[607] she unnerves and demoralizes the Punic army by the luxury of Capua.[608] Minerva and Mars play minor parts, the former favouring Carthage, the latter Rome.[609] Nothing is gained by this dreary and superannuated mechanism, while the poem is yet further hampered by the other encumbrances of epic commonplace. The _Thebais_ of Statius is full of episodes that only find a place because Vergil had borrowed similar episodes from Homer. But the _Thebais_ is a professedly mythological epic, and Statius commands a light touch and brilliant colours. The reader merely groans when the heavy-handed Silius introduces his wondrously engraven shield,[610] his funeral games,[611] his Amazon,[612] his dismal catalogues,[613] his Nekuia.[614] In the latter episode, he even introduces the Vergilian Sibyl of Cumae; it is a redeeming feature that Scipio does not make a 'personally conducted tour' through the nether world; such a direct challenge to the Sixth Aeneid was perhaps impossible for so true a lover of Vergil as Silius. The Homeric method of necromancy is wisely preferred, and the Sibyl reveals the past and future of Rome as the spirits pass before them. But there are no illuminating flashes of imagination; the best feature of the episode is an uninspired and frigid appropriateness. Nothing serves better than the failure of Silius to show at once the daring and the genius of Vergil, when he ransacked the wealth of Homer and from a greater Greek Borrowed as beautifully as the moon The fire o' the sun. Apart from these unintelligent plagiarisms and vexatious absurdities, the actual form and composition of the work show some skill. The poet passes from scene to scene, from battle to battle, with ease and assurance in the earlier books. It is only with the widening of the area of conflict that the work loses its connexion. The earlier and less important exploits of the elder Scipios were wisely dismissed in a few words.[615] The poet avoided the mistake of undue scrupulosity in respect of chronology and makes no attempt to pose as a scientific military historian. But it is a serious defect that he should fail to show the significance of the successful 'peninsular campaign' of the younger Scipio. Here, as in the descriptions of the siege of Syracuse, the reader is haunted by the feeling that these great events are regarded as merely episodic. Even the thrilling march of Hasdrubal, ending in the dramatic catastrophe of the Metaurus, is hardly given its full weight. There is more true historical and dramatic appreciation in Horace's Karthagini iam non ego nuntios mittam superbos: occidit, occidit spes omnis et fortuna nostri nominis Hasdrubale interempto than in all the ill-proportioned verbiage of Silius. The task of setting forth the course of a conflict that flamed all over the Western Mediterranean world was not easy, and Silius' failure was proportionately great. Nay--if it be not merely the hallucination of a weary reader--he seems to have tired of his task. The first twelve books take us no further than Hannibal's appearance before the walls of Rome, and the war is summarily brought to a close in the last five books, although these, it should be noted, are by no means free from irrelevant matter. The last three books above all are jejune and perfunctory, and it has been suggested that they lack the final revision that the rest of the work had received. Be this as it may, the result of the inadequate treatment of the close of the war is that the reader lays down the poem with no feeling of the greatness of Rome's triumph. Yet even with these faults of composition, a genuine poet might have wrought a great work from the rough ore of history. The scene is thronged with figures as remarkable and inspiring as history affords. There is the fierce irresistible Hannibal, the sagacious Fabius, the elder Scipios, tragic victims of disaster, the younger Scipio, glorious with the light of victory as the clouds of defeat are rolled away, Hasdrubal hurled to ruin at the supreme crisis of the war, Marcellus the victorious, beleaguered[616] and beleaguerer, the ill-starred Paulus, the Senate of Rome that thanked the fugitive Varro because he had not despaired of the republic,[617] and above all the gigantic figure of Rome herself, unshaken, indomitable, triumphant. These are no dry bones that the breath of the poet alone should make them live. They breathe immortal in the prose of Livy, in the verse of Silius they are vain 'shadows of men foredone'. The Hannibal of Silius is not the dazzling villain of Livy, the incarnation of military daring and 'Punic faith'. Mistaken patriotism does not lead Silius to blacken the character of Rome's great antagonist; he strives to do him justice; he is as true a patriot, as chivalrous[618] a warrior, as any of the Roman leaders. But he does not live; he is merely the stock warrior of epic, and his exploits fail to compel belief. Fabius, the least romantic, though not the least interesting figure in the war, stands forth more clearly. The prosaic Silius is naturally most successful with his most prosaic hero. The younger Scipio is the embodiment of _pietas_, an historical Aeneas, without his prototype's most distressing weaknesses, but with all his dullness, and lacking the halo of legend and the splendour of the founder of the race to glorify him. Paulus has the merit of true courage, and his consciousness of his colleague's folly invests him with a certain pathos. He makes the best death of any Silian warrior, and deserves the eulogy passed on him by Hannibal. The rest are lay-figures, with even less individuality and life. Silius failed to depict character. He fails, too, to show any true sense of the political greatness of Rome. The genius of Rome and the genius of Carthage are never confronted or contrasted; the greatness of Rome in defeat, the scenes of Rome agonizing in the grip of unexpected disaster, are never brought home to the reader with the least degree of vividness. The great battles are described at tedious length[619] and rendered ridiculous by the lavish introduction of Homeric single combats. If Silius is rarely bombastic or rendered absurd by the grossness of his exaggeration, he yet fails to see what Lucan saw plainly--that for the author of a military historical epic, it is the issues of the war, big with the fate of generations to come, the temper of the combatants, the character of the chief actors, that are the really interesting elements. Almost alone of Silver Latin poets he shows no real gifts of rhetoric and epigram, no virtuosity of diction, no brilliance of description. We lack the declamation of Lucan, the apostrophes on the issues of the war, the vivid character-sketches of the generals, the political enthusiasm, the thunder of the oratory of general and statesman. The battle-speeches of Livy, whose glow and vigour half atone for their theatricality, have been made use of by Silius, but find only a feeble echo in his lifeless verse. Nothing stands out sharply defined; the epic lacks impetus and has no salient points; outlines are blurred in an unpoetic haze. The history of Tacitus has been described as history 'seen by lightning flashes'. Such should be the history of historical epic. In its stead Silius presents us with a confused welter of archaistic battle, learned allusion, and epic commonplace. 'Aequalis liber est, Cretice, qui malus est,' cries Martial[620] to a friend. The epigram would apply to the __Punica_. There is scarcely a passage in the whole work that reveals genuine poetic imagination. Silius is free from many of the faults of his contemporaries, the faults that spring from aspirations towards originality. He is content to be an imitator. In his style, as in his composition, Vergil is an obsession. But the echoes are muffled or unmusical. Gifted with ease and fluency and--for his age--comparative lucidity of diction, Silius has no true ear for music, nor true eye for beauty. His verse moves naturally but heavily. He is the most spondaic poet[621] of his age, and the spondaic rhythm is not alleviated by artistic variety of pause or judicious use of elision. Lucan is heavy, but he hits hard and is weighty in the best sense. Silius rolls on lumbering and unperturbed, never rising or falling. He has all the faults of Ovid, and, in spite of his laboured imitation, none of the merits of Vergil. Nothing can kindle him. The most heroic and the most tragic of all the stories of the struggle for the empire of the western world is that of Regulus, the famous captive of Carthage in the first Punic War.[622] The episode is skilfully and naturally introduced. The story is told by an aged veteran of the first Punic War to a descendant of Regulus, who has fled wounded from the rout of Trasimene. Silius succeeds in making one of the noblest stories in history lifeless and dull. The narration opens with the description of a melodramatic struggle between Regulus and a monstrous serpent in Africa, scarcely an harmonious prelude for the simple and solemn climax of the hero's life, his return to his home to fix 'the Senate's wavering will', his departure unmoved to Carthaginian captivity, with the certainty of death and torture before him. Silius treats this tragic episode simply and severely; there is nothing to offend the taste, but there is equally nothing to move the heart; the description is merely dull; it lacks the fire of life and the finer imagination. Here, again, we turn for relief to Horace with his brief but incomparable atqui sciebat quae sibi barbarus tortor pararet, non aliter tamen dimovit obstantes propinquos et populum reditus morantem quam si clientum longa negotia diiudicata lite relinqueret, tendens Venefranos in agros aut Lacedaemonium Tarentum (iii. 5. 49). Take the corresponding passage in Silius. Regulus concludes his speech to the Senate as follows (vi. 485): exposcunt Libyes nobisque dedere haec referenda, pari libeat si pendere bellum foedere et ex aequo geminas conscribere leges. sed mihi sit Stygios ante intravisse penates talia quam videam ferientes pacta Latinos, haec fatus Tyriae sese iam reddidit irae, nec monitus spernente graves fidosque senatu Poenorum dimissa cohors. quae maesta repulsa ac minitans capto patrias properabat ad oras. prosequitur volgus, patres, ac planctibus ingens personat et luctu campus. revocare libebat interdum et iusto raptum retinere dolore. 'The Libyans ask whether you will cease from war on equal terms and draw up a treaty wherein each side keeps its own. They bid me bring back your reply. But may I sooner enter the gates of hell than see the Latins make such a compact!' He spake, and yielded himself back once more to the mercies of the Tyrian's hate: the Senate spurned not his words of weight, his loyal warning. The Punic embassy was dismissed. Cast down at their rebuff, and threatening their captive, they hastened homeward to their native shores. The people, the fathers, follow them: the whole vast plain resounds with weeping and beating of breasts, and ever and again they strove to recall the hero and with just grief to retain him as he was snatched away from them. Criticism is needless. One passage is in the grand style, the other is not; one is mere verse-making, the other the purest poetry. Silius has nothing of _curiosa felicitas_ or even of the more common gift of vague sensuous charm. Even on such hackneyed themes as the choice of Hercules, with Scipio playing the part of Hercules, he fails to rise to the conventional prettiness of which even a Calpurnius Siculus would have been capable. Virtue and pleasure are rendered equally unattractive, and we pity Scipio for having to make the choice. With the other poets of the age it is easy to select passages to illustrate their characteristic merits and defects. But from the dull monotony of Silius it is hard to choose. He does not read well even in selections. Apart from the general absurdity of the conception of the poem he is rarely grotesque. His taste is chastened by his love of Vergil, and the absence of genuine rhetorical power saves him from dangerous exuberance. The tricks of rhetoric are there, but the edge of his wit is dull, and he has no speed nor energy. For similar reasons he never attains sublimity. There are faint traces of the _Romana gravitas_ in lines such as iamque tibi veniet tempus quo maxima rerum nobilior sit Roma mails (iii. 584). And the time shall come when Rome, the greatest thing in all the world, shall be yet more ennobled by her woes. The idea that the trials of Rome shall be as a 'refiner's fire' has a certain grandeur, but the expression of the idea is commonplace. The same is true of the elaboration of the Vergilian _parcere subiectis_, where the poet describes Marcellus' clemency to the vanquished Syracusans, and makes brief allusion to the unhappy death of Archimedes (xiv. 673): sic parcere victis pro praeda fuit et sese contenta nec ullo sanguine pollutis plausit Victoria pennis. tu quoque ductoris lacrimas, memorande, tulisti, defensor patriae, meditantem in pulvere formas nec turbatum animi tanta feriente ruina. So mercy toward the conquered took the place of rapine, and Victory was content with herself and clapped her wings unstained by any blood. Thou, too, immortal sage, defender of thy country, didst win the meed of the conqueror's tears, thou whom ruin smote down, all unmoved, as thou broodedst o'er figures traced in the dust. To find Silius at his best--not a very exalted best--we must turn to the passage where he depicts the feelings of Hannibal on finding the body of Paulus on the field of Cannae (x. 513): quae postquam aspexit, geminatus gaudia ductor Sidonius 'Fuge, Varro,' inquit 'fuge, Varro, superstes, dum iaceat Paulus. patribus Fabioque sedenti et populo consul totas edissere Cannas. concedam hanc iterum, si lucis tanta cupido est, concedam tibi, Varro, fugam. at, cui fortia et hoste me digna haud parvo caluerunt corda vigore, funere supremo et tumuli decoretur honore. quantus, Paule, iaces! qui tot mihi milibus unus maior laetitiae causa est. cum fata vocabunt, tale precor nobis salva Karthagine letum.' * * * * * 'i decus Ausoniae, quo fas est ire superbas (572) virtute et factis animas. tibi gloria leto iam parta insigni. nostros Fortuna labores versat adhuc casusque iubet nescire futuros.' haec Libys, atque repens crepitantibus undique flammis aetherias anima exultans evasit in auras. When this he saw, the Sidonian chief was filled with double joy and cried, 'Fly, Varro, fly and survive defeat; enough that Paulus lieth low! Go, consul, tell all the tale of Cannae to the fathers, to laggard Fabius, to the people. If so thou long'st to live, I will grant thee, Varro, to flee once more as thou fleest to-day. But let him, whose heart was bold and worthy to be my foe, and all aflame with mighty valour, be honoured with the last rites of burial and all the honour of the tomb. How great, Paulus, art thou in the death! Thy fall alone gives greater cause for joy than the fall of so many thousands. Such, when the fates shall summon me, such I pray be my fate, so Carthage stand unshaken.' ... 'Go, Ausonia's glory, where the souls of those whom valour and noble deeds make proud may go. _Thou_ hast won great glory by thy death. For _us_, Fortune still tosses us to and fro in weltering labour and forbids us to see what chance the future hath in store.' So spake the Libyan, and straightway from the crackling flame the exulting spirit soared skyward through the air. The picture of the soul of Paulus soaring heavenward from the funeral pyre, exultant at the honour paid him by his great foe, is the nearest approach to pure poetic imagination in the whole weary length of the _Punica_.[623] But the pedestrian muse of Silius is more at home in the ingenious description of the manoeuvres and counter-manoeuvres of Fabius and Hannibal in the seventh book; the similes with which the passage closes are hackneyed, but their application is both new and clever: (vii. 91) iam Fabius tacito procedens agmine et arte bellandi lento similis, praecluserat omnes fortunaeque hostique vias. discedere signis haud licitum summumquc decus, quo tollis ad astra imperil, Romane, caput, parere docebat * * * * * (123) cassarum sedet irarum spectator et alti celsus colle iugi domat exultantia corda infractasque minas dilato Marte fatigat sollers cunctandi Fabius, ceu nocte sub atra munitis pastor stabulis per ovilia clausum impavidus somni servat pecus: effera saevit atque impasta truces ululatus turba luporum exercet morsuque quatit restantia claustra. inritus incepti movet inde atque Apula tardo arva Libys passu legit ac nunc valle residit conditus occulta, si praecipitare sequentem atque inopinata detur circumdare fraude; nunc nocturna parat caecae celantibus umbris furta viae retroque abitum fictosque timores adsimulat, tum castra citus deserta relicta ostentat praeda atque invitat prodigus hostem: qualis Maeonia passim Maeandrus in ora, cum sibi gurgitibus flexis revolutus oberrat. nulla vacant incepta dolis: simul omnia versat miscetque exacuens varia ad conamina mentem, sicut aquae splendor radiatus lampade solis dissultat per tecta vaga sub imagine vibrans luminis et tremula laquearia verberat umbra. Now Fabius advanced, leading his host in silence and--such was his cunning--like to a laggard in war; so closed he all the paths whereby fortune or the foe might fall on him. No soldier might quit the standards, and he taught that the height of glory, even that glory, Roman, that raises thine imperial head to the stars, was obedience.... Fabius sits high on the mountain slopes watching the foeman's rage and tames his impetuous ardour, humbles his threats, and, with skilful delay, postpones the day of battle and wears out his patience: as when through the darkness of the night a shepherd, fearless and sleepless in his well-guarded byre, keeps his flock penned within the fold: without, the wolf-pack, fierce and famished, howls fiercely, and with its teeth shakes the gates that bar its entrance. Baffled in his enterprise, the Libyan departs thence and slowly marches across the Apulian fields and pitches his camp deep in a hidden vale, if perchance he may hurl the Roman to ruin as he follows in his track and surround him by hidden guile. Now he prepares a midnight ambush in some dark pass beneath the shelter of the gloom, and falsely feigns retreat and fear; then, swiftly leaving his camp and booty, he displays them to the foe, and lavishly invites a raid. Even as on Maeonian shores Maeander with winding channel turns upon himself and wanders far and wide, now here, now there. Naught he attempts, but has some guile in it. He weighs every scheme, sharpens his mind for divers exploits, and blends contrivance with contrivance, even as the gleam of water lit by the sun's torch dances through a house quivering, and the reflected beam goes wandering and lashes the roof with tremulous reflection. There is in this passage nothing approaching real excellence, but its dexterity may reasonably command some respect. It is dexterity of which Silius has little to show. He is well-read in history and its bastard sister mythology. At his best he can string together his incidents with some skill, and he makes use of his learning in the accepted fashion of his day.[624] The poem is deluged with proper names and learned aetiology, though he has no conception of that magical use of proper names and legendary allusions which is the secret of the masters of literary epic.[625] But the absence of any true poetic genius makes him the most tedious of Latin authors, and his unenviable reputation is well deserved. For the poetry of the struggle with Carthage for the plumed troops and the big wars That make ambition virtue, for 'all quality, pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war', we must go to the inspired prose of Livy. And yet it is well that the _Punica_ should have been preserved. It is well to know that as France has its _Henriade_ and England its _Madoc_, so Rome had its _Punica_. It is our one direct glimpse into the work of that cultured society, devastated by the 'scribendi caccethes', as Juvenal puts it, or, from the point of view of the facile Pliny, adorned by the number of its poets.[626] The _Punica_ have won an immortality far other than that prophesied for them by Martial,[627] but they show us the work of a cultured Roman gentleman of his day, who, if he had small capacity, had a high enthusiasm for letters, who had diligence if he had not genius, and was possessed by a love for the supreme poet in whose steps he followed, a passion so sincere that it may win from his scanty readers at least a partial forgiveness for the inadequacy of his imitation and for the suffering inflicted on all those who have essayed the dreary adventure of reading the seventeen books that bear his name. CHAPTER XI MARTIAL Marcus Valerius Martialis, like Quintilian, Seneca, and Lucan, was a Spaniard by birth, and, unlike those writers, never became thoroughly reconciled to life at Rome. He was born at Bilbilis,[628] a small town of Hispania Tarraconensis. The exact year of his birth is uncertain; but as the tenth book of his epigrams, written between 95 and 98 A. D., contains a reference (24) to his fifty-seventh birthday, he must have been born between 38 and 41 A. D. His birthday was the 1st of March, a fact to which he owes his name Martialis.[629] Of the position of his parents, Valerius Fronto and Flaccilla,[630] we have no evidence. That they were not wealthy is clear from the circumstances of their son. But they were able to give him a regular literary education,[631] although, unlike his fellow-countrymen whom we have mentioned above, he was educated in his native province. But the life of a provincial did not satisfy him. Conscious, perhaps, of his literary gifts, he went, in 64 A.D.,[632] like so many a young provincial, to make his fortune at Rome. There he attached himself as client to the powerful Spanish family of the Senecas, and found a friendly reception also in the house of Calpurnius Piso.[633] But fortune was against him; as he was congratulating himself on his good luck in starting life at Rome under such favourable auspices, the Pisonian conspiracy (65 A.D.) failed, and his patrons fell before the wrath of Nero.[634] His career must be commenced anew. Of his life from this point to the reign of Domitian we know little. But this much is certain, that he endured all the indignities and hardships of a client's life,[635] and that he chose this degrading career in preference to the active career of the Roman bar. He had no taste for oratory, and rejected the advice of his friend Gaius[636] and his distinguished compatriot Quintilian to seek a livelihood as an advocate or as a politician. 'That is not life!' he replies to Quintilian: vivere quod propero pauper nec inutilis annis, da veniam: properat vivere nemo satis. differat hoc patrios optat qui vincere census atriaque immodicis artat imaginibus (ii. 90. 3). His ideals and ambitions were low, and his choice had, as we shall see, a degrading effect upon his poetry. He chose rather to live on such modest fortune as he may have possessed, on the client's dole, and such gifts as his complimentary epigrams may have won from his patrons. These gifts must have been in many cases of a trifling description,[637] but they may occasionally have been on a more generous scale. At any rate, by the year 94 A. D., we find him the possessor of a little farm at Nomentum,[638] and a house on the Quirinal.[639] Although he must presumably have written a considerable quantity of verse in his earlier years, it is not till 80 A. D. that he makes an appearance on the stage of literature. In that year the Flavian amphitheatre was consecrated by the Emperor Titus, and Martial celebrated the fact by the publication of his first book, the _Spectaculorum Liber_. It is of small literary value, but it was his first step on the ladder of fame. Titus conferred on him the _ius trium liberorum_, although he seems not to have entered on the enjoyment of this privilege till the reign of Domitian.[640] He thus first came in touch with the imperial circle. From this time forward we get a continual stream of verse in fulsome praise of Domitian and his freedman. But his flattery met with small reward. There are many poems belauding the princeps, but few that thank him. The most that he acquired by his flattery was the honorary military tribunate and his elevation to the equestrian order.[641] Of material profit he got little,[642] save such as his improved social position may have conferred on him indirectly. Four years after the publication of the _Spectaculorum Liber_ (i.e. later in 84 and 85)[643] he published two books, the thirteenth and fourteenth, composed of neat but trifling poems on the presents (Xenia and Apophoreta) which it was customary to give at the feast of the Saturnalia. From this point his output was continuous and steady, as the following table will show:[644] I, II. 85 or early in 86. III. 87 or early in 88. IV. December (Saturnalia) 88. V. Autumn, 89. VI. Summer or Autumn, 90. VII. December, 92. VIII. 93. IX. Summer, 94. X. 1. December, 95. X. 2. 98. XI. 97. XII. Late in 101. His life during this period was uneventful. He lived expensively and continually complains of lack of funds and of the miseries of a client's life. Once only (about 88) the discomfort of his existence seems to have induced him to abandon Rome. He took up his residence at Forum Cornelii, the modern Imola, but soon returned to Rome.[645] It was not till 98 that he decided to leave the capital for good and to return to his Spanish home. A new princeps was on the throne. Martial had associated his work too closely with Domitian and his court to feel at his ease with Nerva. He sent the new emperor a selection from his tenth and eleventh books, which we may, perhaps, conjecture to have been expurgated. He denounced the dead Domitian in a brilliant epigram which may have formed part of that selection, but which has only been preserved to us by the scholiast on Juvenal (iv. 38): Flavia gens, quantum tibi tertius abstulit heres! paene fuit tanti non habuisse duos. How much thy third has wronged thee, Flavian race! 'Twere better ne'er to have bred the other brace. ANON. But he felt that times were changed and that there was no place now for his peculiar talent for flattery (x. 72. 8): non est hic dominus sed imperator, sed iustissimus omnium senator, per quem de Stygia domo reducta est siccis rustica Veritas capillis. hoc sub principe, si sapis, caveto verbis, Roma, prioribus loquaris. an emperor Is ours, no master as of yore, Himself the Senate's very crown Of justice, who has called from down In her deep Stygian duress The hoyden Truth, with tangled tress. Be wise, Rome, see you shape anew Your tongue; your prince would have it true. A. E. STREET. Let flattery fly to Parthia. Rome is no place for her (ib. 4). Martial had made his name: he was read far and wide throughout the Empire.[646] He could afford to retire from the city that had given him much fame and much pleasure, but had balanced its gifts by a thousand vexations and indignities. Pliny assisted him with journey-money, and after a thirty-four years' sojourn in Italy he returned to Bilbilis to live a life of _dolce far niente_. The kindness of a wealthy friend, a Spanish lady named Marcella,[647] gave him an estate on which he lived in comfort, if not in affluence. He published but one book in Spain, the twelfth, written, he says in the preface, in a very few days. He lived in peace and happiness, though at times he sighed for the welcome of the public for whom he had catered so long,[648] and chafed under the lack of sympathy and culture among his Spanish neighbours.[649] He died in 104. 'Martial is dead,' says Pliny, 'and I am grieved to hear it. He was a man of genius, with a shrewd and vigorous wit. His verses are full of point and sting, and as frank as they are witty. I provided him with money for his journey when he left Rome; I owed it to my friendship for him, and to the verses which he wrote in my honour'--then follows Mart. x. 20--'Was I not right to speed him on his way, and am I not justified in mourning his death, seeing that he wrote thus concerning me? He gave me what he could, he would have given more had he been able. And yet what greater gift can one man give another than by handing down his name and fame to all eternity. I hear you say that Martial's verses will not live to all eternity? You may be right; at any rate, he hoped for their immortality when he wrote them' (Plin. _Ep._ iii. 21). Of Martial's character we shall have occasion to speak later. There is nothing in the slight, but generous, tribute of Pliny that has to be unsaid. Of the circles in which he moved his epigrams give us a brilliant picture; of his exact relations with the persons whom he addresses it is hard to speak with certainty. Many distinguished figures of the day appear as the objects of his flattery. There are Spaniards, Quintilian, Lucinianus Maternus and Canius Rufus, all distinguished men of letters, the poets Silius Italicus, Stertinius Avitus, Arruntius Stella, the younger Pliny, the orator Aquilius Regulus, Lentulus Sura, the friend of Trajan, the rich knights, Atedius Melior, and Claudius Etruscus, the soldier Norbanus, and many others. With Juvenal also he seems to have enjoyed a certain intimacy. Statius he never mentions, although he must have moved in the same circles.[650] His intimates--as might be expected--are for the most part, as far as we can guess, of lower rank. There are the centurions Varus and Pudens, Terentius Priscus his compatriot, Decianus the Stoic from the Spanish town of Emerita, the self-sacrificing Quintus Ovidius, Martial's neighbour at Nomentum and a fellow-client of Seneca, and, above all, Julius Martialis. His enemies and envious rivals are attacked and bespattered with filth in many an epigram, but Martial, true to his promise in the preface to his first book, conceals their true names from us. Of his _vie intime_ he tells us little. As far as we may judge, he was unmarried. It is true that several of his epigrams purport to be addressed to his wife. But two facts show clearly that this lady is wholly imaginary. Even Martial could not have spoken of his wife in such disgusting language as, for instance, he uses in xi. 104, while in another poem (ii. 92) he clearly expresses his intention not to marry: natorum mihi ius trium roganti Musarum pretium dedit mearum solus qui poterat. valebis, uxor, non debet domini perire munus. The honorary _ius trium liberorum_ had given him, he says, all that marriage could have brought him. He has no intention of making the emperor's generosity superfluous by taking a wife. He preferred the untrammelled life of a bachelor. So only could he enjoy the pleasures which for him meant 'life '. He is neither an impressive nor a very interesting figure. He has many qualities that repel, even if we do not take him too seriously; and though he may have been a pleasant and in many respects most amiable companion, he has few characteristics that arrest our attention or compel our respect. More will be said of his virtues and his vices in the pages that follow. It is the artist rather than the man that wakens our interest. In Martial we have a poet who devoted himself to the one class of poetry which, apart from satire, the conditions of the Silver Age were qualified to produce in any real excellence--the epigram. In a period when rhetorical smartness and point were the predominant features of literature, the epigram was almost certain to flourish. But Roman poets in general, and Martial in particular, gave a character to the epigram which has clung to it ever since, and has actually changed the significance of the word itself. In the best days of the Greek epigram the prime consideration was not that a poem should be pointed, but that it should be what is summed up in the untranslatable French epithet _lapidaire_; that is to say, it should possess the conciseness, finish, and relevance required for an inscription on a monument. Its range was wide; it might express the lover's passion, the mourner's grief, the artist's skill, the cynic's laughter, the satirist's scorn. It was all poetry in miniature. Point is not wanting, but its chief characteristics are delicacy and charm. 'No good epigram sacrifices its finer poetical substance to the desire of making a point, and none of the best depend on having a point at all.'[651] Transplanted to the soil of Italy the epigram changes. The less poetic Roman, with his coarse tastes, his brutality, his tendency to satire, his appreciation of the incisive, wrought it to his own use. In his hands it loses most of its sensuous and lyrical elements and makes up for the loss by the cultivation of point. Above all, it becomes the instrument of satire, stinging like a wasp where the satirist pure and simple uses the deadlier weapons of the bludgeon and the rapier. The epigram must have been exceedingly plentiful from the very dawn of the movement which was to make Rome a city of _belles-lettres_. It is the plaything of the dilettante _littérateur_, so plentiful under the empire.[652] Apart from the work of Martial, curiously few epigrams have come down to us; nevertheless, in the vast majority of the very limited number we possess the same Roman characteristics may be traced. In the non-lyrical epigrams of Catullus, in the shorter poems of the _Appendix Vergiliana_, there is the same vigour, the same coarse humour, the same pungency that find their best expression in Martial. Even in the epigrams attributed to Seneca in the _Anthologia Latina_ [653] something of this may be observed, though for the most part they lack the personal note and leave the impression of mere juggling with words. It is in this last respect, the attention to point, that they show most affinity with Martial. Only the epigrams in the same collection attributed to Petronius[654] seem to preserve something of the Greek spirit of beauty untainted by the hard, unlovely, incisive spirit of Rome. Martial was destined to fix the type of the epigram for the future. For pure poetry he had small gifts. He was endowed with a warm heart, a real love for simplicity of life and for the beauties of nature. But he had no lyrical enthusiasm, and was incapable of genuine passion. He entered heartwhole on all his amatory adventures, and left them with indifference. Even the cynical profligacy of Ovid shows more capacity for true love. At their best Martial's erotic epigrams attain to a certain shallow prettiness,[655] for the most part they do not rise above the pornographic. And even though he shows a real capacity for friendship, he also reveals an infinite capacity for cringing or impudent vulgarity in his relations with those who were merely patrons or acquaintances. His needy circumstances led him, as we shall see, to continual expressions of a peevish mendicancy, while the artificiality and pettiness of the life in which he moved induced an excessive triviality and narrowness of outlook. He makes no great struggle after originality. The slightness of his themes and of his _genre_ relieved him of that necessity. Some of his prettiest poems are mere variations on some of the most famous lyrics of Catullus.[656] He pilfers whole lines from Ovid.[657] Phrase after phrase suggests something that has gone before. But his plagiarism is effected with such perfect frankness and such perfect art, that it might well be pardoned, even if Martial had greater claims to be taken seriously. As it is, his freedom in borrowing need scarcely be taken into account in the consideration of our verdict. At the worst his crime is no more than petty larceny. With all his faults, he has gifts such as few poets have possessed, a perfect facility and a perfect finish. Alone of poets of the period he rarely gives the impression of labouring a point. Compared with Martial, Seneca and Lucan, Statius and Juvenal are, at their worst, stylistic acrobats. But Martial, however silly or offensive, however complicated or prosaic his theme, handles his material with supreme ease. His points may often not be worth making; they could not be better made. Moreover, he has a perfect ear; his music may be trivial, but within its narrow limits it is faultless.[658] He knows what is required of him and he knows his own powers. He knows that his range is limited, that his sphere is comparatively humble, but he is proud to excel in it. He has the artist's self-respect without his vanity. His themes are manifold. He might have said, with even greater truth than Juvenal, 'quidquid agunt homines, nostri est farrago libelli.' He does not go beneath the surface, but almost every aspect of the kaleidoscopic world of Rome receives his attention at one time or another. His attitude is, on the whole, satirical, though his satire is not inspired by deep or sincere indignation. He is too easy in his morals and too good-humoured by temperament. He is often insulting, but there is scarcely a line that breathes fierce resentment, while his almost unparalleled obscenity precludes the intrusion of any genuine earnestness of moral scorn in a very large number of his satiric epigrams. On these points he shall speak for himself; he makes no exacting claims. 'I hope,' he says in the preface to his first book, 'that I have exercised such restraint in my writings that no one who is possessed of the least self-respect may have cause to complain of them. My jests are never outrageous, even when directed against persons of the meanest consideration. My practice in this respect is very different from that of early writers, who abused persons without veiling their invective under a pseudonym. Nay more, their victims were men of the highest renown. My _jeux d'esprit_ have no _arrières-pensées_, and I hope that no one will put an evil interpretation on them, nor rewrite my epigrams by infusing his own malignance into his reading of them. It is a scandalous injustice to exercise such ingenuity on what another has written. I would offer some excuse for the freedom and frankness of my language--which is, after all, the language of epigram--if I were setting any new precedent. But all epigrammatists, Catullus, Marsus, Pedo, Gaetulicus, have availed themselves of this licence of speech. But if any one wishes to acquire notoriety by prudish severity, and refuses to permit me to write after the good Roman fashion in so much as a single page of my work, he may stop short at the preface, or even at the title. Epigrams are written for such persons as derive pleasure from the games at the Feast of Flowers. Cato should not enter my theatre, but if he does enter it, let him be content to look on at the sport which I provide. I think I shall be justified in closing my preface with an epigram TO CATO Once more the merry feast of Flora's come, With wanton jest to split the sides of Rome; Yet come you, prince of prudes, to view the show. Why come you? merely to be shocked and go?' He reasserts the kindliness of his heart and the excellence of his intentions elsewhere: hunc servare modum nostri novere libelli; parcere personis, dicere de vitiis (x. 33). For in my verses 'tis my constant care To lash the vices, but the persons spare. HAY. Malignant critics _had_ exercised their ingenuity in the manner which he deprecated.[659] Worse still, libellous verse had been falsely circulated as his: quid prodest, cupiant cum quidam nostra videri si qua Lycambeo sanguine tela madent, vipereumque vomant nostro sub nomine virus qui Phoebi radios ferre diemque negant? (vii. 12. 5). But what does't avail, If in bloodfetching lines others do rail, And vomit viperous poison in my name, Such as the sun themselves to own do shame? ANON., 1695. In this respect his defence of himself is just. When he writes in a vein of invective his victim is never mentioned by name. And we cannot assert in any given case that his pseudonyms mask a real person. He may do no more than satirize a vice embodied and typified in an imaginary personality. He is equally concerned to defend himself against the obvious charges of prurience and immorality: innocuos censura potest permittere lusus: lasciva eat nobis pagina, vita proba[660] (i. 4. 7). Let not these harmless sports your censure taste! My lines are wanton, but my life is chaste. ANON., seventeenth century. This is no real defence, and even though we need not take Martial at his word, when he accuses himself of the foulest vices, there is not the slightest reason to suppose that chastity was one of his virtues. In Juvenal's case we have reason to believe that, whatever his weaknesses, he was a man of genuinely high ideals. Martial at his best shows himself a man capable of fine feeling, but he gives no evidence of moral earnestness or strength of character. On the other hand, to give him his due, we must remember the standard of his age. Although he is lavish with the vilest obscenities, and has no scruples about accusing acquaintances of every variety of unnatural vice, it must be pointed out that such accusations were regarded at Rome as mere matter for laughter. The traditions of the old _Fescennina locutio_ survived, and with the decay of private morality its obscenity increased. Caesar's veterans could sing ribald verses unrebuked at their general's triumph, verses unquotably obscene and casting the foulest aspersions on the character of one whom they worshipped almost as a god. Caesar could invite Catullus to dine in spite of the fact that such accusations formed the matter of his lampoons. Catullus could insert similar charges against the bridegroom for whom he was writing an _epithalamium_. The writing of Priapeia was regarded as a reputable diversion. Martial's defence of his obscenities is therefore in all probability sincere, and may have approved itself to many reputable persons of his day. It was a defence that had already been made in very similar language by Ovid and Catullus,[661] and Martial was not the last to make it. But the fact that Martial felt it necessary to defend himself shows that a body of public opinion--even if not large or representative--did exist which refused to condone this fashionable lubricity. Extenuating circumstances may be urged in Martial's defence, but even to have conformed to the standard of his day is sufficient condemnation; and it is hard to resist the suspicion that he fell below it. His obscenities, though couched in the most easy and pointed language, have rarely even the grace--if grace it be--of wit; they are puerile in conception and infinitely disgusting. It is pleasant to turn to the better side of Martial's character. No writer has ever given more charming expression to his affection for his friends. It is for Decianus and Julius Martialis that he keeps the warmest place in his heart. In poems like the following there is no doubting the sincerity of his feeling or questioning the perfection of its expression: si quis erit raros inter numerandus amicos, quales prisca fides famaque novit anus, si quis Cecropiae madidus Latiaeque Minervae artibus et vera simplicitate bonus, si quis erit recti custos, mirator honesti, et nihil arcano qui roget ore deos, si quis erit magnae subnixus robore mentis: dispeream si non hic Decianus erit (i. 39). Is there a man whose friendship rare With antique friendship may compare; In learning steeped, both old and new, Yet unpedantic, simple, true; Whose soul, ingenuous and upright, Ne'er formed a wish that shunned the light, Whose sense is sound? If such there be, My Decianus, thou art he. PROFESSOR GOLDWIN SMITH Even more charming, if less intense, is the exhortation to Julius Martialis to live while he may, ere the long night come that knows no waking: o mihi post nullos, Iuli, memorande sodales, si quid longa fides canaque iura valent, bis iam paene tibi consul tricensimus instat, et numerat paucos vix tua vita dies. non bene distuleris videas quae posse negari, et solum hoc ducas, quod fuit, esse tuum. exspectant curaeque catenatique labores: gaudia non remanent, sed fugitiva volant. haec utraque manu complexuque adsere toto: saepe fluunt imo sic quoque lapsa sinu. non est, crede mihi, sapientis dicere 'vivam '. sera nimis vita est crastina: vive hodie (i. 15). Friend of my heart--and none of all the band Has to that name older or better right: Julius, thy sixtieth winter is at hand, Far-spent is now life's day and near the night. Delay not what thou would'st recall too late; That which is past, that only call thine own: Cares without end and tribulations wait, Joy tarrieth not, but scarcely come, is flown. Then grasp it quickly firmly to thy heart,-- Though firmly grasped, too oft it slips away;-- To talk of living is not wisdom's part: To-morrow is too late: live thou to-day! PROFESSOR GOLDWIN SMITH Best of all is the retrospect of the long friendship which has united him to Julius. It is as frank as it is touching: triginta mihi quattuorque messes tecum, si memini, fuere, Iuli. quarum dulcia mixta sunt amaris sed iucunda tamen fuere plura; et si calculus omnis huc et illuc diversus bicolorque digeratur, vincet candida turba nigriorem. si vitare voles acerba quaedam et tristes animi cavere morsus, nulli te facias nimis sodalem: gaudebis minus et minus dolebis (xii. 34).[662] My friend, since thou and I first met, This is the thirty-fourth December; Some things there are we'd fain forget, More that 'tis pleasant to remember. Let for each pain a black ball stand, For every pleasure past a white one, And thou wilt find, when all are scanned, The major part will be the bright one. He who would heartache never know, He who serene composure treasures, Must friendship's chequered bliss forego; Who has no pain hath fewer pleasures. PROFESSOR GOLDWIN SMITH He does not pour the treasure of his heart at his friend's feet, as Persius does in his burning tribute to Cornutus. He has no treasure of great price to pour. But it is only natural that in the poems addressed to his friends we should find the statement of his ideals of life: vitam quae faciunt beatiorem, iucundissime Martialis, haec sunt: res non parta labore sed relicta; non ingratus ager, focus perennis; lis numquam, toga rara, mens quieta; vires ingenuae, salubre corpus; prudens simplicitas, pares amici, convictus facilis, sine arte mensa; nox non ebria sed soluta curis. non tristis torus et tamen pudicus; somnus qui faciat breves tenebras: quod sis esse velis nihilque malis; summum nec metuas diem nee optes (x. 47). What makes a happy life, dear friend, If thou would'st briefly learn, attend-- An income left, not earned by toil; Some acres of a kindly soil; The pot unfailing on the fire; No lawsuits; seldom town attire; Health; strength with grace; a peaceful mind; Shrewdness with honesty combined; Plain living; equal friends and free; Evenings of temperate gaiety: A wife discreet, yet blythe and bright; Sound slumber, that lends wings to night. With all thy heart embrace thy lot, Wish not for death and fear it not. PROFESSOR GOLDWIN SMITH. This exquisite echo of the Horatian 'beatus ille qui procul negotiis' sets forth no very lofty ideal. It is frankly, though restrainedly, hedonistic. But it depicts a life that is full of charm and free from evil. Martial, in his heart of hearts, hates the Rome that he depicts so vividly. Rome with its noise, its expense, its bustling snobbery, its triviality, and its vice, where he and his friend Julius waste their days: nunc vivit necuter sibi, bonosque soles effugere atque abire sentit, qui nobis pereunt et imputantur (v. 20. 11). Dead to our better selves we see The golden hours take flight, Still scored against us as they flee. Then haste to live aright. PROFESSOR GOLDWIN SMITH He longs to escape from the world of the professional lounger and the parasite to an ampler air, where he can breathe freely and find rest. He is no philosopher, but it is at times a relief to get away from the rarified atmosphere and the sense of strain that permeates so much of the aspirations towards virtue in this strange age of contradictions. Martial at last found the ease and quiet that his soul desired in his Spanish home: hic pigri colimus labore dulci Boterdum Plateamque (Celtiberis haec sunt nomina crassiora terris): ingenti fruor inproboque somno quem nec tertia saepe rumpit hora, et totum mihi nunc repono quidquid ter denos vigilaveram per annos. ignota est toga, sed datur petenti rupta proxima vestis a cathedra. surgentem focus excipit superba vicini strue cultus iliceti, * * * * * sic me vivere, sic iuvat perire. (xii. 18. 10). Busy but pleas'd and idly taking pains, Here Lewes Downs I till and Ringmer plains, Names that to each South Saxon well are known, Though they sound harsh to powdered beaux in town. None can enjoy a sounder sleep than mine; I often do not wake till after nine; And midnight hours with interest repay For years in town diversions thrown away. Stranger to finery, myself I dress In the first coat from an old broken press. My fire, as soon as I am up, I see Bright with the ruins of some neighbouring tree. * * * * * Such is my life, a life of liberty; So would I wish to live and so to die. HAY. Martial has a genuine love for the country. Born at a time when detailed descriptions of the charms of scenery had become fashionable, and the cultivated landscape at least found many painters, he succeeds far better than any of his contemporaries in conveying to the reader his sense of the beauties which his eyes beheld. That sense is limited, but exquisite. It does not go deep; there is nothing of the almost mystical background that Vergil at times suggests; there is nothing of the feeling of the open air and the wild life that is sometimes wafted to us in the sensuous verse of Theocritus. But Martial sees what he sees clearly, and he describes it perfectly. Compare his work with the affected prettiness of Pliny's description of the source of the Clitumnus or with the more sensuous, but over-elaborate, craftsmanship of Statius in the _Silvae_. Martial is incomparably their superior. He speaks a more human language, and has a far clearer vision. Both Statius and Martial described villas by the sea. We have already mentioned Statius' description of the villa of Pollius at Sorrento; Martial shall speak in his turn: o temperatae dulce Formiae litus, vos, cum severi fugit oppidum Martis et inquietas fessus exuit curas, Apollinaris omnibus locis praefert. * * * * * hic summa leni stringitur Thetis vento: nec languet aequor, viva sed quies ponti pictam phaselon adiuvante fert aura, sicut puellae lion amantis aestatem mota salubre purpura venit frigus. nec saeta longo quaerit in mari praedam, sed a cubili lectuloque iactatam spectatus alte lineam trahit piscis. * * * * * frui sed istis quando, Roma, permittis? quot Formianos imputat dies annus negotiosis rebus urbis haerenti? o ianitores vilicique felices! dominis parantur ista, serviunt vobis[663] (x. 30). O strand of Formiae, sweet with genial air, Who art Apollinaris' chosen home When, taking flight from his task-mistress Rome, The tired man doffs his load of troubling care. * * * * * Here the sea's bosom quivers in the wind; 'Tis no dead calm, but sweet serenity, Which bears the painted boat before the breeze, As though some maid at pains the heat to ban, Should waft a genial zephyr with her fan. No fisher needs to buffet the high seas, But whiles from bed or couch his line he casts, May see his captive in the toils below. * * * * * But, niggard Rome, thou giv'st how grudgingly! What the year's tale of days at Formiae For him who tied by work in town must stay? Stewards and lacqueys, happy your employ, Your lords prepare enjoyment, you enjoy. A. E. STREET. These are surely the most beautiful _scazons_[664] in the Latin tongue; the metre limps no more; a master-hand has wrought it to exquisite melody; the quiet undulation of the sea, the yacht's easy gliding over its surface, live before us in its music. Even more delicate is the homelier description of the gardens of Julius Martialis on the slopes of the Janiculum. It is animated by the sincerity that never fails Martial when he writes to his friend: Iuli iugera pauca Martialis hortis Hesperidum beatiora longo Ianiculi iugo recumbunt: lati collibus imminent recessus et planus modico tumore vertex caelo perfruitur sereniore et curvas nebula tegente valles solus luce nitet peculiari: puris leniter admoventur astris celsae culmina delicata villae. hinc septem dominos videre montes et totam licet aestimare Romam, Albanos quoque Tusculosque colles et quodcumque iacet sub urbe frigus (iv. 64). Martial's few acres, e'en more blest Than those famed gardens of the West, Lie on Janiculum's long crest; Above the slopes wide reaches hang recessed. The level, gently swelling crown Breathes air from purer heavens blown; When mists the hollow valleys drown 'Tis radiant with a light that's all its own. The clear stars almost seem to lie On the wrought roof that's built so high; The seven hills stand in majesty, And Rome is summed in one wide sweep of eye. Tusculan, Alban hills unfold, Each nook which holds its store of cold. A. E. STREET. Such a picture is unsurpassed in any language.[665] Statius, with all his brilliance, never came near such perfect success; he lacks sincerity; he can juggle with words against any one, but he never learned their truest and noblest use. There are many other themes beside landscape painting in which the _Silvae_ of Statius challenge comparison with the epigrams of Martial. Both use the same servile flattery to the emperor, both celebrate the same patrons,[666] both console their noble friends for the loss of relatives, or favourite slaves; both write _propemptica_. Even in the most trivial of these poems, those addressed to the emperor, Statius is easily surpassed by his humbler rival. His inferiority lies largely in the fact that he is more ambitious. He wrote on a larger scale. When the infinitely trivial is a theme for verse, the epigrammatist has the advantage of the author of the more lengthy _Silvae_. Perfect neatness vanquishes dexterous elaboration. Moreover, if taste can be said to enter into such poems at all, Martial errs less grossly. Even Domitian--one might conjecture--may have felt that Statius' flattery was 'laid on with a trowel'. Martial may have used the same instrument, but had the art to conceal it.[667] There are even occasions where his flattery ceases to revolt the reader, and where we forget the object of the flattery. In a poem describing the suicide of a certain Festus he succeeds in combining the dignity of a funeral _laudatio_ with the subtlest and most graceful flattery of the princeps: indignas premeret pestis cum tabida fauces, inque suos voltus serperet atra lues, siccis ipse genis flentes hortatus amicos decrevit Stygios Festus adire lacus. nec tamen obscuro pia polluit ora veneno aut torsit lenta tristia fata fame, sanctam Romana vitam sed morte peregit dimisitque animam nobiliore via. hanc mortem fatis magni praeferre Catonis fama potest; huius Caesar amicus erat (i. 78). When the dire quinsy choked his guiltless breath, And o'er his face the blackening venom stole, Festus disdained to wait a lingering death, Cheered his sad friends and freed his dauntless soul. No meagre famine's slowly-wasting force, Nor hemlock's gradual chillness he endured, But like a Roman chose the nobler course, And by one blow his liberty secured. His death was nobler far than Cato's end, For Caesar to the last was Festus' friend. HODGSON (slightly altered). The unctuous dexterity of Statius never achieved such a master-stroke. So, too, in laments for the dead, the superior brevity and simplicity of Martial bear the palm away. Both poets bewailed the death of Glaucias, the child favourite of Atedius Melior. Statius has already been quoted in this connexion; Martial's poems on the subject,[668] though not quite among his best, yet ring truer than the verse of Statius. And Martial's epitaphs and epicedia at their best have in their slight way an almost unique charm. We must go to the best work of the Greek Anthology to surpass the epitaph on Erotion (v. 34): hanc tibi, Fronto pater, genetrix Flaccilla, puellam oscula commendo deliciasque meas, parvola ne nigras horrescat Erotion umbras oraque Tartarei prodigiosa canis. inpletura fuit sextae modo frigora brumae, vixisset totidem ni minus illa dies. inter tam veteres ludat lasciva patronos et nomen blaeso garriat ore meum. mollia non rigidus caespes tegat ossa nec illi, terra, gravis fueris: non fuit illa tibi. Fronto, and you, Flaccilla, to you, my father and mother, Here I commend this child, once my delight and my pet, So may the darkling shades and deep-mouthed baying of hellhound Touch not with horror of dread little Erotion dear. Now was her sixth year ending, and melting the snows of the winter, Only a brief six days lacked to the tale of the years. Young, amid dull old age, let her wanton and frolic and gambol, Babble of me that was, tenderly lisping my name. Soft were her tiny bones, then soft be the sod that enshrouds her, Gentle thy touch, mother Earth, gently she rested on thee! A. E. STREET. Another poem on a like theme shows a different and more fantastic, but scarcely less pleasing vein (v. 37): puella senibus dulcior mihi cycnis, agna Galaesi mollior Phalantini, concha Lucrini delicatior stagni, cui nec lapillos praeferas Erythraeos nec modo politum pecudis Indicae dentem nivesque primas liliumque non tactum; quae crine vicit Baetici gregis vellus Rhenique nodos aureamque nitellam; fragravit ore quod rosarium Paesti, quod Atticarum prima mella cerarum, quod sucinorum rapta de manu gleba; cui conparatus indecens erat pavo, inamabilis sciurus et frequens phoenix, adhuc recenti tepet Erotion busto, quam pessimorum lex amara fatorum sexta peregit hieme, nec tamen tota, nostros amores gaudiumque lususque. Little maiden sweeter far to me Than the swans are with their vaunted snows, Maid more tender than the lambkins be Where Galaesus by Phalantus flows; Daintier than the daintiest shells that lie By the ripples of the Lucrine wave; Choicer than new-polished ivory That the herds in Indian jungles gave; Choicer than Erythrae's marbles white, Snows new-fallen, lilies yet unsoiled: Softer were your tresses and more bright Than the locks by German maidens coiled: Than the finest fleeces Baetis shows, Than the dormouse with her golden hue: Lips more fragrant than the Paestan rose, Than the Attic bees' first honey-dew, Or an amber ball, new-pressed and warm; Paled the peacock's sheen in your compare; E'en the winsome squirrel lost his charm, And the Phoenix seemed no longer rare. Scarce Erotion's ashes yet are cold; Greedily grim fate ordained to smite E'er her sixth brief winter had grown old-- Little love, my bliss, my heart's delight. A.D. INNES. Through all the playful affectations of the lines we get the portrait of a fairy-like child, light-footed as the squirrel, golden-haired and fair as ivory or lilies.[669] Martial was a child-lover before he was a man of letters. Beautiful as these little poems are, there is in Martial little trace of feeling for the sorrows of humanity in general. He can feel for his intimate friends, and his tears are ready to flow for his patron's sorrows. But the general impression given by his poetry is that of a certain hardness and lack of feeling, of a limited sympathy, and an unemotional temperament. It is a relief to come upon a poem such as that in which he describes a father's poignant anguish for the loss of his son (ix. 74): effigiem tantum pueri pictura Camoni servat, et infantis parva figura manet. florentes nulla signavit imagine voltus, dum timet ora pius muta videre pater. Here as in happy infancy he smiled Behold Camonus--painted as a child; For on his face as seen in manhood's days His sorrowing father would not dare to gaze. W. S. B. or to find a sudden outbreak of sympathy with the sorrows of the slave (iii. 21): proscriptum famulus servavit fronte notata, non fuit haec domini vita sed invidia.[670] When scarred with cruel brand, the slave Snatched from the murderer's hand His proscript lord, not life he gave His tyrant, but the brand. PROFESSOR GOLDWIN SMITH. Of the _gravitas_ or dignity of character specially associated with Rome he shows equally few traces. His outlook on life is not sufficiently serious, he shows little interest in Rome of the past, and has nothing of the retrospective note so prominent in Lucan, Juvenal, or Tacitus; he lives in and for the present. He writes, it is true, of the famous suicide of Arria and Caecina Paetus,[671] of the death of Portia the wife of Brutus,[672] of the bravery of Mucius Scaevola.[673] But in none of these poems does he give us of his best. They lack, if not sincerity, at least enthusiasm; emotion is sacrificed to point. He is out of sympathy with Stoicism, and the suicide doctrinaire does not interest him. 'Live while you may' is his motto, 'and make the best of circumstances.' It is possible to live a reasonably virtuous life without going to the lengths of Thrasea: quod magni Thraseae consummatique Catonis dogmata sic sequeris salvus ut esse velis, pectore nec nudo strictos incurris in enses, quod fecisse velim te, Deciane, facis. nolo virum facili redimit qui sanguine famam; hunc volo, laudari qui sine morte potest (i. 8). That you, like Thrasea or Cato, great, Pursue their maxims, but decline their fate; Nor rashly point the dagger to your heart; More to my wish you act a Roman's part. I like not him who fame by death retrieves, Give me the man who merits praise and lives. HAY. The sentiment is full of common sense, but it is undeniably unheroic. Martial is not quixotic, and refuses to treat life more seriously than is necessary. Our complaint against him is that he scarcely takes it seriously enough. It would be unjust to demand a deep fund of earnestness from a professed epigrammatist dowered with a gift of humour and a turn for satire. But it is doing Martial no injustice to style him the laureate of triviality. For his satire is neither genial nor earnest. His kindly temper led him to avoid direct personalities, but his invective is directed against vice, not primarily because it is wicked, but rather because it is grotesque or not _comme il faut_. His humour, too, though often sparkling enough, is more often strained and most often filthy. Many of his epigrams were not worth writing, by whatever standard they be judged.[674] The point is hard to illustrate, since a large proportion of his inferior work is fatuously obscene. But the following may be taken at random from two books: Eutrapelus tonsor dum circuit ora Luperci expingitque genas, altera barba subit (vii. 83). Eutrapelus the barber works so slow, That while he shaves, the beard anew does grow. ANON., 1695. invitas ad aprum, ponis mihi, Gallice, porcum. hybrida sum, si das, Gallice, verba mihi (viii. 22). You invite me to partake of a wild boar, you set before me a home-grown pig. I'm half-boar, half-pig, if you can cheat me thus. pars maxillarum tonsa est tibi, pars tibi rasa est, pars volsa est. unum quis putet esse caput? (viii. 47). Part of your jaws is shaven, part clipped, part has the hair pulled out. Who'd think you'd only one head? tres habuit dentes, pariter quos expuit omnes, ad tumulum Picens dum sedet ipse suum; collegitque sinu fragmenta novissima laxi oris et adgesta contumulavit humo. ossa licet quondam defuncti non legat heres: hoc sibi iam Picens praestitit officium (viii. 57). Picens had three teeth, which he spat out altogether while he was sitting at the spot he had chosen for his tomb. He gathered in his robe the last fragments of his loose jaw and interred them in a heap of earth. His heir need not gather his bones when he is dead, Picens has performed that office for himself. summa Palatini poteras aequare Colossi, si fieres brevior, Claudia, sesquipede (viii. 60). Had you been eighteen inches shorter, Claudia, you would have been as tall as the Colossus on the Palatine. Without wishing to break a butterfly on the wheel, we may well quote against Martial the remark made in a different context to a worthless poet: tanti non erat esse te disertum (xii. 43). 'Twas scarce worth while to be thus eloquent. There is much also which, without being precisely pointless or silly, is too petty and mean to be tolerable to modern taste. Most noticeable in this respect are the epigrams in which Martial solicits the liberality of his patrons. The amazing relations existing at this period between patron and client had worked a painful revolution in the manners and tone of society, a revolution which meant scarcely less than the pauperization of the middle class. The old sacred and almost feudal tie uniting client and patron had long since disappeared, and had been replaced by relations of a professional and commercial character. Wealth was concentrated in comparatively few hands, and with the decrease of the number of the patrons the throng of clients proportionately increased. The crowd of clients bustling to the early morning _salutatio_ of the patronus, and struggling with one another for the _sportula_ is familiar to us in the pages of Juvenal and receives fresh and equally vivid illustration from Martial. The worst results of these unnatural relations were a general loss of independence of character and a lamentable growth of bad manners and cynical snobbery. The patron, owing to the increasingly heavy demands upon his purse, naturally tended to become close-fisted and stingy, the needy client too often was grasping and discontented. The patron, if he asked his client to dine, would regale him with food and drink of a coarser and inferior quality to that with which he himself was served.[675] The client, on the other hand, could not be trusted to behave himself; he would steal the table fittings, make outrageous demands on his patron, and employ every act of servile and cringing flattery to improve his position.[676] The poor poet was in a sense doubly dependent. He would stand in the ordinary relation of _cliens_ to a _patronus_, and would be dependent also for his livelihood on the generosity of his literary patrons. For, in spite of the comparative facilities for the publication and circulation of books, he could make little by the public sale of his works, and living at Rome was abnormally expensive. The worst feature of all was that such a life of servile dependence was not clearly felt to be degrading. It was disliked for its hardship, annoyance, and monotony, but the client too often seems to have regarded it as beneath his dignity to attempt to escape from it by industry and manly independence. As a result of these conditions, we find the pages of Martial full of allusions to the miserable life of the client. His skill does not fail him, but the theme is ugly and the historical interest necessarily predominates over the literary, though the reader's patience is at times rewarded with shrewd observations on human nature, as, for instance, the bitter expression of the truth that 'To him that hath shall be given'-- semper pauper eris, si pauper es, Aemiliane; dantur opes nullis nunc nisi divitibus (v. 81); Poor once and poor for ever, Nat, I fear, None but the rich get place and pension here. N.B. HALHEAD. or the even more incisive pauper videri Cinna vult: et est pauper (viii. 19). But we soon weary of the continual reference to dinners and parasites, to the snobbery and indifference of the rich, to the tricks of toadyism on the part of needy client or legacy hunter. It is a mean world, and the wit and raillery of Martial cannot make it palatable. Without a moral background, such as is provided by the indignation of Juvenal, the picture soon palls, and the reader sickens. Most unpleasing of all are the epigrams where Martial himself speaks as client in a language of mingled impertinence and servility. His flattery of the emperor we may pass by. It was no doubt interested, but it was universal, and Martial's flattery is more dexterous without being either more or less offensive than that of his contemporaries. His relations towards less exalted patrons cannot be thus easily condoned. He feels no shame in begging, nor in abusing those who will not give or whose gifts are not sufficient for his needs. His purse is empty; he must sell the gifts that Regulus has given him. Will Regulus buy? aera domi non sunt, superest hoc, Regule, solum ut tua vendamus munera: numquid emis? (vii. 16). I have no money, Regulus, at home. Only one thing is left to do--sell the gifts you gave me. Will you buy? Stella has given him some tiles to roof his house; he would like a cloak as well: cum pluvias madidumque Iovem perferre negaret et rudis hibernis villa nataret aquis, plurima, quae posset subitos effundere nimbos, muneribus venit tegula missa tuis. horridus ecce sonat Boreae stridore December: Stella, tegis villam, non tegis agricolam (vii. 36).[677] When my crased house heaven's showers could not sustain, But flooded with vast deluges of rain, Thou shingles, Stella, seasonably didst send, Which from the impetuous storms did me defend: Now fierce loud-sounding Boreas rocks doth cleave, Dost clothe the farm, and farmer naked leave? ANON., 1695. This is not the way a gentleman thanks a friend, nor can modern taste appreciate at its antique value abuse such as-- primum est ut praestes, si quid te, Cinna, rogabo; illud deinde sequens ut cito, Cinna, neges. diligo praestantem; non odi, Cinna, negantem: sed tu nec praestas nec cito, Cinna, negas (vii. 43). The kindest thing of all is to comply: The next kind thing is quickly to deny. I love performance nor denial hate: Your 'Shall I, shall I?' is the cursed state. The poet's poverty is no real excuse for this petulant mendicancy.[678] He had refused to adopt a profession,[679] though professional employment would assuredly have left him time for writing, and no one would have complained if his output had been somewhat smaller. Instead, he chose a life which involved moving in society, and was necessarily expensive. We can hardly attribute his choice merely to the love of his art. If he must beg, he might have done so with better taste and some show of finer feeling. Macaulay's criticism is just: 'I can make large allowance for the difference of manners; but it can never have been _comme il faut_ in any age or nation for a man of note--an accomplished man--a man living with the great--to be constantly asking for money, clothes, and dainties, and to pursue with volleys of abuse those who would give him nothing.' In spite, however, of the obscenity, meanness, and exaggerated triviality of much of his work, there have been few poets who could turn a prettier compliment, make a neater jest, or enshrine the trivial in a more exquisite setting. Take the beautifully finished poem to Flaccus in the eighth book (56), wherein Martial complains that times have altered since Vergil's day. 'Now there are no patrons and consequently no poets'-- ergo ego Vergilius, si munera Maecenatis des mihi? Vergilius non ero, Marsus ero. Shall I then be a Vergil, if you give me such gifts as Maecenas gave? No, I shall not be a Vergil, but a Marsus. Here, at least, Martial shows that he could complain of his poverty with decency, and speak of himself and his work with becoming modesty. Or take a poem of a different type, an indirect plea for the recall of an exile (viii. 32): aera per tacitum delapsa sedentis in ipsos fluxit Aratullae blanda columba sinus, luserat hoc casus, nisi inobservata maneret permissaque sibi nollet abire fuga. si meliora piae fas est sperare sorori et dominum mundi flectere vota valent, haec a Sardois tibi forsitan exulis oris, fratre reversuro, nuntia venit avis. A gentle dove glided down through the silent air and settled even in Aratulla's bosom as she was sitting. This might have seemed but the sport of chance had it not rested there, though undetained, and refused to part even when flight was free. If it is granted to the loving sister to hope for better things, and if prayers can move the lord of the world, this bird perchance has come to thee from Sardinia's shore of exile to announce the speedy return of thy brother. Nothing could be more conventional, nothing more perfect in form, more full of music, more delicate in expression. The same felicity is shown in his epigrams on curiosities of art or nature, a fashionable and, it must be confessed, an easy theme.[680] Fish carved by Phidias' hand, a lizard cast by Mentor, a fly enclosed in amber, are all given immortality: artis Phidiacae toreuma clarum pisces aspicis: adde aquam, natabunt (iii. 35). These fishes Phidias wrought: with life by him They are endowed: add water and they swim. PROFESSOR GOLDWIN SMITH. inserta phialae Mentoris manu ducta lacerta vivit et timetur argentum (iii. 41). That lizard on the goblet makes thee start. Fear not: it lives only by Mentor's art. PROFESSOR GOLDWIN SMITH. et latet et lucet Phaethontide condita gutta, ut videatur apis nectare clusa suo. dignum tantorum pretium tulit illa laborum: credibile est ipsam sic voluisse mori (iv. 32). Here shines a bee closed in an amber tomb, As if interred in her own honey-comb. A fit reward fate to her labours gave; No other death would she have wished to have. MAY. Always at home in describing the trifling amenities of life, he is at his best equally successful in dealing with its trifling follies. An acquaintance has given his cook the absurd name of Mistyllos in allusion to the Homeric phrase [Greek: mistyllon t' ora talla]. Martial's comment is inimitable: si tibi Mistyllos cocus, Aemiliane, vocatur, dicatur quare non Taratalla mihi? (i. 50). He complains of the wine given him at a dinner-party with a finished whimsicality: potavi modo consulare vinum. quaeris quam vetus atque liberale? Prisco consule conditum: sed ipse qui ponebat erat, Severe, consul (vii. 79). I have just drunk some consular wine. How old, you ask, and how generous? It was bottled in Priscus' consulship: and he who set it before me was the consul himself. Polycharmus has returned Caietanus his IOU's. 'Little good will that do you, and Caietanus will not even be grateful': quod Caietano reddis, Polycharme, tabellas, milia te centum num tribuisse putas? 'debuit haec' inquis. tibi habe, Polycharme, tabellas et Caietano milia crede duo (viii. 37). In giving back Caietanus his IOU's, Polycharmus, do you think you are giving him 100,000 sesterces? 'He owed me that sum,' you say. Keep the IOU's and lend him two thousand more! Chloe, the murderess of her seven husbands, erects monuments to their memory, and inscribes _fecit Chloe_ on the tombstones: inscripsit tumulis septem scelerata virorum 'se fecisse' Chloe. quid pote simplicius? (ix. 15). On her seven husbands' tombs she doth impress 'This Chloe did.' What more can she confess? WRIGHT. Vacerra admires the old poets only. What shall Martial do? miraris veteres, Vacerra, solos nec laudas nisi mortuos poetas. ignoscas petimus, Vacerra: tanti non est, ut placeam tibi, perire (viii. 69). Vacerra lauds no living poet's lays, But for departed genius keeps his praise. I, alas, live, nor deem it worth my while To die that I may win Vacerra's smile. PROFESSOR GOLDWIN SMITH. All this is very slight, _merae nugae_; but even if the humour be not of the first water, it will compare well with the humour of epigrams of any age. Martial knows he is not a great poet.[681] He knows, too, that his work is uneven: iactat inaequalem Matho me fecisse libellum: si verum est, laudat carmina nostra Matho. aequales scribit libros Calvinus et Vmber: aequalis liber est, Cretice, qui malus est (vii. 90). Matho makes game of my unequal verse; If it's unequal it might well be worse. Calvinus, Umber, write on one dead level, The book that's got no up and down's the devil! If there are thirty good epigrams in a book, he is satisfied (vii. 81). His defence hardly answers the question, 'Why publish so many?' but should at least mollify our judgement. Few poets read better in selections than Martial, and of few poets does selection give so inadequate an idea. For few poets of his undoubted genius have left such a large bulk of work which, in spite of its formal perfection, is morally repulsive or, from the purely literary standpoint, uninteresting. But he is an important figure in the history of literature, for he is the father of the modern epigram. Alone of Silver Latin poets is he a perfect stylist. He has the gift of _felicitas_ to the full, but it is not _curiosa_. Inferior to Horace in all other points, he has greater spontaneity. And he is free from the faults of his age. He is no _virtuoso_, eaten up with self-conscious vanity; he attempts no impossible feats of language; he is clear, and uses his mythological and geographical knowledge neatly and picturesquely; but he makes no display of obscure learning. 'I would please schoolmasters,' he says, 'but not _qua_ schoolmasters' (x. 21. 5). So, too, he complains of his own education: at me litterulas stulti docuere parentes: quid cum grammaticis rhetoribusque mihi? (ix. 73. 7). My learning only proves my father fool! Why would he send me to a grammar school? HAY. As a result, perhaps, of this lack of sympathy with the education of his day, we find that, while he knows and admires the great poets of the past, and can flatter the rich poetasters of the present, his bent is curiously unliterary. He gives us practically no literary criticism. It is with the surface qualities of life that he is concerned, with its pleasures and its follies, guilty or innocent. He has a marvellously quick and clear power of observation, and of vivid presentation. He is in this sense above all others the poet of his age. He either does not see or chooses to ignore many of the best and most interesting features of his time, but the picture which he presents, for all its incompleteness, is wider and more varied than any other. We both hate him and read him for the sake of the world he depicts. 'Ugliness is always bad art, and Martial often failed as a poet from his choice of subject.'[682] There are comparatively few of his poems which we read for their own sake. Remarkable as these few poems are, the main attraction of Martial is to be found not in his wit or finish, so much as in the vividness with which he has portrayed the life of the brilliant yet corrupt society in which his lot was cast. It lives before us in all its splendour and in all its squalor. The court, with its atmosphere of grovelling flattery, its gross vices veiled and tricked out in the garb of respectability; the wealthy official class, with their villas, their favourites, their circle of dependants, men of culture, wit, and urbanity, through all which runs, strangely intermingled, a vein of extreme coarseness, vulgarity, and meanness; the lounger and the reciter, the diner-out and the legacy-hunter; the clients struggling to win their patrons' favour and to rise in the social scale, enduring the hardships and discomfort of a sordid life unillumined by lofty ideals or strength of will, a life that under cold northern skies would have been intolerable; the freedman and the slave, with all the riff-raff that support a parasitic existence on the vices of the upper classes; the noise and bustle of Rome, its sleepless nights, its cheerless tenements, its noisy streets, loud with the sound of traffic or of revelry; the shows in the theatre, the races in the circus, the interchange of presents at the Saturnalia; the pleasant life in the country villa, the simplicity of rural Italy, the sights and sounds of the park and the farm-yard; and dimly seen beyond all, the provinces, a great ocean which absorbs from time to time the rulers of Rome and the leaders of society, and from which come faint and confused echoes of frontier wars; all are there. It is a great pageant lacking order and coherence, a scene that shifts continually, but never lacks brilliance of detail and sharply defined presentment. Martial was the child of the age; it gave him his strength and his weakness. If we hate him or despise him, it is because he is the faithful representative of the life of his times; his gifts we cannot question. He practised a form of poetry that at its best is not exalted, and must, even more than other branches of art, be conditioned by social circumstance. Within its limited sphere Martial stands, not faultless, but yet supreme. CHAPTER XII JUVENAL Our knowledge of the life of the most famous of Roman satirists is strangely unsatisfactory. Many so-called lives of Juvenal have come down to us, but they are confused, contradictory, inadequate, and unreliable.[683] His own work and allusions in other writers help us but little in our attempt to reconstruct the story of the poet's life. Only by investigating the dates within which the satires seem to fall is it possible to arrive at some idea of the dates within which falls the life of their author. The satires were published in five books at different times. The first book (1-5), which is full of allusions to the tyranny of Domitian, cannot have been published before 100 A.D., since the first satire contains an allusion to the condemnation of Marius Priscus,[684] which took place in that year. The fifth book (13-16) must, from references in the thirteenth and fifteenth[685] satires to the year 127, have been published not much later than that date. The publication of the satires falls, therefore, between 100 and 130. With these data it is possible to approach the question of the dates of Juvenal's birth and death. The main facts to guide us are the statements of the best of the biographies that he did not begin to write satire till on the confines of middle age, that even then he delayed to publish, and that he died at the age of eighty.[686] The inference is that he was born between 50 and 60 A. D., and died between 130 and 140 A. D.[687] As to the facts of his life we are on little firmer ground. But concerning his name and birthplace there is practical certainty. Decimus Junius Juvenalis[688] was born at Aquinum,[689] a town of Latium, and is said to have been the son or adopted son of a rich freedman. His education was of the usual character, literary and rhetorical, and was presumably carried out at Rome.[690] He acquired thus early in youth a taste for rhetoric that never left him. For he is said to have practised declamation up till middle age, not with a view to obtaining a position as professor of rhetoric or as advocate, but from sheer love of the art.[691] It is probable that he combined his passion for rhetoric with service as an officer in the army. Not only does he show considerable intimacy in his satires with a soldier's life,[692] but interesting external evidence is afforded by an inscription discovered near Aquinum. It runs: C_ERE_RI. SACRVM D. _IV_NIVS. IVVENALIS _TRIB_. COH. _I_. DELMATARVM II. _VIR_. QVINQ. FLAMEN DIVI. VESPASIANI VOVIT. DEDICAV_ITQ_VE SVA PEC.[693] If this inscription refers, as well it may, to the poet, it will follow that he served as tribune of the first Dalmatian cohort, probably in Britain,[694] held high municipal office in his native town, and was priest of the deified Vespasian. But the _praenomen_ is wanting in the original, and the inscription may have been erected not by the satirist but by one of his kinsfolk. That he spent the greater portion of his life at Rome is evident from his satires. Of his friends we know little. Umbricius, Persicus, Catullus, and Calvinus[695] are mere names. Of Quintilian[696] he speaks with great respect, and may perhaps have studied under him; of Statius he writes with enthusiasm, but there is no evidence that he had done more than be present at that poet's recitations.[697] Martial, however, was a personal friend, and writes affectionately of him and to him in three of his epigrams.[698] Unlike Martial, whose life was a continual struggle against poverty, Juvenal, though he had clearly endured some of the discomforts and degradations involved by a client's attendance on his rich _patronus_, was a man of some means, possessing an estate at Aquinum,[699] a country house at Tibur,[700] and a house at Rome.[701] At what date precisely he began to write is uncertain. We are told that his first effort was a brief poem attacking the actor Paris, which he afterwards embodied in the seventh satire. But it was long before he ventured to read his satires even to his intimate friends.[702] This suggests that portions, at any rate, of the satires of the first book were composed during the reign of Domitian.[703] Juvenal had certainly every reason for concealing their existence till after the tyrant's death. The first satire was probably written later to form a preface to the other four, and the whole book may have been published in 101. It is noteworthy, however, that Martial, writing to him in that year, mentions merely his gifts as a declaimer, and seems not to know him as a satirist. The second book, containing only the sixth satire, was probably published about 116, since it contains allusions to earthquakes in Asia and to a comet boding ill to Parthia and Armenia (l. 407-12). Such a comet was visible in Rome in the autumn of 115, on the eve of Trajan's campaign against Parthia, while in December an earthquake did great damage to the town of Antioch. The third book (7-9) opens with an elaborate compliment to Hadrian as the patron of literature at Rome. As Hadrian succeeded to the principate in 117 and left Rome for a tour of the provinces in 121, this book must fall somewhere between our dates. The fourth book (10-12) contains no indication as to its date, but must lie between the publication of the third book and of the fifth (after 127). Beyond these facts it is hardly possible to go in our reconstruction of the poet's life. As far as may be judged it was an uneventful career save for one great calamity. The ancient biographies assert that Juvenal's denunciation of actors embodied in the seventh satire offended an actor who was the favourite of the princeps. They are supported by Apollinaris Sidonius,[704] who speaks of Juvenal as the 'exile-victim of an actor's anger', and by Johannes Malala.[705] The latter writer, with certain of the ancient biographies, identifies the actor with Paris, the favourite of Domitian; others, again, say that the poet was banished by Nero[706]--a manifestly absurd statement--others by Trajan,[707] while our best authority asserts that he was eighty years old when banished, and that he died of grief and mortification.[708] The place of exile is variously given. Most of the biographies place it in Egypt, the best of them asserting that he was given a military command in that province.[709] Others mention Britain,[710] others the Pentapolis of Libya.[711] Amid such discrepancies it is impossible to give any certain answer. But it is certain that the actor who caused Juvenal's banishment was not Paris, who was put to death by Domitian as early as 83, and almost equally certain that Domitian is guiltless of the poet's exile. It is, however, possible that he was banished by Trajan or Hadrian, though it would surprise us to find Trajan, for all the debauchery of his private life, so far under the influence of an actor[712] as to sacrifice a Roman citizen to his displeasure; while as regards Hadrian it is noteworthy that the very satire said to have offended the _pantomimus_ contains an eloquent panegyric of that emperor. Further, it is hard to believe the story that Juvenal was banished to Egypt at the advanced age of eighty under the pretext of a military command. The problem is insoluble.[713] The most that can be said is that the persistence of the tradition gives it some claim to credibility, though the details handed down to us are wholly untrustworthy, and probably little better than clumsy inferences from passages in the satires. The scope of Juvenal's work and the motives that spur him are set forth in the first satire. He is weary of the deluge of trivial and mechanical verse poured out by the myriad poetasters of the day: Still shall I hear and never quit the score, Stunned with hoarse Codrus' Theseid, o'er and o'er? Shall this man's elegies and t'other's play Unpunished murder a long summer's day? ... since the world with writing is possest, I'll versify in spite; and do my best To make as much waste-paper as the rest.[714] He will write in a different vein from his rivals. Satire shall be his theme. In such an age, when virtue is praised and vice practised, the age of the libertine, the _parvenu_, the forger, the murderer, it is hard not to write satire. 'Facit indignatio versum!'[715] he cries. 'All the daily life of Rome shall be my theme': quidquid agunt homines votum timor ira voluptas gaudia discursus nostri est farrago libelli.[716] What human kind desires and what they shun, Rage, passion, pleasure, impotence of will, Shall this satirical collection fill. DRYDEN. Never was vice so rampant; luxury has become monstrous; the rich lord lives in pampered and selfish ease, while those poor mortals, his clients, jostle together to receive the paltry dole of the _sportula_; that is all the help they will get from their patron: No age can go beyond us; future times Can add no further to the present crimes. Our sons but the same things can wish and do; Vice is at stand and at the highest flow. Thou, Satire, spread thy sails, take all the winds that blow.[717] And yet the satirist must be cautious; the days are past when a Lucilius could lash Rome at his will: When Lucilius brandishes his pen And flashes in the face of guilty men, A cold sweat stands in drops on every part, And rage succeeds to tears, revenge to smart. Muse, be advised; 'tis past considering time, When entered once the dangerous lists of rhyme; Since none the living villains dare implead, Arraign them in the persons of the dead.[718] No better preface has ever been written; it gives a perfect summary of the motives, the objects, and the methods of the poet's work in language which for vigour and brilliance he never surpassed. The closing lines show us his literary parentage. It is Lucilius who inspires him; it is the fierce invective of the father of Roman satire that appeals to him. Lucilius had scourged Rome, when the inroads of Hellenism and oriental luxury, the fruits of foreign conquest, were beginning to make themselves felt. To Juvenal it falls to denounce the triumph of these corroding influences. He has nothing of the almost pathetic philosophic detachment of Persius, nor of the easy-going compromise of Horace. He does not palter with problems of right and wrong, nor hesitate over his moral judgements; casuistry is wholly alien to his temper. It is indignation makes the verse, and from this fact, together with his rhetorical training, his chief merits and his chief failings spring. He introduces no novelty into satire save the almost unvarying bitterness and ferocity of his tone. Like Horace and Persius, he employs the dactylic hexameter to the exclusion of other metres, while, owing in the main to his taste for declamation, he is far more sparing in the use of the dialogue-form than either of his predecessors. Before further discussing his general characteristics, it is necessary to take a brief survey of the remaining satires. The second and ninth are savage and, as was almost inevitable, obscene denunciations of unnatural vice. In the third, the most orderly in arrangement and the most brilliant in execution of all his satires, he describes all the dangers and horrors of life at Rome. Umbricius, a friend of the poet, is leaving the city. It is no place for a man of honour; it has become a city for Greeks; the worthless and astute _Graeculus_ is everywhere predominant, and, stained though he be with a thousand vices, has outwitted the native-born, and, by the arts of the panderer and the flatterer, has made himself their master. The poor are treated like slaves. Houses fall, or are burned with fire. Sleep is impossible, so loud with traffic are the streets. By day it is scarcely safe to walk abroad for fear of being crushed by one of the great drays that throng the city; by night there are the lesser perils of slops and broken crockery cast from the windows, the greater perils of roisterers and thieves. Rome is no place for Umbricius. He must go. The fourth satire opens with a violent attack on the _parvenu_ Egyptian Crispinus, so powerful at the court of Domitian, and goes on by a somewhat clumsy transition to tell the story of the huge turbot caught near Ancona and presented to the emperor. So large was it that a cabinet council must needs be called to decide what should be done with it. This affords excuse for an inimitable picture of Domitian's servile councillors. At last it is decided that the turbot is to be served whole and a special dish to be constructed for it. 'Ah! why,' the poet concludes, 'did not Domitian devote himself entirely to such trifles as these?' In the fifth satire Juvenal returns to the subject of the hardships and insults which the poor client must endure. He pictures the host sitting in state with the best of everything set before him and served in the choicest manner, while the unhappy client must be content with food and drink of the coarsest kind. Virro, the rich man, does this not because he is parsimonious, but because the humiliation of his client amuses his perverted mind. But the satirist does not spare the client, whose servile complaisance leads him to put up with such treatment. 'Be a man!' he cries, 'and sooner beg on the streets than degrade yourself thus.' The sixth satire, the longest of the collection, is a savage denunciation of the vices of womankind. The various types of female degradation are revealed to our gaze with merciless and often revolting portrayal. The unchastity of woman is the main theme, but ranked with the adulteress and the wanton are the murderess of husband or of child, the torturer of the slave, the client of the fortune-teller or the astrologer, and even the more harmless female athlete and blue-stocking. For vigour and skill the satire ranks among Juvenal's best, but it is marred by wanton grossness and at times almost absurd exaggeration. The seventh satire deals with the difficulties besetting a literary career. It opens with a dexterous compliment to Hadrian; the poet qualifies his complaints by saying that they apply only to the past. The accession of Hadrian has swept all the storm-clouds from the author's sky. But in the unhappy days but lately passed away, the poet's lot was most miserable. His work brings him no livelihood; his patron's liberality goes but a little way. The historian is in no less parlous plight. The advocate makes some show of wealth, but it is, as a rule, the merest show; only the man already wealthy succeeds at the bar; many a struggling lawyer goes bankrupt in the struggle to advertise himself and push his way. The teacher of rhetoric and the school-master receive but a miserable fee, yet they have all the drudgery of discipline and all the responsibility of moulding the characters of the young placed upon their shoulders. They are expected to be omniscient, and yet they starve. The eighth satire treats the familiar theme that without virtue birth is of small account. Many examples of the degeneracy of the aristocracy are given, some trivial, some grave, but above all the satirist denounces the cruelty and oppression of nobly-born provincial governors. He concludes in his noblest vein in praise of the great plebeians of the past, Cicero, Marius, the Decii, and Servius Tullius. It is in deeds, not in titles, that true nobility lies. Better be the son of Thersites and possess the valour of Achilles, than live the life of a Thersites and boast Achilles for your sire. The eighth satire may be regarded as the presage of a distinct change of type. Instead of the vivid pictures of Roman life and the almost dramatic representation of vice personified, Juvenal seems to turn for inspiration to the scholastic declamation which had fascinated his youth. Moral problems are treated in a more abstract way, and the old fierce onset of indignation, though it has by no means disappeared, seems to have lost something of its former violence. There are also traces of declining powers, a greater tendency to digression, a lack of concentration and vigour, and even of dexterity of language. But the change is due in all probability not merely to advance in years nor to the calming and mellowing influence of old age, but also to a change that was gradually passing over the Roman world. The material for savage satire was appreciably less. Evil in its worst forms had triumphed under Domitian. With Nerva, Trajan, and Hadrian virtue began slowly and uncertainly to reclaim part of her lost dominions. The fourth book opens with the famous tenth satire on the vanity of human wishes. What should man pray for? The theme is hackneyed and the treatment shows no special originality. But the thought is elevated, the rhetoric superb, and the verse has a resounding tread such as is only found in Persius and Juvenal among the later poets of Rome. 'What shall man pray for?' Power? Think of Sejanus, Pompey, Demosthenes, Cicero! To each one greatness brought his doom. Think of Hannibal and Alexander, how they, and with them all their high schemings, came to die; Long life? What? Should we pray to outlive our bodily powers, to bewail the death of our nearest and dearest, to fall from the high place where once we stood? Beauty? Beauty is beset by a thousand perils in these vile days, and rarely do beauty and chastity go hand in hand. Rather than pray for boons like these, 'entrust thy fortune to the gods above,' or, if pray thou must, stand confined To health of body and content of mind; A soul that can securely death defy, And count it nature's privilege to die; Serene and manly, hardened to sustain The load of life and exercised in pain: Guiltless of hate and proof against desire, That all things weighs and nothing can admire; That dares prefer the toils of Hercules, To dalliance, banquet, and ignoble ease. The path to peace is virtue; what I show, Thyself may freely on thyself bestow; Fortune was never worshipped by the wise, But, set aloft by fools, usurps the skies.[719] In the eleventh satire we drop from these splendid heights of rhetoric; to a declamatory invitation to dinner, which affords occasion for a denunciation of the extravagant indulgence in the pleasures of the table and for the praise of the good old days when Romans clave to the simple life. The dinner to which Juvenal invites his friend will be of simple fare simply served-- You'll have no scandal when you dine. But honest talk and wholesome wine. And instead of lewd dance and song, a slave shall read aloud Homer and Homer's one rival, Vergil. The twelfth satire opens with a thanksgiving for the escape of a friend, Catullus, from a great storm at sea, and ends with a denunciation of legacy hunters, the connecting link between these somewhat remote themes being that Juvenal, at any rate, is disinterested in his joy at his friend's escape. The thirteenth and fourteenth satires deal with more abstract themes, the pangs of the guilty conscience and the importance of parental example. In the first, Juvenal consoles his friend, Calvinus, who has been defrauded of a sum of money. The loss, he says, is small, and, after all, honesty is rare nowadays. Men have so little care for the gods that they shrink from no perjury. Besides, what is such loss compared with the many worse crimes that darken life. Why thirst for revenge? It is the doctrine of the common herd. Philosophy teaches otherwise. The torment of conscience will be a worse penalty than any you can inflict, and at last justice will claim its own. In the next satire, to emphasize the value of parental example, the poet illustrates his point from the vice of avarice, and finally, forgetting his original theme, lashes the avaricious man in words such as would never suggest that the question of parental example had been raised at all. It is noteworthy that throughout these two satires the poet draws his illustrations from the themes of the schools rather than from the scenes of contemporary life. In the fifteenth satire, however, he returns to depict and discuss actual occurrences, but in how altered and strange a manner. His theme is a case of cannibalism in Egypt,[720] the result of a collision between religious fanatics of neighbouring townships. The aged poet spurs himself into one last fury against the hated Oriental, regardless of the fact that the denunciation of cannibalism to a civilized audience must necessarily be insipid. Last comes a fragment expatiating bitterly on the shameful advantages of a military career. The unhappy civilian assaulted by a soldier cannot get redress, for the case must be heard in camp before a bench of soldiers. The soldier, on the other hand, can get summary settlement of all his disputes, and alone of Romans is exempt from the _patria potestas_, can control his earnings and bequeath them to whom he will. At this point the satire breaks off abruptly, and we have no means of judging the extent of the loss. It is a striking reversion to his earlier manner. Once more the satire takes the form of a series of sketches from actual life. Both of these satires, notably the fifteenth, show a marked falling off alike in style and matter. Both, in fact, have been branded as spurious, the latter from times as early as those of the scholia. But there is no real ground for such a suspicion. Both satires have all the characteristics of Juvenal, excepting only the vigour and brilliance of his earlier days. No poet's powers are proof against the advance of old age, and there is no vein of poetry more exhausting or more easily exhausted than satire. And, as has already been remarked, there are signs of a falling away before these satires are reached. Even the famous tenth satire, for all its indisputable greatness, does not demand or reveal, such special gifts of style and observation as the first and third. It is less in touch with actual life: it is a theme from the schools, and the illustrations, effective as they are, are as trite as the theme itself. Were it his only work, the tenth satire would give Juvenal high rank among Roman poets: it will always, thanks to the brilliance of its rhetoric and the wide applicability of its moral, be his most popular work: it is not his highest achievement. It will have been obvious from this brief survey that the themes chosen by Juvenal are for the most part of a commonplace nature. It could hardly be otherwise. Satire, to be effective, must choose obvious themes. But in some respects the treatment of them is surprisingly commonplace. There is little freshness or originality about Juvenal's way of thinking. His morality is neither satisfying nor profound. His ideal is the old narrow Roman republican ideal of a chaste, vigorous, and unluxurious life, wherein publicity is for man alone, while woman is confined to the cares of the family and the household; the ideal of a society wholly Italian and free-born, untainted by the importations of Greece and Asia; of a state stern and exclusive, though just and merciful, sparing the subject and beating down the proud. The nobility of this ideal is not to be denied, but it is inadequate because it is wholly unpractical. There is no denying that the emancipation of women had led to gross evils, some of them imperilling the very existence of the State; nor can it be doubted that much of the Greek influence had been wholly for the bad, and that in many cases the introduction of the cults of the East served merely to cloak debauchery. The rich freedman, also, for whom Juvenal reserves his bitterest shafts, was often of vicious and degraded character and had risen to power by repulsive means. But there is another side to the picture, the existence of which Juvenal sometimes, by his vehemence, seems to deny. The freedman class supplied some of the most valuable of civil servants, and many must have been worthy of their emancipation and of their rise to power.[721] There was a higher Hellenism, which Juvenal ignored. The intellectual movements of the Empire still found their chief source in Greece, and the great Sophistic movement was already setting in, as a result of which Greek literature was to revive and the Greek language to supersede the Latin as the chief vehicle of literary expression even at Rome itself. The greater freedom accorded to women had its compensations; in spite of Juvenal, woman does not become worse or less attractive because she is cultured and well educated, and if there was much dissipation and debauchery in the high society of his day, even high society contained many noble women of fine intellect and pure character. The spread of Roman citizenship and the breaking down of the old exclusive tradition were potent factors for good in the history of civilization. It may be urged in Juvenal's defence that satire must necessarily deal with the darker side of life, that his silence as to the better and more hopeful elements in society does not mean that he ignored them, and that it is absurd to attack a satirist because he is not a scientific social historian. All this is true; but it is possible to have plenty of material for the bitterest satire and to indict gross and rampant vice without leaving the impression that the life of the day has no redeeming elements, without generalizing extravagantly from the vices of one section of society, even though that section be large and influential. The weakness of Juvenal is that he is too retrospective, both in his praise and in his blame. He dare not satirize the living, but will attack the dead. But it would be wrong to assume that in the dead he always attacks types of the living. There is always the impression that he is in reality attacking the first century rather than the second, the reigns of Nero and Domitian rather than the society governed by Trajan and Hadrian. He had lived through a night of terror and would not recognize the signs of a new dawn. Directing his attention too exclusively on Rome itself and on the past, he forgets the larger world and the future hope. It is to the impossible Rome of the past that he turns his eyes for inspiration. Hence comes his hatred, often merely racial, for Greek and Asiatic importations,[722] hence his dislike and contempt for the new woman. Moreover, he had lived on the fringe of high society and not in it; he had drunk in the bitterness of the client's life, and had lived in the enveloping atmosphere of scandal that always surrounds society for those who are excluded from it. A man of an acrid and jealous temperament, easily angered and not readily appeased, he yields too lightly and indiscriminately to that indignation, which, he tells us, is the fountain-head of all he writes. Satire should be something more than a wild torrent sweeping away obstacles great and small with one equal violence; it should have its laughing shallows and its placid deeps. But Juvenal's laughter rings harsh and wild, and wounds as deeply as his invective; he drives continually before the fierce gale of his spirit, and there are no calm havens where he may rest and contemplate the ideal that so much denunciation implies. He knows no gradations: all failings suffer beneath the same remorseless lash. The consul Lateranus has a taste for driving: bad taste, perhaps, yet hardly criminal. But Juvenal thunders at him as though he were guilty of high treason (viii. 146): praeter maiorum cineres atque ossa volucri carpento rapitur pinguis Lateranus, et ipse, ipse rotam adstringit sufflamine mulio consul, nocte quidem, sed Luna videt, sed sidera testes intendunt oculos. finitum tempus honoris cum fuerit, clara Lateranus luce flagellum sumet et occursum numquam trepidabit amici iam senis. See! by his great progenitor's remains Fat Lateranus sweeps, with loosened reins. Good Consul! he no pride of office feels, But stoops, himself, to clog his headlong wheels. 'But this is all by night,' the hero cries, Yet the moon sees! yet the stars stretch their eyes Pull on your shame!--A few short moments wait, And Damasippus quits the pomp of state: Then, proud the experienced driver to display, He mounts the chariot in the face of day, Whirls, with bold front, his grave associate by, And jerks his whip, to catch the senior's eye. GIFFORD. Elsewhere (i. 55-62) the 'horsy' youth is spoken of as worse than the husband who connives at his wife's dishonour and pockets the reward of her shame. Among the monstrous women of the sixth satire we come with a shock of surprise upon the learned lady (434): illa tamen gravior, quae cum discumbere coepit laudat Vergilium, periturae ignoscit Elissae, committit vates et comparat, inde Maronem atque alia parte in trutina suspendit Homerum. But of all plagues the greatest is untold; The book-learned wife, in Greek and Latin bold; The critic dame, who at her table sits, Homer and Virgil quotes and weighs their wits, And pities Dido's agonizing fits. DRYDEN. She figures strangely among the poisoners and adulteresses. Juvenal is misogynist by temperament as well as by conviction. Nero is a matricide like Orestes, but-- in scaena numquam cantavit Orestes, Troica non scripsit. quid enim Verginius armis debuit ulcisci magis aut cum Vindice Galba, quod Nero tam saeva crudaque tyrannide fecit? (viii. 220). Besides, Orestes in his wildest mood Sung on no public stage, no Troics wrote.-- This topped his frantic crimes! This roused mankind! For what could Galba, what Virginius find, In the dire annals of that bloody reign, Which called for vengeance in a louder strain? GIFFORD. It is almost a crime to be a foreigner. The Greek is a liar, a base flatterer, a monster of lust, a traitor, a murderer.[723] The Jew is the sordid victim of a narrow and degrading superstition.[724] The Oriental is the defilement of Rome; worst of all are the Egyptians;[725] they even eat each other. The freedman, the _nouveau riche_, the _parvenu_[726] are hated with all a Roman's hatred. The old patriotism of the city state is not yet merged in the wider imperialism. It is bitter to hear one of alien blood say 'Civis Romanus sum'. This strange violence and lack of proportion are due in part to the poet's rhetorical training, which had warped still further a naturally biased temperament. He had been taught and loved to use the language of hyperbole. And he had lived through the principate of Domitian; it was that above all else which made him cry _difficile est saturam non scribere_. To this same tendency to exaggeration may be in part attributed the extreme grossness of so much of his work. It is true that vices flaunted themselves before his eyes that it would be hard to satirize without indecency. There is excuse to some extent for the second, sixth, and ninth satires. But even there Juvenal oversteps the mark and is often guilty of coarseness for coarseness' sake. It is easy to plead the custom of the age,[727] but it is doubtful whether such pleading affords any real palliation for a writer who sets out to be a moralist. It is easy in an access of admiration to say that Juvenal is never prurient: but it is hard to be genuinely convinced that such a statement is true, or that Juvenal's coarseness is never more than mere plain speaking.[728] For not a few readers, this tenseness of language, this violence of judgement, and this occasional unclean handling of the unclean, make Juvenal an exhausting and a depressing poet to read in any large quantity at a time. Worse still, they lead the reader at times to harbour doubts as to the genuineness of Juvenal's indignation. Such doubts are not in reality justifiable. Juvenal sometimes goads himself into inappropriate frenzies and sometimes betrays a suspiciously close acquaintance with the most disgusting details of the worst vices of the age. But though he had something of the unreality of the rhetorician, and though his character may, perhaps, not have been free from serious blemish, he is never a hypocrite; nor, though he paints exclusively the darkest side of society, is there the least reason to accuse him of culpable misrepresentation of actual facts. He has selected the material most suited to his peculiar genius: we may complain of his principle of selection, and of his tendency to generalize. There our criticism must end. These defects are largely the defects of his qualities and may be readily forgiven. We have Pliny the younger and the inscriptions to modify his sombre picture. When all is said, Juvenal had a matchless field for satire and matchless gifts, against which his defects will not weigh in the balance for a moment. His unrivalled capacity for declamation, for mordant epigram and scathing wit, more than compensate for his often ill-balanced ferocity; the extraordinary vividness of his pictures of the life of Rome makes up for lack of perspective and proportion, the richness and variety of his imagination for its too frequent superficiality, the vigour and trenchancy of his blows for the absence of the rapier thrust, the fervour of his teaching for its lack of breadth and depth. These qualities make him the greatest of the satirists of Rome, if not of the world. It is, perhaps, his vividness that makes the most immediate impression. It would be hard to find in any literature a writer with such a power to make the scenes described live before his readers. The salient features of a scene or character are seized at once.[729] There is no irrelevant detail; the picture may be crowded, but it is never obscure; if there is a fault it is that the colouring is sometimes too crude and glaring to please. But before such word-painting as the description of Domitian's privy council criticism is dumb: nec melior vultu quamvis ignobilis ibat Rubrius, offensae veteris reus atque tacendae. * * * * * Montani quoque venter adest abdomine tardus, et matutino sudans Crispinua amomo quantum vix redolent duo funera, saevior illo Pompeius tenui iugulos aperire susurro, et qui vulturibus servabat viscera Dacis Fuscus marmorea meditatus proelia villa, et cum mortifero prudens Veiento Catullo, qui numquam visae flagrabat amore puellae, grande et conspicuum nostro quoque tempore monstrum, caecus adulator, dirusque a ponte satelles dignus Aricinos qui mendicaret ad axes blandaque devexae iactaret basia raedae (iv. 104). Rubrius, though not, like these, of noble race, Followed with equal terror in his face; * * * * * Montanus' belly next, and next appeared The legs on which that monstrous pile was reared. Crispinus followed, daubed with more perfume, Thus early! than two funerals consume. Then bloodier Pompey, practised to betray, And hesitate the noblest lives away. Then Fuscus, who in studious pomp at home, Planned future triumphs for the arms of Rome. Blind to the event! those arms a different fate, Inglorious wounds and Dacian vultures wait. Last, sly Veiento with Catullus came, Deadly Catullus, who at beauty's name Took fire, although unseen: a wretch, whose crimes Struck with amaze even those prodigious times. A base, blind parasite, a murderous lord, From the bridge-end raised to the council-board, Yet fitter still to dog the traveller's heels, And whine for alms to the descending wheels. GIFFORD. Figure after figure they live before us, till the procession culminates with the crowning horror of the blind delator, L. Valerius Catullus Messalinus. Equally vivid is Juvenal's description of places. There is the rude theatre of the country town with its white-robed audience _en négligé_:-- ipsa dierum festorum herboso colitur si quando theatro maiestas tandemque redit ad pulpita notum exodium, cum personae pallentis hiatum in gremio matris formidat rusticus infans, aequales habitus illic similesque videbis orchestram et populum, clari velamen honoris sufficiunt tunicae summis aedilibus albae (iii. 172). Some distant parts of Italy are known, Where none but only dead men wear a gown, On theatres of turf, in homely state, Old plays they act, old feasts they celebrate; * * * * * The mimic yearly gives the same delights; And in the mother's arms the clownish infant frights. Their habits (undistinguished by degrees) Are plain alike; the same simplicity Both on the stage and in the pit you see. In his white cloak the magistrate appears; The country bumpkin the same livery wears. DRYDEN. There is the poor gentleman's garret high on the topmost story of some tottering _insula_, close beneath the tiles, where the doves nest: lectus erat Codro Procula minor, urceoli sex ornamentum abaci nec non et parvulus infra cantharus, et recubans sub eodem marmore Chiro iamque vetus graecos servabat cista libellos, et divina opici rodebant carmina mures (iii. 203). Codrus had but one bed, so short to boot, That his short wife's short legs go dangling out His cupboard's head six earthen pitchers graced, Beneath them was his trusty tankard placed; And to support this noble plate, there lay A bending Chiron cast from honest clay; His few Greek books a rotten chest contained, Whose covers much of mouldiness complained; Where mice and rats devoured poetic bread, And on heroic verse luxuriously were fed. DRYDEN. There is the hurrying throng of the streets of Rome with all its dangers and discomforts: nobis properantibus opstat unda prior, magno populus premit agmine lumbos qui sequitur; ferit hic cubito, ferit assere duro alter, at hic tignum capiti incutit, ille metretam. pinguia crura luto, planta mox undique magna calcor et in digito clavus mihi militis haeret. nonne vides quanto celebretur sportula fumo? centum convivae, sequitur sua quemque culina. Corbulo vix ferret tot vasa ingentia, tot res inpositas capiti, quas recto vertice portat servulus infelix et cursu ventilat ignem. scinduntur tunicae sartae modo, longa coruscat serraco veniente abies, atque altera pinum plaustra vehunt, nutant alte populoque minantur (iii. 243). The press before him stops the client's pace; The crowd that follows crush his panting sides, And trip his heels; he walks not but he rides. One elbows him, one jostles in the shoal, A rafter breaks his head or chairman's pole; Stockinged with loads of fat town dirt he goes, And some rogue-soldier with his hob-nailed shoes Indents his legs behind in bloody rows. See, with what smoke our doles we celebrate! A hundred guests invited walk in state; A hundred hungry slaves with their Dutch-kitchens wait: Huge pans the wretches on their heads must bear, Which scarce gigantic Corbulo could rear; Yet they must walk upright beneath the load, Nay run, and running blow the sparkling flames abroad, Their coats from botching newly brought are torn. Unwieldy timber-trees in waggons borne, Stretched at their length, beyond their carriage lie, That nod and threaten ruin from on high. DRYDEN. Even in the later satires, where with the advance of age this pictorial gift begins to fail him and he tends to rely rather on brilliant rhetorical treatment of philosophical commonplaces, there are still flashes of the old power. The well-known description of the fall of Sejanus in the tenth satire is in his best manner, while even the humbler picture of the rustic family of primitive Rome in the fourteenth satire shows the same firmness of touch, the same eye for vivid and direct representation: saturabat glaebula talis patrem ipsum turbamque casae, qua feta iacebat uxor et infantes ludebant quattuor, unus vernula, tres domini, sed magnis fratribus horum a scrobe vel sulco redeuntibus altera cena amplior et grandes fumabant pultibus ollae (166). For then the little glebe, improved with care, Largely supplied with vegetable fare, The good old man, the wife in childbed laid, And four hale boys, that round the cottage played, Three free-born, one a slave: while, on the board, Huge porringers, with wholesome pottage stored, Smoked for their elder brothers, who were now, Hungry and tired, expected from the plough. GIFFORD. His handling of the essential weapons of satire, scathing epigram, and impetuous rhetoric, contribute equally to his success. He has the capacity of branding a character with eternal shame in a few terse trenchant lines. Who can forget the Greek adventurer of the third satire?-- grammaticus rhetor geometres pictor aliptes augur schoenobates medicus magus, omnia novit Graeculus esuriens; in caelum miseris, ibit (iii. 76); A cook, a conjurer, a rhetorician, A painter, pedant, a geometrician, A dancer on the ropes and a physician; All things the hungry Greek exactly knows, And bid him go to heaven, to heaven he goes. DRYDEN. or the summary of Domitian's reign with which he dates the story of the gigantic turbot?-- cum iam semianimum laceraret Flavius orbem ultimus et calvo serviret Roma Neroni (iv. 37); When the last Flavius, drunk with fury, tore The prostrate world, which bled at every pore, And Rome beheld, in body as in mind, A bald-pate Nero rise to curse mankind. GIFFORD. or the curse upon the legacy-hunter Pacuvius?-- vivat Pacuvius quaeso vel Nestora totum, possideat quantum rapuit Nero, montibus aurum exaequet, nec amet quemquam nec ametur ab ullo (xii. 128). Health to the man! and may he thus get more Than Nero plundered! pile his shining store High, mountain high: in years a Nestor prove, And, loving none, ne'er know another's love! GIFFORD. Not less mordant in a different way is the savage and sceptical melancholy of the conclusion of the second satire, where he contrasts the degenerate Roman, tainted by the foulest lusts, with the noble Romans of the past, and even with the barbarians, newly conquered, on the confines of empire (149): esse aliquos manes et subterranea regna et contum et Stygio ranas in gurgite nigras atque una transire vadum tot milia cumba nec pueri credunt, nisi qui nondum aere lavantur. sed tu vera puta: Curius quid sentit et ambo Scipiadae, quid Fabricius manesque Camilli, quid Cremerae legio et Cannis consumpta iuventus, tot bellorum animae, quotiens hinc talis ad illos umbra venit? cuperent lustrari, si qua darentur sulpura cum taedis et si foret umida laurus. illic heu miseri traducimur. arma quidem ultra litora Iuvernae promovimus et modo captas Orcadas ac minima contentos nocte Britannos, sed quae nunc populi fiunt victoris in urbe, non faciuut illi quos vicimus. That angry Justice formed a dreadful hell, That ghosts in subterranean regions dwell, That hateful Styx his sable current rolls, And Charon ferries o'er unbodied souls, Are now as tales or idle fables prized; By children questioned and by men despised. Yet these, do thou believe. What thoughts, declare, Ye Scipios, once the thunderbolts of war! Fabricius, Curius, great Camillus' ghost! Ye valiant Fabii, in yourselves an host! Ye dauntless youths at fatal Cannae slain! Spirits of many a brave and bloody plain! What thoughts are yours, whene'er with feet unblest, An unbelieving shade invades your rest? Ye fly, to expiate the blasting view; Fling on the pine-tree torch the sulphur blue, And from the dripping bay dash round the lustral dew. And yet--to these abodes we all must come, Believe, or not, these are our final home; Though now Ierne tremble at our sway, And Britain, boastful of her length of day; Though the blue Orcades receive our chain, And isles that slumber in the frozen main. But why of conquest boast? the conquered climes Are free, O Rome, from thy detested crimes. GIFFORD. In the same bitter spirit, Umbricius is made to cry: quid Romae faciam? mentiri nescio; librum, si malus est, nequeo laudare et poscere; motus astrorum ignoro; funus promittere patris nec volo nec possum; ranarum viscera numquam inspexi; ferre ad nuptam quae mittit adulter, quae mandat, norunt alii; me nemo ministro fur erit, atque ideo nulli comes exeo tamquam mancus et extinctae, corpus non utile, dextrae (iii. 41). What's Rome to me, what business have I there? I who can neither lie nor falsely swear? Nor praise my patron's undeserving rhymes, Nor yet comply with him nor with his times? Unskilled in schemes by planets to foreshow, Like canting rascals, how the wars will go; I neither will nor can prognosticate To the young gaping heir his father's fate; Nor in the entrails of a toad have pried, Nor carried bawdy presents to a bride: For want of these town-virtues, thus alone I go conducted on my way by none; Like a dead member from the body rent, Maimed and unuseful to the government. DRYDEN. This bitterness Juvenal seasons at times with saturnine jests of a type that is all his own. Virro gives rancid oil to his poor guests as dressing to their salad: illud enim vestris datur alveolis quod canna Micipsarum prora subvexit acuta, propter quod Romae cum Boccare nemo lavatur, quod tutos etiam facit a serpentibus atris (v. 88). Such oil to you is thrown, Such rancid grease, as Afric sends to town; So strong that when her factors seek the bath, All wind and all avoid the noisome path. GIFFORD. When the blind _delator_, Catullus Messalinus, is summoned to give his advice concerning the gigantic turbot: nemo magis rhombum stupuit; nam plurima dixit in laevom conversus, at illi dextra iacebat belua. sic pugnas Cilicis laudabat et ictus et pegma et pueros inde ad velaria raptos (iv. 119). None dwelt so largely on the turbot's size, Or raised with such applause his wondering eyes; But to the left (O treacherous want of sight) He poured his praise;--the fish was on the right. Thus would he at the fencer's matches sit, And shout with rapture at some fancied hit; And thus applaud the stage machinery, where The youths were rapt aloft and lost in air. GIFFORD. Grimmest of all is the jest on the mushrooms set before Virro: vilibus ancipites fungi ponentur amicis, boletus domino, sed quales Claudius edit ante illum uxoris, post quem nihil amplius edit (v. 146). You champ on spongy toadstools, hateful treat! Fearful of poisons in each bit you eat: He feasts secure on mushrooms, fine as those Which Claudius for his special eating chose, Till one more fine, provided by his wife, Finished at once his feasting and his life! GIFFORD. But Juvenal is not always bitter, nor always angry. His indignation is never absent, but takes at times a graver and a nobler tone. At times he preaches virtue directly, instead of doing so indirectly through the denunciation of vice. He has no new secret of morality to reveal, no fresh lights to throw upon problems of conduct; his advice is obvious and straightforward; neither in form nor matter is there anything paradoxical. He was no student of philosophy,[730] though naturally familiar with the more important philosophic creeds and disposed by temperament to fall in with the views of the stern Stoic school. The conclusion of the tenth satire quoted above owes much to the Stoics. 'Leave the ordering of your fortunes to the powers above. Man is dearer to them than to himself. The wise man is free from all desire, all anger and all fear of death.'[731] 'Revenge is an unworthy and degrading passion.'[732] 'Fate[733] and the revolution[734] of the stars in heaven rule all with unchanging law.' All these maxims have their counterpart in the Stoic creed. But there is no need of the philosophy of the schools to guide man to the paths of virtue. numquam aliud natura, aliud sapientia dicit (xiv. 321). Nature and wisdom never are at strife. GIFFORD. Philosophy has its value, but the good man is no less good for not being a philosopher: magna quidem, sacris quae dat praecepta libellis, victrix fortunae sapientia, ducimus autem hos quoque felices, qui ferre incommoda vitae nec iactare iugum vita didicere magistra (xiii. 19). Wisdom, I know, contains a sovereign charm, To vanquish fortune or at least disarm: Blest they who walk in her unerring rule! Nor those unblest who, tutored in life's school, Have learned of old experience to submit, And lightly bear the yoke they cannot quit. GIFFORD. He agrees with the Stoics just because their practical teaching harmonizes so entirely with the old _virtus Romana_, that is his ideal. No more profound are his religious views: he hates the alien cults that work as insidious poison in the life of Rome; he rejects the picturesque legends of the afterworld, bred of the fertile imagination of the Greeks. But he is no unbeliever: separat hoc nos a grege mutorum, atque ideo venerabile soli sortiti ingenium divinorumque capaces atque exercendis pariendisque artibus apti sensum a caelesti demissum traximus arce, cuius egent prona et terram spectantia. mundi principio indulsit communis conditor illis tantum animas, nobis animum quoque, mutuus ut nos adfectus petere auxilium et praestare iuberet (xv. 142). This marks our birth The great distinction from the beasts of earth! And therefore--gifted with superior powers And capable of things divine--'tis ours To learn and practise every useful art; And from high heaven deduce that better part, That moral sense, denied to creatures prone And downward bent, and found with man alone!-- For He, who gave this vast machine to roll, Breathed life in them, in us a reasoning soul: That kindred feelings might our state improve, And mutual wants conduct to mutual love. GIFFORD. God is over all and guides and guards the world, and has ordained torment of conscience and slow retribution for sin.[735] Yet Juvenal does not definitely reject the gods of his native land; nor do these exalted beliefs cause him to refuse sacrifice to Jupiter, Juno, Minerva, and his household gods.[736] It is the creed, not of a theologian, but of a man with high ideals, a staunch patriotism, and a deep reverence for the past. But this lack of profundity and philosophical training does not, as may be inferred from passages already quoted, prevent him from being intensely effective as a moral teacher. His platitudes are none the worse for not having a Stoic label and all the better for their simplicity and directness of expression. They do not reveal the hunger and thirst after righteousness that breathe from the lines of Persius, but they have at least an equal appeal to the plain man, and they are matchlessly expressed. His pleading against revenging the wrong done, if not on the very highest moral plane, possesses a grave dignity and beauty that brings it straight home to the heart: at vindicta bonum vita iucundius ipsa. nempe hoc indocti, quorum praecordia nullis interdum aut levibus videas flagrantia causis. * * * * * Chrysippus non dicet idem nec mite Thaletis ingenium dulcique senex vicinus Hymetto, qui partem acceptae saeva inter vincla cicutae accusatori nollet dare. plurima felix paulatim vitia atque errores exuit omnes, prima docet rectum sapientia. quippe minuti semper et infirmi est animi exiguique voluptas ultio. continuo sic collige, quod vindicta nemo magis gaudet quam femina. cur tamen hos tu evasisse putes, quos diri conscia facti mens habet attonitos et surdo verbere caedit occultum quatiente animo tortore flagellum? poena autem vehemens ac multo saevior illis quas et Caedicius gravis invenit et Rhadamanthus, nocte dieque suum gestare in pectore testem (xiii. 180). 'Revenge,' they say, and I believe their words, 'A pleasure sweeter far than life affords.' Who say? The fools, whose passions prone to ire At slightest causes or at none take fire. ... ... ... Chrysippus said not so; Nor Thales, to our frailties clement still; Nor that old man, by sweet Hymettus' hill, Who drank the poison with unruffled soul, And, dying, from his foes withheld the bowl. Divine philosophy! by whose pure light We first distinguish, then pursue the right, Thy power the breast from every error frees And weeds out every error by degrees:-- Illumined by thy beam, revenge we find The abject pleasure of an abject mind, And hence so dear to poor, weak womankind. But why are those, Calvinus, thought to 'scape Unpunished, whom in every fearful shape Guilt still alarms, and conscience ne'er asleep Wounds with incessant strokes 'not loud but deep', While the vexed mind, her own tormentor, plies A scorpion scourge, unmarked by human eyes? Trust me, no tortures which the poets feign, Can match the fierce, the unutterable pain He feels, who night and day, devoid of rest, Carries his own accuser in his breast. GIFFORD. The same characteristics mark his praise of nobility of character as opposed to nobility of birth: tota licet veteres exornent undique cerae atria, nobilitas sola est atque unica virtus. Paulus vel Cossus vel Drusus moribus esto, hos ante effigies maiorum pone tuorum, praecedant ipsas illi te consule virgas. prima mihi debes anima bona. sanctus haberi iustitiaeque tenax factis dictisque mereris? adgnosco procerem; salve Gaetulice, seu tu Silanus, quocumque alio de sanguine, rarus civis et egregius patriae contingis ovanti (viii. 19). Fond man, though all the heroes of your line Bedeck your halls, and round your galleries shine In proud display: yet take this truth from me, 'Virtue alone is true nobility.' Set Cossus, Drusus, Paulus, then, in view, The bright example of their lives pursue; Let these precede the statues of your race, And these, when consul, of your rods take place, O give me inborn worth! Dare to be just, Firm to your word and faithful to your trust. Then praises hear, at least deserve to hear, I grant your claim and recognize the peer. Hail from whatever stock you draw your birth, The son of Cossus or the son of Earth, All hail! in you exulting Rome espies Her guardian power, her great Palladium rise. GIFFORD. This is rhetoric, but rhetoric of the noblest kind. Of pure poetry there is naturally but little in Juvenal. Neither his temperament nor his subject would admit it. He had too keen an eye for the hideous and the grotesque, too strong a passion for the declamatory style. Hence it is rather his brilliant sketches of a vicious society, his fiery outbursts of rhetoric, his striking _sententiae_ that primarily impress the reader: expende Hannibalem: quot libras in duce summo invenies? (x. 147). Great Hannibal within the balance lay, And count how many pounds his ashes weigh. DRYDEN. finem animae quae res humanas miscuit olim, non gladii, non saxa dabunt nec tela, sed ille Cannarum vindex et tanti sanguinis ultor anulus. i demens et saevas curre per Alpes, ut pueris placeas et declamatio fias (x. 163). What wondrous sort of death has heaven designed For so untamed, so turbulent a mind? Nor swords at hand, nor hissing darts afar, Are doomed to avenge the tedious bloody war; But poison drawn through a ring's hollow plate, Must finish him--a sucking infant's fate. Go, climb the rugged Alps, ambitious fool, To please the boys, and be a theme at school. DRYDEN. nemo repente fuit turpissimus (ii. 83). For none become at once completely vile. GIFFORD. summum crede nefas animam praeferre pudori et propter vitam vivendi perdere causas (viii. 83). si natura negat, facit indignatio versum (i. 79). Think it a crime no tears can e'er efface, To purchase safety with compliance base, At honour's cost a feverish span extend, And sacrifice for life, life's only end! GIFFORD. It is lines such as these that first rise to the mind at the mention of Juvenal. But he was no mere declaimer. Here and there we may find phrases of the purest poetry and of the most perfect form. Far above all others come the wonderful lines of the ninth satire: festinat enim decurrere velox flosculus angustae miseraeque brevissima vitae portio; dum bibimus, dum serta unguenta puellas poscimus, obrepit non intellecta senectus (ix. 126). For youth, too transient flower! of life's short day The shortest part, but blossoms--to decay. Lo! while we give the unregarded hour To revelry and joy in Pleasure's bower, While now for rosy wreaths our brow to twine, While now for nymphs we call, and now for wine, The noiseless foot of time steals swiftly by, And, ere we dream of manhood, age is nigh! GIFFORD. Of a very different character, but of a beauty that is nothing less than startling in its sombre surroundings, is the blessing that he invokes on the good men of old who 'enthroned the teacher in the revered parent's place'. di maiorum umbris tenuem et sine pondere terram spirantesque crocos et in urna perpetuum ver, qui praeceptorem sancti voluere parentis esse loco (vii. 207). Shades of our sires! O sacred be your rest, And lightly lie the turf upon your breast! Flowers round your urns breathe sweets beyond compare, And spring eternal shed its influence there! You honoured tutors, now a slighted race, And gave them all a parent's power and place. GIFFORD. The sensuous appeal of the 'fragrant crocus and the spring that dies not in the urn of death' is unique in Juvenal. This slender stream of definitely poetic imagination reveals itself suddenly and unexpectedly in strange forms and circumstances. At the close of the passage in the third satire describing the perils of the Roman streets, Juvenal imagines the death of some householder in a street accident. All is bustle and business at home in expectation of his return: domus interea secura patellas iam lavat et bucca foculum excitat et sonat unctis striglibus et pleno componit lintea guto. haec inter pueros varie properantur, at ille iam sedet in ripa taetrumque novicius horret porthmea nec sperat caenosi gurgitis alnum infelix nec habet quem porrigat ore trientem (iii. 261). Meantime, unknowing of their fellow's fate, The servants wash the platter, scour the plate, Then blow the fire with puffing cheeks, and lay The rubbers and the bathing-sheets display, And oil them first, each handy in his way. But he for whom this busy care they take, Poor ghost! is wandering by the Stygian lake; Affrighted by the ferryman's grim face, New to the horrors of the fearful place, His passage begs, with unregarded prayer, And wants two farthings to discharge his fare. DRYDEN. Out of the grotesque there gradually looms the horror of death and the friendless ghost sitting lost and homeless by the Stygian waters. That there is small scope in his work for such distinctively poetic imagination is not Juvenal's fault, nor can we complain of its absence. But in technical accomplishment he shows himself a writer of the first rank. His treatment of the hexameter exactly suits his declamatory type of satire. The conversational verse of Horace, with its easy-going rambling gait, was unsuitable for the thunders of Juvenal's rhetoric. Something more massive in structure, more vigorous in movement, was needed as the vehicle of so much rhetoric and invective. The delicate tripping hexameter of contemporary epic was equally unsuitable. Unlike the majority of post-Augustan poets, Juvenal is almost untouched by the Ovidian influence. As far as his metre has any ancestry, it is descended from the Vergilian hexameter, though with the licence of satire it claims greater liberty in its treatment of pauses and of elision. The post-Augustan poet with whom in this respect Juvenal has greatest affinity is Persius. For vigour and variety he far surpasses all other poets of the age; while even Persius, although at his best and in his more declamatory passages he is at least Juvenal's equal, does not maintain the same level of excellence, and his more frequent employment of the traditional dialogue of satire gives him fewer opportunities for striking metrical effect. As regards his diction Juvenal is equally remarkable. He has suffered little from the schools of rhetoric and has gained much. He is pointed and clear, without being either obscure[737] or mechanical. There is no vain striving after antithesis and no epigram for epigram's sake. Grotesque he is not seldom, but the grotesqueness is deliberate and effective, and no mere affectation. His one serious weakness is his lack of constructive power and his incapacity to preserve due proportion between the parts of his satires. The most glaring instances of this failing are to be found in the fourth, twelfth, and fourteenth satires, but except the third there is hardly a satire that can be regarded as wholly successful in point of construction. This defect, it may be admitted, is less serious in satire than in almost any other branch of literature. Such discursiveness was justified by the tradition and by the inherent nature of satire. But Juvenal offends in this respect beyond due reason, and only his extraordinary merits in other directions save him from the penalties of this failing. Juvenal is the last of the poets of the Silver Age, and the only one of them to whom the epithet 'great' can reasonably be applied. He is no faultless writer, but he has genius and power, and has risen superior to the besetting sins of the age. He is a rhetorician, it is true, but he chose a form of literature where his rhetoric could have legitimate play. But he is no plagiarist or imitator; though, as in any other poet, we may find in him many traces and even echoes of his predecessors, he is in the best sense original. He is never a mere juggler in words and phrases, he is a true artist. Form and matter are indissolubly welded and interfused one with another. And this is because, unlike other writers of the age, he has something to say. He is poet by inspiration, not by profession. His excessive pessimism, his tendency to bias and exaggeration, cannot on the worst estimate obscure his merits either as artist or moralist. His picture of society has large elements of truth, and we can no more blame him for his tendency to caricature than we can blame Hogarth. Satire, especially the satire of declamatory invective, must be one-sided, and the satirist must select the features of life which he desires to denounce. And if this leads us at times into unpleasant places and among unpleasant people unpleasantly described, that does not justify us in denouncing the satirist. It must be remembered that the true satirist is not likely to be a man of perfect character. He must have seen much and experienced much; if his character has in the process become not merely unduly embittered, but perhaps somewhat smirched, these failings may be redeemed by other qualities. And in the case of Juvenal they are so redeemed. He has not the lucid judgement of Horace nor the pure fervour of Persius. He is more positive than the former, more negative than the latter. But he has lived in a sense in which Persius never had, and possesses the gift of direct and lucid expression; therefore, when he strikes, he strikes home. He cannot, like Horace, 'play about the hearts of men,' he will have nothing of compromise, he cannot and will not adapt himself to his environment. The doctrine of [Greek: m_eden agan], the _aurea mediocritas_, have no attractions for him. Hence his ideal is often unpractical; 'the times were out of joint,' and Juvenal was not precisely the man to 'set them right'. But at least he sets forth an ideal, that any honest man must admit to be noble. It is precisely because he is no casuist, because he hits hard and unsparingly, and is translucently honest, and because his weapon is the most fervid and trenchant rhetoric, that Juvenal is the most quoted and one of the most popular of Latin poets. He has contributed little to the thought of the world, but he has taught men to hate iniquity. He does not rise to the height of such an immortal saying as virtutem videant intabescantque relicta; he is no philosopher, and his ideals have neither the exaltation nor the stimulating power of the Stoic ideal. But he unveils vice and folly, so that men may fly from their utter hideousness, in such burning words as it has fallen to few poets to utter. He is 'dowered with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn'; had he possessed also the 'love of love', he might have reached greater heights of pure poetry, but he would not have been Juvenal, and the world would have been the loser. INDEX OF NAMES Abascantus 205 _n_, 299 _n_. Accius 12, 71, 89. Aeschylus 207 _n_, 212 _n_, 216 _n_. Aetna 140-6, 156. Afranius 12, 25. Agrippina 25, 74, 76. Antimachus 207 _n_, 209, 210. Antistius Sosianus 163 _n_, 164. Apollonius Rhodius 182 sqq. Aquilius Regulus 256. Arria 81, 275. Arrius Antoninus 173 _n_. Arulenus Rustieus 168. Asellius Sabinus 3. Asinius Pollio 18. Atedius Melior 205 _n_, 230, 256, 272. Attalus 32. Attius Labeo 160. Ausonius 174, 175. Bassus, Caesius 80-2, 163-5. Bassus, Saleius 19, 168, 169. Bathyllus 27. Caecilius 12. Caesar, C. Julius 103 sqq., 263. Caesennia 163. Calenus 175. Caligula 4, 5, 31, 163. Callimachus 207. Calpurnius Piso 35, 99, 152, 156-9, 251. Calpurnius Siculus 137, 150-9, 245. Calpurnius Statura 80. Calvinus 289. Carinas Secundus 4. Cassius Rufus 256. Cato 37, 38, 58, 101, 103 sqq., 262. Catullus, C. Valerius 2, 123 _n_, 176, 260, 261, 263. Catullus (writer of mimes) 24. Catullus (friend of Juvenal) 289, 297. Cicero 58, 172, 238. Claudia 204. Claudianus 174. Claudius 5, 25, 32, 36, 63. Claudius Agathurnus 80. Claudius Augustalis 146. Claudius Etruscus 205 _n_, 231, 256, 299 _n_. Clutorius Priscus 3. Codrus 291. Columella 137, 146-9, 180. Cornelius Severus 144. Cornutus 6, 79-82, 94, 95, 97, 267. Cremutius Cordus 2, 101. Crispinus (1) 205 _n_. ---- (2) 294. Curiatius Maternus 30. Decianus 257, 264. Demosthenes 128. Domitianus 19, 21, 25, 168, 176, 181, 203, 204, 228, 229, 252, 271, 287, 293, 296, 303, 305. Earinus 229. Einsiedeln Fragments 151, 156, 157. Ennius 12, 23. Epictetus 70, 238. Erotion 272. Euphorion 3. Euripides 45, 46, 74, 127, 207 _n_, 212 _n_, 216 _n_. Faustus 30. Flaccilla 251, 272. Flaccus (father of Persius) 79. Flaccus of Patavium 180, 281. Fronto (rhetorician) 35. Fronto (father of Martial) 251, 272. Fulgentius 134, 135. Fulvia Sisennia 79. Gaetulicus 163, 259, 261. Galba 25. Gallio L. Iunius 31. Glaucias 230, 272. Hadrianus 290, 291, 294, 296. Hecato 43 _n_. Helvidius Priscus 168. Herennius Senecio 168. Hesiod 12. Homer 4, 12, 160, 161, 188, 221, 227. Horatius 10-12, 71, 83, 84, 89, 91, 92, 123 _n_, 171, 191, 241, 244, 284, 293, 317, 320. Hyperides 128. Ilias Latina 22, 160-3. Italicus, Babius 163. Iulius Martialis 257, 264, 265, 270. Iuvenalis 21, 22, 91, 92,121,168,169, 170, 174, 236, 245, 256, 260, 261, 263, 275, 278, 279, 287-320. Labienus 4. Latro 15 _n_. Lentulus Sura 256. Livilla 32, 33. Livius Andronicus 160. Livius, T. 4, 239, 242, 245. Lucanus 7, 8, 20-2, 28, 31, 80, 94, 97-124, 132, 179, 180, 187, 192, 221 _n_, 226, 229, 233, 235, 238, 239, 243, 244. 251, 260, 275. Lucian 27. Lucilius Iunior 144, 163 _n_. Lucilius (satirist) 10, 83, 89, 293. Lucinianus Maternus 256. Lucretius 123 _n_, 140, 143. Lynceus 207 _n_. Macrinus 80, 82. Marcella 255. Marius Priscus 287. Marsus, Domitius 259, 261, 281. Martialis 8 _n_, 134, 139, 163, 167, 169, 173-6, 180, 204, 238, 243, 250, 251-86, 289. Matius, Cn. 160. Maximus Vibius 204, 205. Mela, M. Annaeus 31, 36, 97. Meliboeus 152, 156-9. Memor, Scaevus 30. Menander 12. Messala, Vipstanus 16, 126. Montanus, Curtius 163 _n_. Mummius 24 _n_. Musonius Rufus 8. Naevius 12. Nero 6-8, 19, 20, 28, 33, 41, 43, 74-6, 89 _n_, 97, 98, 101, 102, 119, 125-7, 131 _n_, 132, 144, 151, 236, 251, 290, 291, 302. Nerva 21, 169, 170, 255, 296. Ninnius Crassus 160. Norbanus 256. Novatus, M. Annaeus 31, 30. Novius Vindex 205 _n_. Octavia 40, 41, 74-8. Ovidius 11, 12, 17 _n_, 29, 46, 71, 112, 123 _n_, 143, 144, 161, 192, 207, 221 _n_, 226, 259, 260, 263. Paccius 30. Pacuvius 12, 23, 71, 89. Paris, 28, 203, 291. Parthenius 8. Passennus Paulus Propertius Blaesus 170, 171. Passienus, Crispus 36. Patronius Aristocrates 80. Pedo, Albinovanus 259 _n_, 261. Persicus 289. Persius 20-2, 79-96, 160, 164, 191, 236, 267, 293, 318, 319. Pervigilium Veneris 174. Petronius Arbiter 16 _n_, 20, 103, 125-39, 239, 259. Phaedrus 3. Pindar 127. Piso, _see_ Calpurnius. Pisonem, Panegyricus in 156-9. Plato 127. Plautus 12, 23. Plinius (the younger) 20, 25, 163, 170-3, 232, 236, 245, 255, 268, 305. Plotius Grypus 205 _n_. Plutarch 94. Polla, Argentaria 100, 205 _n_. Pollius 231, 268. Polybius 4, 32, 161. Pompeius 37, 101, 102 sqq. Pomponius Bassulus 25, 170. Pomponius Secundus 29. Ponticus 207 _n_. Probus 79. Propertius 139, 170, 171. Pudens (friend of Martial) 257 Pudens L. Valerius (boy-poet) 14 _n_. Pylades (1) 27. ---- (2) 291. Quintilianus 12, 16, 20, 25, 29, 35, 116, 164, 167-9, 179, 180, 251, 252, 256. Quintus Ovidius 257. Remmius Palaemon 17 _n_, 79. Rhianus 3. Rubrenus Lappa 30. Rutilius Gallicus 205 _n_. Rutilius Namatianus 174. Sappho 176. Scaurus, Mamercus 2. Seneca (the elder) 15, 31, 97. Seneca (the younger) 4, 5, 20, 31-78, 93, 94, 97, 115, 124, 132, 134, 144, 145, 161, 164, 179, 180, 185-7, 207 _n_, 221 _n_, 236, 251, 259, 260. Sentius Augurinus 170, 171. Serranus 168, 169. Servilius Nonianus 80. Severus, Cassius 4. Silius Italicus 20, 102, 123_n_, 145, 156, 163, 168, 179, 191, 236-50, 256. Silvinus 146. Sophocles 47 _n_, 127, 207 _n_, 216 _n_. Sotion 32. Statius (the elder) 169, 202, 203. Statius (the younger) 8 _n_, 20, 22, 28, 100, 123 _n_, 164, 167-9, 179, 191, 192, 202-35, 240, 260, 268, 270-2. Stella, Arruntius 169, 205 _n,_ 256, 280. Stertinius Avitus 256. Sulpicia (the elder) 174. Sulpicia (the younger) 174-8. Sulpicius Maximus 14 _n._ Tacitus 20, 21, 121, 125, 127, 168, 169, 170, 179, 243, 275. Terentius 23. Theocritus 150, 268. Thrasea 34, 80, 168. Thucydides 128. Tiberianus 174. Tiberius 2-4, 25, 102. Tibullus 174. Titus 167, 181, 252. Traianus 21, 127, 169, 170, 256, 290, 291, 296. Triarius 15 _n._ Turnus 30, 169. Umbricius 289, 293, 294. Vacca 97. Vagellius 163 _n._ Valerius Flaccus 20, 123 _n,_ 167, 168, 179-201, 212 _n,_ 220, 226, 235, 236. Varius 29. Varro (Atacinus) 183. Varro (Reatinus) 127. Varus 257. Vergilius Maro 4, 11, 12, 17 _n,_ 20, 101, 102, 115, 123 _n,_ 130, 143, 144, 146, 147, 149, 150, 151, 153, 161, 179, 186, 187, 191, 193, 194, 198, 207 _n,_ 210, 211, 220 _n,_ 221, 226, 227, 237, 238-40, 243-5, 281. Vergilius Romanus 25, 170. Verginius Flavus 7. Verginius Rufus 169. Vespasianus 144, 166, 169, 170, 180. Vestricius Spurinna 169. Vopiscus 231. FOOTNOTES: 1. See Teuffel and Schwabe, § 272. 2. Cf. Tac. _Ann_. i. 1. Velleius Paterculus is a good example of the servile historian. For an example of servile oratory of. Tac. _Ann_. xvi. 28. 3. Suet, _Tib_. 21. 4. Dion. 1 vii. 22; Tac. _Ann_. vi. 39; iv. 31. 5. Tac. _Ann_. iv. 34. 6. Dion. lviii. 24 [Greek: math_on oun touto ho Tiberios, eph' eaut_oi tote to epos eir_esthai eph_e, Atreus dia t_en miaiphonian einai prospoi_esamenos.] Tac. _Ann_. vi. 29. 7. 'Pulsi tum Italia histriones,' Tac. _Ann_. iv. 14. 8. III Prol. 38 sqq., Epil. 29 sqq. 9. Suet. _Tib_. 42. 10. Tac. _Ann_. iii. 49; Dion. lvii. 20. 11. Suet. _Tib_. 70 12. Suet. _Tib_. 71 13. Suet. _Tib_. 61 14. Suidas, s.v. [Greek: Kaisar Tiberios]. 15. Suet. _Tib_. 70. 16. Suet. _Tib. 70._ 17. Suet. _Cal. 53._ 18. Suet. _Cal. 53._ 19. Suet. _Cal. 16._ 20. Dion. _lix. 20._ 21. Suet. _Cal. 27._ 22. Dion. _lix. 19._ 23. Suet. _Cal._ 34 'nullius ingenii minimaeque doctrinae'. 24. Suet. _Cal. 20._ 25. For his writings generally of. Suet. _Claud. 41, 42._ 26. Tac. _Ann. xiii. 43._ 27. Suet. _Claud. 33._ 28. For his writings generally of. Suet. _Claud. 41, 42._ 29. Suet _Claud. 11._ 30. Suet. _Claud. 41. This is borne out by the fragments of the speech delivered at Lyons on the Gallic franchise. _C.I. L. 13, 1668._ 31. Suet. _Claud. 28._ 32. Sc. in the _Apocolocyntosis_. 33. Suet. _Ner. 52._ 34. Suet. _Ner. 49_ 'qualis artifex pereo!' 35. Suet. _Ner. 52_; Tac. _Ann. xiii. 3._ 36. Tac. _Ann. xiv. 16._ 37. Suet. _Domit. 1_; Tac. _Ann. xv. 49_; Suet. _Ner. 24._ 38. Mart, ix. 26. 9; Plin. _N. H. xxxvii. 50._ 39. Persius is sometimes said to quote from the Bacchae. Cf. Schol. Pers. _Sat. i. 93-5, 99-102_. But see ch. in, p. 89. 40. Juv. viii. 221; Serv. Verg. _Georg. iii. 36, Aen. v. 370._ 41. Dion. lxii. 29. 42. Dion. lxii. 18; Suet. _Ner. 38_; Tac. _Ann. xv. 39_. For fragments of his work see Baehrens, _Poet. Rom. Fragm., p. 368._ 43. Suet, Ner. 10, 21. 44. Philostr. _vit. Apoll_. iv. 39 [Greek: ad_on ta tou Ner_onos mel_e ... ep_ege mel_e ta men ex Oresteias, ta d' ex Antigon_es, ta d' opothenoun t_on prag_odoumen_on aut_o kai _odas ekampten oposas Ner_on elugize te kai kak_os estrephen]. 45. Suet. _vita Lucani_; see chapter on Lucan, p. 97. 46. See chapter on Lucan, p. 98. 47. Suet. _Luc_.; Tac. _Ann_. xv. 49. 48. Suet. _Ner_. 39. 49. It may be urged that the damage lies not in the loss of poetry suppressed by the Emperor, but in the generation of a type of court poetry, examples of which survive in their most repulsive form in the _Silvae_ of Statius and the epigrams of Martial. The objection has its element of truth, but only affects a very small and comparatively unimportant portion of the poetry of the age. 50. See Tacitus, _Dial._ 28 sqq. on the moral training of a young Roman of his day. Also Juv. xiv. 51. After the death of the great Augustan authors Alexandrian erudition becomes yet more rampant. It was a great assistance to men of second-rate poetical talent. 52. Quint, i. 1. 12. 53. Quint, i. 8. 3; Plin. _Ep._ ii. 14. 54. Quint, i. 9. 2; Cic. _Ep. ad Fam._ vi. 18. 5; Quint. i. 8. 6; Stat. _Silv._ ii. 1. 114; Ov. _Tr._ ii. 369. 55. Cp. Wilkins, _Rom. Education_, p. 60. 56. Op. Juv. vii. 231-6; Suet. _Tib._ 70. The result of this type of instruction is visible throughout the poets of the age, whereas Vergil and the best of the Greek Alexandrians had a true appreciation of the sensuous charm of proper names and legendary allusions, as in our literature had Marlowe, Milton, Keats, and Tennyson. Cp. Milton, _Paradise Lost_, Bk. 1: What resounds In fable or romance of Uther's son Begirt with British and Armoric knights; And all who since, baptised or infidel, Jousted in Aspramont or Montalban, Damasco, or Marocco, or Trebisond, Or whom Biserta sent from Afric shore, When Charlemain with all his peerage fell By Fontarabia. Or compare Tennyson's use of the names of Arthur's battles, 'Agned Cathregonion' and the 'waste sand-shore of Trath Treroit.' 57. Wilkins, _Roman Education_, p. 72. 58. See Wilkins, op. cit, p. 74. 59. Wilkins, _Roman Education_, p. 75. 60. The most striking instances of this precocity are Q. Sulpicius Maximus, who at the age of twelve and a half won the prize for Greek verse at the Agon Capitolinus A.D. 94 (cp. Kaibel, _Epigr_. Gr. 618), and L. Valerius L. F. Pudens, aged thirteen, who won the prize for Latin verse in A.D. 106. Cp. _C.I.L._ ix. 286. 61. For the importance attached to imitation sec Quint, x. 2. 62. The Greek rhetoricians of this period lay great stress on the importance of avoiding declamatory rhetoric. They belong to the Attic revival. But the Attic revival never really 'caught on' at Rome; by the time of Quintilian the mischief was done. 63. Sen. _Suas_. 3. 64. Ib. 7. 65. Ib. 2. I subjoin the text of the last. The author is Triarius.' 'Non pudet Laconas ne pugna quidem hostium, sed fabula vinci? Magnum est alumnum virtutis nasci et Laconem: ad certam victoriam omnes remansissent: ad certam mortem tantum Lacones. Non est Sparta lapidibus circumdata: ibi muros habet ubi viros. Melius revocabimus fugientes trecenos quam sequemur. Sed montes perforat, maria contegit. Nunquam solido stetit superba felicitas et ingentium imperiorum magna fastigia oblivione fragilitatis humanae conlapsa sunt. Scias licet non ad finem pervenisse quae ad invidiam porducta sunt. Maria terrasque, rerum naturam statione immutavit sua: moriamur trecenti, ut hic primum invenerit quod mutare non posset. Si tam demens placiturum consilium erat, cur non potius in turba fuginius?' 66. Latro is the author of the following treatment of the theme. 'Hoc exspectastis ut capite demisso verecundia se ipsa antequam impelleretur deiceret? id enim decrat ut modestior in saxo esset quam in sacrario fuerat. Constitit et circumlatis in frequentiam oculis sanctissimum numen, quasi parum violasset inter altaria, coepit in ipso quo vindicabatur violare supplicio: hoc alterum damnatae incestum fuit, damnata est quia incesta erat, deiceta est quia damnata erat, repetenda est quia et incesta et damnata et deiceta est, dubitari potest quin usque eo deicienda sit, donec efficiatur propter quod deiecta est? patrocinium suum vocat pereundi infelicitatem. Quid tibi, importuna mulier, precor nisi ut ne vis quidem deiceta pereas? "Invocavi," inquit, "deos", statuta in illo saxo deos nominasti, et miraris si te iterum deici volunt? si nihil aliud, loco incestarum stetisti.' Sen. _Cont_. i. 3. 67. e.g. Sen. _Cont_. i. 7 'Liberi parentes alant aut vinciant: quidam alterum fratrem tyrannum occidit, alterum in adulterio deprehensum deprecante patre interfecit. A piratis captas scripsit patri de redemptione. Pater piratis epistolam scripsit, si praecidissent manus, duplam se daturum. Piratae illum dimiserunt: patrem egentem non alit.' 68. For a brilliant description of the evils of the Roman system of education see Tac. _Dial_. 30-5. See also p. 127 for the very similar criticism of Petronius. 69. ce. 28-30. Cp. also Quint, i. 2 1-8. 70. The schoolmaster was not infrequently, it is to be feared, of doubtful character. Cp. the case of the famous rhetorician Remmius Palaemon. Cp. also Quint, i. 3. 13. 71. c. 35. 72. Tac. _Dial_. 26. 73. The influence of rhetoric was of course large in the Augustan age. Vergil and still more Ovid testify to this fact. But the tone of rhetoric was saner in the days of Vergil. Ovid, himself no inconsiderable influence on the poetry of the Silver Age, begins to show the effects of the new and meretricious type of rhetoric that flourished under the anti-Ciceronian reaction, when the healthy influence of the great orators of a saner age began to give way before the inroads of the brilliant but insincere epigrammatic style. This latter style was fostered largely by the importance assigned to the _controversia_ and _suasoria_ as opposed to the more realistic methods of oratorical training during the last century of the republic. 74. See Mayor on Juv. iii. 9. 75. Cp. Juv. i. 1 sqq., iii. 9. For the enormous part played in social life by recitations cp. Plin. _Ep_. i. 13, ii. 19, iv. 5, 27, v. 12, vi. 2, 17, 21, viii. 21. 76. Cp. especially the speeches of Lucan. 77. For some very just criticism on this head cp. Quint, viii. 5. 25 sqq. 78. For amusing instances of rudeness on the part of members of the audience ep. Sen. _Ep._ cxxii. 11; Plin. _Ep._ vi. 15. 79. Petr. 83, 88-91, 115. Mart. iii. 44. 10 'et stanti legis et legis cacanti. | in thermas fugio: sonas ad aurem. | piscinam peto: non licet natare. | ad cenam propero: tenes euntem. | ad cenam venio: fugas sedentem. | lassus dormio: suscitas iacentem.' Cp. also 3, 50 and passim. Plin. _Ep._ vi. 13; Juv. i. 1-21; iii. 6-9; vii. 39 sqq. 80. Plin. _Ep._ viii. 12. 81. Suet. _Dom._ 4. 82. Tac. _Dial_. 35 83. See ch. v. 84. There had always, it may be noted, existed an archaistic section of literary society. Seneca (_Ep._ cxiv. 13), Persius (i. 76), and Tacitus (_Dial._ 23) decide the imitators of the early poets of the republic. But virtually no trace of pronounced imitation of this kind is to be observed in the poetry that has survived. Novelty and what passed for originality were naturally more popular than the resuscitation of the dead or dying past. 85. Boissier, _L'Opposition sous les Césars_, p. 238. 86. Macrobius (_Sat._ 10. 3) speaks of a revival of the Atellan by a certain Mummius, but gives no indication of the date. 87. Juv. viii. 185. 888. Suet. _Calig._ 57; Joseph. _Ant._ xix. 1. 13; Juv. viii. 187. 89. Mart. _de Spect._ 7. 90. Plutarch, _de Sollert. Anim._ xix. 9. 91. Suet. _Tib_. 45. 92. ib. _Ner_. 39. 93. Ib. _Galb_. 13. 94. Ib. _Dom_. 10. 95. Ib. _Calig_. 27; _Nero_, I. c.; Tac. _Ann_. iv. 14. 96. _C. I. L_. ix. 1165. 97. _Ep_. vi. 21. 98. Suet. _Ner_. II. 999. Quint, xi. 3. 178. 100. Juv. iii. 93. 101. x. 1, 99. 102. Lucian, _de Salt_. 27. 103. Suet. _Ner_. 24. 104. Lucian, _de Salt_. 79. 105. Suet. _ap. Hieronym_. (Roth, p. 301, 25). 106. Plut. _Qu. Conv_. vii. 8. 3; Sen. _Contr_. 3. praef. 10. 107. Lucian, op. cit., 37-61. 108. Plut, _Qu. Conv_. iv. 15. 17; Libanius (Reiske) iii, p. 381. 109. Lucian, op. cit., 69 sqq. 110. e.g. Pasiphae, Cinyras and Myrrha, Jupiter and Leda. Lucian, 1. c.; Joseph. _Ant. Iud_. xix. 1. 13; Juv. vi. 63-6. 111. For the effect of such dancing cp. the interesting stories told by Lucian, op. cit., 63-6. Cp. also Liban., in, p. 373. For the importance attached to gesture in ancient times see Quint. xi. 3. 87 sqq. 112. Story of Turnus; Suet, _Ner_. 54. Dido; Macrob. Sat. v. 17. 15. 113. See p. 100. 114. Juv. vii. 92. 115. For the general history of the pantomimus see Friedländer, _Sittengeschicht,_ II. in. 3, and Lucian, _de Saltatione_. 116. Dion. liv. 17; Tac. _Ann_. i. 54 and 77; Dion. lvii. 14. 117. Suet. _Ner_. 46. 118. There is no clear proof of the performance on the Roman stage of any tragedy in the strict sense of the word during the Silver Age. The words used e.g. in Dio Chrys. (19, p. 261: 23, p. 396), Lucian (_Nigrin_. 8), Libanius (iii, p. 265, Reiske) may refer merely to the performance of isolated scenes. See note on Vespasian's attitude to the theatre, p. 166. 119. Pliny the elder wrote his life. Plin. _Ep_. iii. 5. Cp. also Tac. _Ann_. v. 8; xii. 28; Plin. _N.H_. xiii. 83. 120. Ribbeck, _Trag. Rom. Fr_. p. 268, fr. 1; p. 331 (ed. 3). 121. _Ann_. xi. 13. 122. Charis, _Gr. Lat_. i. p. 125, 23; p. 137, 23. 123. Tac. _Dial_. II. 124. Ib. 2, 3. 125. Ib. 3. 126. Ib. 3. 127. Ib. II. 128. Juv. vii. 12. 129. Juv. vii. 12. 130. Ib. vii. 72. 131. He flourished in reign of Domitian. Schol. Vall. luv. i. 20; Mart. xi. 9 and 10; Donat. _Gramm. Lat_. iv. p. 537, 17; Apollin. Sid. ix. 266. 132. In the fragment preserved by Donatus (Ribbeck, _Trag. Rom. Fr_. p. 269) the chorus address Hecuba under the name Cisseis. 'Fulgentius expos. serm. antiq. 25 (p. 119, 5, Helm) says _Memos_ (Schopen emends to _Memor_) _in tragoedia Herculis ait: ferte suppetias optimi comites_.' 133. xi. 2. 8. 134. Mart. _i._ 61, 7; _Poet. Lat. Min._ iv. p. 62, 19, Bachrens. 135. Tac. _Ann._ xv. 73; xvi. 17. 136. Tac. _Ann._ xv. 73; xvi. 17. 137. Sen. _ad Helv. de Cons._ xix. 2. 138. Sen. _ad Helv._ 1. c.; _Ep._ lxxviii. 1. Dion. Cass. lix. 19. 139. 5 Dion. Cass. 1. c. 140. Suet. _Calig._ 53. See ch. i. p. 4. 141. _Ep._ cviii. 17 sqq.; Hioronym. _ad ann._ 2029. That he knew and never lost his respect for the teaching of Pythagoras is shown by the frequency with which he quotes him in the letters. 142. _Ep._ cviii. 3 sqq. 143. Cp. the speech of Suillius, Tac. _Ann._ xiii. 42; Dion. Cass. lxi. 10. 144. _ad Helv. de Cons._ 6 sqq. 145. _ad Polyb. de Cons._ 146. The _Apocolocyntosis_--almost undoubtedly by Seneca--hardly falls within the scope of this work. Such intrinsic importance as it possesses is due to the prose portions. In point of form it is an example of the _Menippean Satire_, that strange medley of prose and verse. The verse portions form but a small proportion of the whole and are insipid and lacking in interest. 147. He was forbidden by Agrippina to give definite philosophical instruction. Cp. Suet. _Nero_, 52. 148. Cp. _ad Ner. de Clem._ ii. 2; Henderson, _Life of Nero_, Notes, p. 459. 149. For what may be regarded as an academic _apologia pro vita sua_, cp. _Ep._ 5; 17: 20; _de Ira_, in. 33; _de Const. Sap._ 1-4, 10-13; _de Vit. Beat._ 17-28, &c. 150. Dion. Cass. lxi. 4. 5. 151. Tac. _Ann_. xvi. 28. 152. This is Dion's view, lxi. 10. For an ingenious view of Seneca's character see Ball, _Satire of Sen. on apotheosis of Claudius_, p. 34. 'It may be that Seneca cared less for the realization of high ideals in life than for the formulation of the ideals as such. Sincerity and hypocrisy are terms much less worth controversy in some minds than others.' 153. Tac. _Ann._ xv. 61-4. 154. Quint, x. 1. 125-9. 155. Fronto, p. 155, N. 156. Quint, x. 1. 129. Over and above his writings on moral philosophy we possess seven books _ad Lucilium naturalium quaestionum._ 157. _Patruos duos_ more naturally, however, refers to Gallio and Mela, in which case Marcus is the son of Seneca himself. 158. Cp. _P.L.M._ iv. 15, 8; Plin. _N.H._ xvi. 242. 159. For these cp. _Ep._ xiv. 13; ib. civ. 29. 160. e.g. 7l 'de Atho monte', 57 'de Graeciae ruina', 50 'de bono quietae vitae', 47, 48 'morte omnes aequari', 25 'de spe'. 161. There is, in fact, direct evidence that he wrote such verses. Plin. _Ep._ v. 3. 5. 162. Cp. p. 263. 163. Cp. the not dissimilar situation in Sen. _Oed_. (936), where Oedipus meditates in very similar style, as to how he may expiate his guilt. The couplet _vivere si poteris_, &c., is nothing if not Senecan. 164. Quint, viii. 3. 31 ('memini iuvenis admodum inter Pomponium ac Senecam etiam praefationibus esse tractatum, an "gradus eliminet" in tragoedia dici oportuisset') shows Seneca as critic of dramatic diction; there is no evidence to show what these _praefationes_ were, but they _may_ have been prefaces to tragedies. The _Medea_ (453) is cited by Quintilian ix. 2. 8. For later quotations from the tragedies, cp. Diomedes, _gr. Lat_. i. p. 511, 23; Terentianus Maurus, ibid. vi. p. 404, 2672; Probus, ibid. iv. p. 229, 22, p. 246, 19; Priscian, ibid. ii. p. 253, 7 and 9; Tertullian, _de An_. 42, _de Resurr_. 1; Lactantius, _Schol. Stat. Theb_. iv. 530. 165. Cp. also the iambic translation of Cleanthes, _Ep_. cvii. 11:-- duc, o parens celsique dominator poli, quocunque placuit: nulla parendi mora est. adsum impiger. fac nolle, comitabor gemens malusque patiar, facere quod licuit bono. ducunt volentem fata, nolentem trahunt. 166. Some of the more remarkable parallels have been collected by Nisard (_Études sur les poètes latins de la décadence_, i. 68-91), e.g. _Med_. 163 'qui nil potest sperare, desperet nihil'. _Ep_. v. 7 'desines timere, si sperare desieris'. _Oed_. 705 'qui sceptra duro saevus imperio regit, timet timentes: metus in auctorem redit'. _Ep_. cv. 4 'qui timetur, timet: nemo potuit terribilis esse secure'. de Ira_, ii. 11 'quid quod semper in auctores redundat timor, nec quisquam metuitur ipse securus?'-_Oed_. 980 sqq.; _de Prov_. v. 6 sqq.; _Phoen_. 146, 53; _Ep_. xii. 10; _de Prov_. vi. 7; _Herc. F_. 463, 464; _Ep_. xcii. 14. 167. The arguments against the Senecan authorship are of little weight. It has been urged (a) that the MSS. assign the author a _praenomen_ Marcus. No Marcus Seneca is known, though Marcus was the _praenomen_ of both Gallio and Mela, and of Lucan. Mistakes of this kind are, however, by no means rare (cp. the 'Sextus Aurelius Propertius Nauta' of many MSS. of that poet: both 'Aurelius' and 'Nauta' are errors), (b) Sidonius Apollinaris (ix. 229) mentions three Senecas, philosopher, tragedian, and epic writer (i.e. Lucan). But Sidonius lived in the fifth century A.D., and may easily have made a mistake. Such a mistake actually occurs (S. A. xxiii. 165) where he seems to assert that Argentaria Polla, Lucan's faithful widow, subsequently married Statius. The mistake as regards Seneca is probably due to a misinterpretation of Martial i. 61 'duosque Senecas unicumque Lucanum facunda loquitur Corduba'. Not being acquainted with the works of the elder Seneca the rhetorician, Sidonius invented a new author, Seneca the tragedian. 168. See ch. on Octavia, p.78. 169. Leo, _Sen. tragoed._ i. 89-134. 170. It is not even necessary to suppose with Leo that these were the earliest of the plays and that these metrical experiments were youthful indiscretions which failed and were not repeated. Leo, i. p. 133. 171. For a detailed treatment see Leo, i. p. 48. Melzer, _de H. Oetaeo Annaeano_, Chemnitz, 1890; _Classical Review_, 1905, p. 40, Summers. 172. See p. 39 on relation of epigrams to dramas. 173. _Ann_. xiv. 52. 174. See also note on p. 42 for Leo's ingenious, but inconclusive theory for the dates of the _Agamemnon_ and _Oedipus_. 175. There is but one passage that can be held to afford the slightest evidence for a later date, _Med_. 163 'qui nil potest sperare, desperet nihil' seems to be an echo of _Ep_. v. 7 'sed ut huius quoque diei lucellum tecum communicem, apud Hecatonem nostrum inveni ... "desines", inquit, "timere, si sperare desieris".' This aphorism is quoted as newly found. The letters were written 62-5 A.D. This passage would therefore suggest a very late date for the _Medea_. But Seneca had probably been long familiar with the works of Hecato, and the epigram is not of such profundity that it might not have occurred to Seneca independently. 176. For comparative analyses of Seneca's tragedies and the corresponding Greek dramas see Miller's _Translation of the Tragedies of Seneca_, p. 455. 177. The _Phaedra_ of Seneca is interesting as being modelled on the lost _Hippolytus Veiled_ of Euripides. Phaedra herself declares her passion to Hippolytus, with her own lips reveals to Theseus the pretended outrage to her honour, and slays herself only on hearing of the death of Hippolytus. Cp. Leo, _Sen. Trag_. i. 173. The _Phoenissae_ presents a curious problem. It is far shorter than any of the other plays and has no chorus. It falls into two parts with little connexion. I. (_a_) 1-319. Oedipus and Antigone are on their way to Cithaeron. Oedipus meditates suicide and is dissuaded by Antigone. (_b_) 320-62. An embassy from Thebes arrives begging Oedipus to return and stop the threatened war between his sons. He refuses, and declares the intention of hiding near the field of battle and listening joyfully to the conflict between his unnatural sons. II. The remaining portion, on the other hand, seems to imply that Oedipus is still in Thebes (553, 623), and represents a scene between Jocasta and her sons. It lacks a conclusion. These two different scenes can hardly have belonged to one and the same play. They may be fragments of two separate plays, an _Oedipus Coloneus_ and a _Phoenissae_, or may equally well be two isolated scenes written for declamation without ever having been intended for embodiment in two completed dramas. Cp. Ribbeck, _Gesch. Röm. Dichtung_, iii. 70. 178. _Sen. Trag._ i. 161. 179. Leo, op. cit., i. 166 sqq. 180. 530-658. The _Oedipus_ is based on the _O. Rex_ of Sophocles, but is much compressed, and the beautiful proportions of the Greek are lost. In Seneca out of a total of 1,060 lines 330 are occupied by the lyric measures of the chorus, 230 by descriptions of omens and necromancy. 181. It is also to be noted that the nurse does not make use of this device till after Hippolytus has left the stage, although to be really effective her words should have been uttered while Hippolytus held Phaedra by the hair. The explanation is, I think, that the play was written for recitation, not for acting. Had the play been acted, the nurse's call for help and her accusation of Hippolytus could have been brought in while Hippolytus was struggling with Phaedra. But being written for recitation by a single person there was not room for the speech at the really critical moment, and therefore it was inserted afterwards--too late. See p. 73. 182. Similarly, Medea, being a sorceress, must be represented engaged in the practice of her art. Hence lurid descriptions of serpents, dark invocations, &c. (670-842). 183. Seneca never knows when to stop. Undue length characterizes declamations and lyrics alike. 184. As a whole the _Troades_ fails, although, the play being necessarily episodic, the deficiencies of plot are less remarkable. But compared with the exquisite _Troades_ of Euripides it is at once exaggerated and insipid. 185. Cp. Apul. _Met_. x. 3, where a step-mother in similar circumstances defends her passion with the words, 'illius (sc. patris) enim recognoscens imaginem in tua facie merito te diligo.' 186. This speech is closely imitated by Racine in his _Phèdre_. 187. 2: Cp. esp. 995-1006: the _agnosco fratrem_ of Thyestes is perhaps the most monstrous stroke of rhetoric in all Seneca. Better, but equally revolting, are ll. 1096-1112 from the same play. 188. For other examples of dialogue cp. esp. _Medea_, 159-76, 490-529 (perhaps the most effective dialogue in Seneca), _Thyestes_, 205-20; H. F. 422-38. for which see p. 62. 189. _Pro M_. 61 'Fuit enim quidam summo ingenio vir, Zeno, cuius inventorum aemuli Stoici nominantur: huius sententia et praecepta huiusmodi: sapientem gratia nunquam moveri, nunquam cuiusquam delicto ignoscere; neminem misericordem esse nisi stultum et levem: viri non esse neque exorari neque placari: solos sapientes esse, si distortissimi sint, formosos, si mendicissimi, divites, si servitutem serviant reges.' &c. He goes on to put a number of cases where the Stoic rules break down. 190. Cp. Eurip. _Andr_. 453 sqq. 191. For still greater exaggeration cp. _Phoen_. 151 sqq,; _Oed_. 1020 sqq. 192. Cp. Sen. _Contr_. ii. 5; ix. 4. 193. Cp. Sen. _de Proc_. iv. 6 'calamitas virtutis occasio est'. 194. Cp. Sen. _Ep_. xcii. 30, 31 'magnus erat labor ire in caelum'. 195. Cp. Sen. _Ep_. xcii. 16 sqq. 196. _Ep_. cviii. 24. 197. Cp. _Macbeth_ ii. 2. 36, Macbeth does murder sleep, &c. For other Shakespearian parallels, cp. _Macbeth_, Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased? _H.F._ 1261 'nemo pollute queat | animo mederi.' _Macbeth_, I have lived long enough.... And that which should accompany old age, As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends, I must not look to have. _H.F._ 1258 'Cur animam in ista luce detincam amplius | morerque nihil est; cuncta iam amisi bona, | mentem, arma, famam, coniugem, natos, manus.' J. Phil. vi. 70. Cunliffe, _Influence of Seneca on Elizabethan Tragedy_. 198. An exception might be made in favour of the beautiful simile describing Polyxena about to die, notable as giving one of the very few allusions to the beauty of sunset to be found in ancient literature (_Troad_. 1137): ipsa deiectos gerit vultus pudore, sed tamen fulgent genae magisque solito splendet extremus decor, ut esse Phoebi dulcius lumen solet iamiam cadentis, astra cum repetunt vices premiturque dubius nocte vicina dies. Fine, too, are the lines describing the blind Oedipus (_Oed_. 971): attollit caput cavisque lustrans orbibus caeli plagas noctem experitur. 199. pp. 52 sqq., 59. 200. Cp. Eur. _H.F._ 438 sqq. 201. For further examples cp. _H.F._ 5-18, _Troades_ 215-19. 202. This terse stabbing rhetoric is characteristic of Stoicism; the same short, jerky sentences reappear in Epictetus. Seneca is doubtless influenced by the declamatory rhetoric of schools as well, but his philosophical training probably did much to form his style. 203. Exceptions are so few as to be negligible. The effect of this rule is aggravated by the fact that in nine cases out of ten the accent of the word and the metrical ictus 'clash', this result being obtained 'by most violent elisions, such as rarely or never occur in the other feet of the verse'. Munro, J. Phil. 6, 75. 204. The older and more rugged iambic survives in the fables of Phaedrus, written at no distant date from these plays, if not actually contemporary. 205. Cp. Leo, op. cit. i. 166, 174. 206. See p. 29. 207. These horrors go beyond the crucifixion scene in the Laureolus (see p. 24), and the tradition of genuine tragedy was all against such presentation. As far as the grotesqueness and bombast of the plays go, the age of Nero might have tolerated them. We must remember that seventeenth-century England enjoyed the brilliant bombast of Dryden (e.g. in _Aurungzebe_) and that the eighteenth delighted in the crude absurdities of such plays as _George Barnwell_. 208. Cp. also _Phaedra_ 707, where Hippolytus' words, 'en impudicum crine contorto caput | laeva reflexi,' can only be justified as inserted to explain to the hearers what they could not see. See also p. 48, note. 209. They have been influenced by the pantomimus and the dramatic recitation so fashionable in their day, inasmuch as they lack connexion, and, though containing effective episodes, are of far too loose a texture to be effective drama. 210. See R. Fischer, _Die Kunstentwicklung der englischen Tragödie_; J. W. Cunliffe, _Influence of Seneca on Elizabethan Tragedy_; J. E. Manly, _Introductory Essay_ to Miller's _Translation of the Tragedies of Seneca_. The Senecan drama finds its best modern development in the tragedies of Alfieri. Infinitely superior in every respect as are the plays of the modern dramatist, he yet reveals in a modified form not a few of Seneca's faults. There is often a tendency to bombast, an exaggeration of character, a hardness of outline, that irresistibly recall the Latin poet. 211. The debt is as good as acknowledged, ll. 58 sqq. 212. ll. 310 sqq. 213. l. 915. 214. There is no direct evidence of the sex of the chorus in the _Octavia_. In Greek drama they would almost certainly have been women. 215. The diction is wholly un-Senecan. There is no straining after epigram; the dialogue, though not lacking point (e.g. the four lines 185-8, or 451-60), does not bristle with it, and is far less rhetorical and more natural. The chorus confines itself to anapaests, is simpler and far more relevant. The all-pervading Stoicism is the one point they have in common. 216. The imitation of Lucan in 70, 71 'magni resto nominis umbra,' is also strong evidence against the Senecan authorship. 217. _Probus, vita_. 'A. Persius Flaccus natus est pridie non. Dec. Fabio Persico, L. Vitellio coss.' Hieronym. ad ann. 2050=34 A.D. 'Persius Flaccus Satiricus Volaterris nascitur.' Where not otherwise stated the facts of Persius' life are drawn from the biography of Probus. 218. Quint, vii. 4, 40; Tac. _Ann_. xv. 71. 219. Suet. _de Gramm_. 23. 220. Bassus was many years his senior--addressed as _senex_ in Sat. vi. 6, written late in 61 or early in 62 A.D.--and perished in the eruption of Vesuvius, 79 A. D. Cp. Schol. _ad Pers_. vi. 1. 221. Lucan was five years his junior. Cp. p. 97. 222. Cp. Tac. _Ann_. xiv. 19; _Dial_. 23; Quint. x. 1. 102. 223. This friendship lasted ten years, presumably the last ten of Persius' life; cp. _Prob. vit_. The second satire is addressed to Plotius Macrinus, who, according to the scholiast, was a learned man, who 'loved Persius as his son, having studied with him in the house of Servilius Nonianus.' 224. See O. Jahn's ed., p. 240. 225. _Prob. vit_.'decessit VIII Kal. Dec. P. Mario, Afinio Gallio coss.' Hieronym. ad ann. 2078--62 A.D. 'Persius moritur anno aetatis XXVIII.' 226. _Prob. vit_. 227. Such at least is a plausible inference. Probus tells us that he used to travel abroad with Thrasea. It is a natural conjecture that these _hodoeporica_ were in the style of Horace's journey to Brundisium. 228. Cp. Mart. i. 13; Plin. _Ep_. iii. 16. She was the mother of the wife of Thrasea. 229. This may mean that the last satire was actually incomplete, but that the omission of a few lines at the end gave it an appearance of completion; or that a few lines intended for the opening of a seventh satire were omitted. 230. So Probus. Cp. also Quint. x. 1. 94 'multum et verae gloriae quamvis uno libro meruit.' Mart. iv. 29. 7. 231. Hieronym. _in apol. contra Rufin._ i. 16 'puto quod puer legeris ... commentarios ... aliorum in alios, Plautum videlicet, Lucretium, Flaccum, Persium atque Lucanum.' The high moral tone of the work, coupled perhaps with the smallness of its bulk, is in the main responsible for its survival. Scholia from different sources have come down to us under the title of _Cornuti commentum_. Whether such a person as the commentator Cornutus existed or not is uncertain. The name may have been attached to the scholia merely to give them a spurious importance as though possessing the imprimatur of the friend and teacher of the poet. 232. The choliambi are placed after the satires by two of the three best MSS., but before them by the scholia and inferior MSS. It is of little importance which we follow. But it seems probable that Probus (see below) regarded the choliambi as a prologue. Such at least is my interpretation of _sibi primo_ (i.e. in the prologue) _mox omnibus detrectaturus._ The lines have rather more force if read first and not last. 233. _Prob. vit._ 'sed mox ut a schola magistrisque devertit, lecto Lucili libro decimo vehementer saturas componere studuit; cuius libri principium imitatus est, sibi primo, mox omnibus detrectaturus, cum tanta recentium poetarum et oratorum insectatione,' &c. This can only refer to the prologue and the first satire, and seems to point to its having been the first to be composed. According to the scholiast the opening line is taken from the first satire of Lucilius. 234. Porphyr. _ad Hor. Sat._ i. 10. 53 'facit autem Lucilius hoc cum alias tum vel maxime in tertio libro, ... et nono et decimo. 235. Cp. Nettleship's note ad loc., and Petron. 4. 236. e.g. Dama, Davus, Natta, Nerius, Craterus, Pedius, Bestius. 237. Instances might be almost indefinitely multiplied. The whole of Pers. i, but more especially the conclusion, is strongly influenced by Hor. _Sat._ i. 10. Cp. also Pers. ii. 12, Hor. _Sat._ ii. 5. 45; Pers. iii. 66, Hor. _Ep._ i. 18. 96; Pers. v. 10, Hor. _Sat._ i. 4. 19, &c., &c. 238. i. 92-102. According to the scholiast the last four lines-- torva Mimalloneis implerunt cornua bombis, et raptum vitulo caput ablatura superbo Bassaris et lyncem Maenas flexura corymbis euhion ingeminat, reparabilis adsonat echo (i. 99)-- are by Nero. But it is incredible that Persius should have had such audacity as openly to deride the all-powerful emperor. The same remark applies to other passages where the scholiast and some modern critics have seen satirical allusions to Nero (e.g. prologue and the whole of Sat. iv). The only passage in which it is possible that there was a covert allusion to Nero is i. 121, which, according to the scholiast, originally ran _auriculas asini Mida rex habet_. Cornutus suppressed the words _Mida rex_ and substituted _quis non_. For an ingenious defence of the view that Persius hits directly at Nero see Pretor, _Class. Rev_., vol. xxi, p. 72. 239. i. 76 'Est nunc Brisaei quem venosus liber Acci, | sunt quos Pacuviusque et verrucosa moretur | Antiopa, aerumnis cor luctificabile fulta.' 240. The description of the self-indulgent man who, feeling ill, consults his doctor and then fails to follow his advice (iii. 88), is a possible exception. It is noteworthy that in Sat. iv he addresses a young aspirant to a political career as though free political action was still possible at Rome. 241. e.g. iv. 41. 242. But see below, p. 91. 243. Prob. vita Persii. 244. Our chief authorities for Lucan's life are the 'lives' by Suetonius (fragmentary) and by Vacca (a grammarian of the sixth century). 245. Vacca. 246. Tac. _Ann._ xvi. 17. 247. Vacca. 248. Vacca. 249. The young Lucan is said to have formed a friendship with the satirist at the school of Cornutus; Persius was some five years his senior. _Vita Persii_ (p. 58, Bücheler). 250. Suetonius and Vacca. The latter curiously treats this victory as one of the causes of Nero's jealousy. Considering that the poem was a panegyric of the emperor, and that it was Lucan's first step in the imperial favour, the suggestion deserves small credit. 251. Sueton. There is an unfortunate hiatus in the Life by Suetonius, occurring just before the mention of the visit to Athens. As the text stands it suggests that the visit to Athens occurred after the victory at the Neronia. Otherwise it would seem more probable that Lucan went to Athens somewhat earlier (e.g. 57 A.D.) to complete his education. 252. Sueton., Vacca. 253. Vacca; Tac. _Ann._ xv. 49; Dion. lxii. 29. 254. Vacca. 255. Suetonius. 256. Suetonius. 257. Sueton.; Tac. _Ann._ xv. 56. 258. Vacca; Sueton.; Tac. _Ann._ xv. 70. Various passages in the _Pharsalia_ have been suggested as suitable for Lucan's recitation at his last gasp, iii. 638-41, vii. 608-15, ix. 811. 259. Statius, in his _Genethliacon Lucani_ (_Silv._ ii. 7. 54), seems to indicate the order of the poems: ac primum teneris adhuc in annis ludes Hectora Thessalosque currus et supplex Priami potentis aurum, et sedes reserabis inferorum; ingratus Nero duleibus theatris et noster tibi proferetur Orpheus, dices culminibus Remi vagantis infandos domini nocentis ignes, hinc castae titulum decusque Pollae iucunda dabis adlocutione. mox coepta generosior iuventa albos ossibus Italis Philippos et Pharsalica bella detonabis. Cp. also Vacca, 'extant eius complures et alii, ut Iliacon, Saturnalia, Catachthonion, Silvarum x, tragoedia Medea imperfecta, salticae fabulae xiv, et epigrammata (MSS. _appamata_ sive _ippamata_), prosae orationes in Octavium Sagittam et pro eo, de incendio Urbis, epistularum ex Campania, non fastidiendi quidem omnes, tales tamen ut belli civili videantur accessio.' 260. Vacca. 261. See chapter on Statius. 262. See chapter on Drama. 263. Cp. Mart., bks. xiii and xiv. 264. There are two fragments from the _Iliacon_, two from the _Orpheus_, one from the _Catachthonion_, two from the _Epigrammata_, together with a few scanty references in ancient commentators and grammarians: see Postgate, _Corp. Poet. Lat._ 265. Vacca, 'ediderat ... tres libros, quales videmus.' 266. Sueton. 'civile bellum ... recitavit ut praefatione quadem aetatem et initia sua comparans ausus sit dicere, "quantum mihi restat ad Culicem".' Cp. also Stat, _Silv._ ii. 7. 73:-- haec (Pharsalia) primo iuvenis canes sub aevo ante annos Culicis Maroniani. Vergil was twenty-six when he composed the _Culex_. Cp. Ribbeck, _App. Verg._ p. 19. 267. Vacca, 'reliqui septem belli civilis libri locum calumniantibus tanquam mendosi non darent; qui tametsi sub vero crimine non egent patrocinio: in iisdem dici, quod in Ovidii libris praescribitur, potest: emendaturus, si licuisset, erat.' 268. See p. 4. 269. Boissier, _L'Opposition sous les Césars (p. 279), sees some significance in the fact that the list of Nero's ancestors always stops at Augustus. But there was no reason why the list should go further than the founder of the principate. It is noteworthy that Lucan's uncle Seneca wrote a number of epigrams in praise of the Pompeii and Cato. The famous lines, quis iustius induit arma scire nefas: magno se iudice quisque tuetur, victrix causa deis placuit, sed victa Catoni (i. 126), are supremely diplomatic. Without sacrificing his principles, Lucan avoids giving a shadow of offence to his emperor. 270. See p. 116. 271. Petron., loc. cit. 272. v. 207, vii. 451, 596, 782, x. 339-42, 431. 273. i. 143-57. 274. ii. 657 nil actum credens cum quid superesset agendum. 275. v. 317 meruitque timeri non metuens. 276. See Shelley, _Prometheus Unbound_, Preface. 277. vii. 45-150. 278. vii. 342. 279. vii. 647-727. 280. Cp. the epigrams attributed to Seneca, _P. L. M._ iv, _Anth. Lat._ 7, 8, 9. 281. The one exception is Curio, sec iv. 799. 282. i. 185: ut ventum est parvi Rubiconis ad undas, ingens visa duci patriae trepidantis imago, clara per obscuram voltu maestissima noctem turrigero canos effundens vertice crines caesarie lacera nudisque adstare lacertis et gemitu permixta loqui: 'quo tenditis ultra? quo fertis mea signa, viri? si iure venitis, si cives, huc usque licet.' 283. iii. 1: propulit ut classem velis cedentibus Auster incumbens mediumque rates movere profundum, omnis in Ionios spectabat navita fluctus; solus ab Hesperia non flexit lumina terra Magnus, dum patrios portus, dum litora numquam ad visus reditura suos tectumque cacumen nubibus et dubios cernit vanescere montes. 284. v. 722-end. 285. vii. 6-44. 286. iii. 399-425. 287. iii. 399. 288. Cp. Seneca, _Oed._ 530 sqq. The description of a grove was part of the poetic wardrobe. Cp. Pers. i. 70. 289. See p. 103. 290. iii. 509-762. For a still more grotesque fight, cp. vi. 169-262; also ii. 211-20; iv. 794, 5. 291. v. 610-53. Cp. also ix. 457-71. 292. Sir E. Ridley's trans. 293. Sir E. Ridley's trans. 294. ix. 619-838. 295. ix. 946, 7. 296. For examples of erudition, cp. ix. loc. cit., where the origin of serpents of Africa is given, involving the story of Perseus and Medea, iv. 622 sqq. The arrival of Curio in Africa is signalized by a long account of the slaying of Antaeus by Hercules. 297. i. 523-end. 298. ii. 67-220. 299. ii. 392-438. Cp. the geography of Thessaly, coupled with a description of its witches, vi. 333-506. 300. v. 71-236. 301. vi. 507-830. It is noteworthy, also, that incidents not necessarily irrelevant in themselves are treated with a monstrous lack of proportion, e.g. the siege of Massilia is not irrelevant; but it is given 390 lines (iii. 372-762), and Lucan forgets to mention that Caesar captured it. 302. e.g. iv. 799-end, vii. 385-459, 586-96, 617-46, 847-72, viii. 542-60, 793-end. 303. vii. 385-459. 304. There is nothing in these last seven books that can be regarded as in any way written to please Nero, save the description of the noble death of Domitius Ahenobarbus, Nero's great-great-grandfather (vii. 597-616). On the contrary there are many passages which Lucan would hardly have written while he was enjoying court favour: e.g. iv. 821-3, v. 385-402, vi. 809, vii. 694-6, x. 25-8. 305. See p. 98. 306. e.g. the two speeches of Cato quoted above. 307. He is, moreover, very careless in his repetition of the same word, cp. i. 25, 27 urbibus, iii. 436, 441, 445 silva, &c.; cp. Haskins, ed. lxxxi. (Heitland's introd.) 308. He is far less dactylic than Ovid. For the relation between the various writers of epic in respect of metre, see Drobisch, _Versuch üb. die Formen des lat. Hex._ 140. The proportion of spondees in the first four feet of hexameters of Roman writers is there given as follows: Catullus 65.8%, Silius 60.6%, Ennius 59.5%, Lucretius 57.4%, Vergil 56%, Horace 55%, Lucan 54.3%, Statius 49.7%, Valerius 46.2%, Ovid 45.2%. 309. Tac. _Ann._ xvi. 18, 19 (Church and Brodribb's trans.). 310. c. 118 sq. 311. cc. 1-5. 312. The first reference in literature to the _Satyricon_ is in Macrobius, in _Somn. Scip._ i. 2, 8. 313. cc. 1-5. 314. MS. fortuna. 315. MS. dent. 316. c. 83 317. Cp. Juv. _Sat._ 7; Tac. _Dial._ 9. 318. c. 89. It has been suggested that this poem is a parody of Nero's _Troiae halosis_! But the poem shows _no_ signs of being a parody. It is obviously written in all seriousness. 319. MS. _minor_, I suggest _minans_ as a possible solution of the difficulty. 320. c. 93. 321. Cp. also 128 and the spirited epic fragment burlesquely used in 108. 322. See p. 36. 323. Baehrens, _P. L. M._ iv. 74-89. 324. Nos. 76 and 86. Cp. Fulg. _Mythol._ i. I, p. 31; Lactant. _ad Stat. Theb._ iii. 661; Fulg. _Mythol._ iii. 9, p. 126. 325. Baehrens, _P.L.M._ iv. 90-100. 326. Poitiers, 1579 A.D. 327. Fulg. _Mythol._ i. 12, p. 44. 328. That the attribution to Petronius rests on the authority of the lost MS. is a clear inference from Binet's words, cp. Baehrens, _P.L.M._ iv. 101-8, 'sequebantur ista, sed sine Petronii titulo, at priores illi duo Phalaecii vix alius fuerint quam Petronii.' 329. Baehrens, _P.L.M._ iv. 101-8. 330. See note 4. 331. Petr. cc. 14, 83; Baehrens, _P.L.M._ iv. 120, 121. 332. Cp. _Satyr_. 127, 131; _P.L.M._ iv. 75; _S._ 128; _P.L.M._ iv. 121; _S._ 108; _P.L.M._ iv. 85; _S._ 79, iv. 101. 333. _P.L.M._ iv. 75. 334. _P.L.M._ iv. 81. 335. The MS. is hopelessly corrupt at this point. I suggest _naidas alterna manu_ as a possible correction of the MS. _Iliadas armatas s. manus._ 336. _P.L.M._ iv. 84. 337. _P.L.M._ iv. 85. 338. Ib. 76. 339. Ib. 82. 340. Ib. 78. 341. _P. L. M._ iv. 99. Cp. also 92 and 107. 342. 569 sqq. 343. 17-22, 43 sqq. He falls into the same error himself (203). 344. 76 sqq. 345. 88 sqq. 346. 220 sqq. 347. 96 sqq. 348. 178 sqq. 349. 400 sqq. 350. 333 sqq. 351. 294. 352. So Ellis (_Corp. Poet. Lat._, vol. ii. pref.); Baehrens, _P. L. M._ ii. pp. 29 sqq. 353. Serv. _ad Verg. Aen._ praef. Donatus, _vita Verg._, p. 58 R ('Scripsit etiam de qua ambigitur Aetnam'). 354. Sen. _Nat. Quaest._ iii. 26. 5. He also wrote in verse on philosophical subjects; cp. Sen. _Ep._ 24, 19-21. 355. So Wernsdorf, von Jacob, Munro (edd.), Wagler _de Aetna quaest. crit._, Berlin, 1884. 356. Sen. _Nat. Quaest._ iv. 2. 2. 357. Sen. _Ep._ 79. 5. 358. So many Italian scholars of sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, among them Scaliger. 359. Cornelius Severus wrote a poem on the Sicilian War of Octavian and Sext. Pompeius; cp. Quint, x. l. 89. 360. Cp. _Nat. Quaest._ iii. 16. 4, _Aetna_, 302 and 303. But this may be due to the fact that both Seneca and the author of _Aetna_ get their information from the same source, perhaps Posidonius; cp. Sudhaus, introd. to his edition, p. 75. 361. It is not improbable that in 293 sqq. the poet refers to the mechanical Triton shown at the Naumachia on the Fucine Lake at a festival given by Claudius in honour of Nero's adoption in 50 A. D. 362. 425-34. 363. Baehrens would put the lower limit at 63 A. D., the year in which severe earthquakes first indicated the reviving activity of Phlegraean fields. But earthquakes, though often caused by volcanic action, do not necessarily produce volcanoes. 364. viii. 16. 9; 10. 185. 365. iii. 3. 3 'his certe temporibus Nomentana regio celeberrima fama est illustris, et praecipue quam possidet Seneca, vir excellentis ingenii atque doctrinae'. He is quoted by Pliny, not infrequently. Columella was an old man when he wrote; cp. 12 ad fin. 'nec tamen canis natura dedit cunctarum rerum prudentiam'. 366. Cp. _C.I.L._ ix. 235 'L. Iunio L. F. Gal. Moderato Columellae Trib. mil. leg. VI. Ferratae'. That this refers to the poet is borne out by two facts. (1) Gades belonged to the Tribus Galeria. (2) At this date the legio VI. Ferrata was stationed in Syria; cp. Col. ii. 10. 18 'Ciliciae Syriaeque regionibus ipse vidi'. 367. Cp. i. 1. 7. He speaks as a practical farmer; cp. ii. 8. 5; 9. 1; 10. 11; iii. 9. 2; 10. 8, &c. He writes primarily for Italy, not for Spain; cp. iii. 8. 5. 368. Cp. x. praef.: also ix. 16. 2, which tells us that Gallio, Seneca's brother, had added his entreaties. 369. xi. praef. 370. He also wrote a treatise against astrologers (cp. xi. 1. 131) and a treatise on religious ceremonies connected with agriculture (cp. ii. 21. 5). This latter work was perhaps never completed (cp. ii. 21. 6). In any case both treatises were lost. There survives a book on arboriculture which is not an isolated monograph, but portion of a larger work, at least three books long, for it alludes to a 'primum volumen de cultu agrorum' (ad init.). It probably consisted of four books, since Cassiodorus (_div. lect_. 28) speaks of the sixteen books of Columella. 371. siderei Maronis, 434. 372. Cp. esp. 196 sqq. 373. Cp. 130 sqq., 320 sqq., 344 sqq. 374. 102 sqq. 375. 45-94. 376. 29-34. 377. 196 sqq. 378. Tac. _Ann._ xii. 58. 379. M. Haupt, _Opusc._ i. 391; Lachm. _Comm. on Lucret._ 1855, p. 326 Schenkl (ed. Calp. Sic., p. ix). 380. Or _de laude Pisonis_. See Baehrens, _Poet. Lat. Min._ iii. 1. For the question of authorship see p. 159. 381. It was long believed that there were eleven, but the last four eclogues of the collection are shown by their style to be of later date, and there can be little doubt that the MSS. which attribute them to Nemesianus of Carthage are right. We know of a Nemesianus who lived about 290 A.D. and wrote a _Cynegetica_, a portion of which survives. Comparison with these four eclogues shows a marked resemblance of style. 382. Verg. _Ecl._ vii. 1: forte sub arguta consederat ilice Daphnis, compulerantque greges Corydon et Thyrsis in unum, Thyrsis oves, Corydon distentas lacte capellas, ambo florentes aetatibus, Arcades ambo, et cantare pares et respondere parati. Calp. ii. 1: intactam Crocalen puer Astacus et puer Idas, Idas lanigeri dominus gregis, Astacus horti, dilexere diu, formosus uterque nec impar voce sonans. The conclusion is borrowed from Vergil, _Ecl._ iii. 108: non nostrum inter vos tantas componere lites. et vitula tu dignus et hic et quisquis amores aut metuet dulces aut experietur amaros. claudite iam rivos, pueri; sat prata biberunt. Calp. ii. 95-100: 'iam resonant frondes, iam cantibus obstrepit arbos: i procul, o Doryla, rivumque reclude canali et sine iam dudum sitientes irriget hortos' vix ea finierant, senior cum talia Thyrsis, 'este pares ...' 383. Cp. also v. 50 sqq. 384. See Baehrens, _Poet. Lat. Min._ vol. iii. p. 60. The first poem is unfinished, the award of Midas being missing. 385. Bücheler, _Rhein. Mus._ xxvi. p. 235. 386. So Bücheler, loc. cit. _respexit_ is a mere conjecture: _corrumpit_, the MS. reading, is meaningless, and no satisfactory alternative has been suggested. The lines may merely refer to Apollo, but _et me_ suggests strongly that Ladas retorts, 'I, too, have Caesar's favour.' Cp. _L._ 37, where _hic vester Apollo est!_ clearly refers to Nero. 387. In a MS. at Lorsch, now lost; but used by Sechard for his edition of Ovid, Basle, 1527. 388. In Parisinus 7647 (Florileg.). Sec Baehrens, _P. L. M._ i. p. 222. 389. Tac. _Ann._ xv. 48 'facundiam tuendis civibus exercebat, largitionem adversum amicos et ignotis quoque comi sermone et congressu.' 390. Schol. Vall, _ad Iuv._ v. 109 'in latrunculorum lusu tam perfectus et callidus, ut ad cum ludentem concurreretur.' 391. Cp. ll. 190 sqq. 392. Cp. ll. 190 sqq. 393. Baehrens, _Fragm. Poet. Rom._ p. 281. 394. Priscian, _Gr. Lat._ i. 478. 395. Persius derides a certain Labeo (i. 4) and a writer named Attius (i. 50) for his translation of _Iliad_. On this last passage the scholiast says, 'Attius Labeo poeta indoctus fuit illorum temporum, qui Iliadem Homeri foedissime composuit.' The names are found combined in an inscription from Corinth, Joh. Schmidt, _Mitt. des deutsch. archäol. Inst. in Athen_, vi (1882), p. 354. 396. Schol. _ad Pers._ i. 4 (p. 248, Jahn). 397. Schol. _ad Pers._ i. 4, ex cod. Io. Tillii Brionensis episc., cited by El. Vinetus. 398. Sen. _ad Polyb. de Cons._ viii. 2, and xi. 5. 399. Vualtherus Spirensis Vs. 93. X cent. (ed. Harster, Munich, 1878, p. 22). Eberhard Bethunensis, _Labyr. Tract._ iii. 45. 400. This apparent confusion between Homer and Pindar is first found in Benzo, episc. Albensis (_Monum. Germ._ xi. 599) circa 1087. In Hugo Trimbergensis (thirteenth century) Pindar is the translator: 'Homero, quem Pindarus philosophus fertur transtulisse.' Cp. L. Müller, _Philol._ xv, p. 475. So, too, in Cod. Vat. Reg. 1708 (thirteenth and fourteenth centuries); in Vat. Pal. 1611 (end of fourteenth century), he is styled Pandarus. See Baehrens, _P. L. M._ iii. 4. 401. Seyffert, in Munk, _Geschichte der Röm. Litt._ ii, p. 242. Bücheler, _Rhein. Mus._ 35 (1880), p. 391. 402. Baehrens (_P. L. M._ iii) reads (7) _ut primum tulerant_ for _ex quo pertulerant_. The corruption is unlikely, especially since the corresponding line in the _Iliad_ (i. 6) begins [Greek: ex ou]. In line 1065, for _quam cernis paucis ... remis_, he reads _remis quam cernis ... paucis_, a distinct improvement. Some of those who retain MSS. in (7) attempt to explain _Italice_ as a vocative or adverb. But _ex nihilo nihil fit_. For a summary of these unprofitable and generally absurd speculations, cp. Schanz, _Gesch. Röm. Lit._ § 394. 403. Vindobon. 3509 (fifteenth or sixteenth centuries). 404. Mart. vii. 63. 405. Vagellius, Sen. _N.Q._ vi. 2. 9. Antistius Sosianus, Tac. _Ann._ xiii. 28. C. Montanus, ib. xvi. 28. 29. Lucilius junior, see p. 144. 406. Tac. _Ann._ iv. 46; _C.I.L._ ii. 2093. 407. Dion. lix. 22; Tac. _Ann._ vi. 30. 408. Dion. loc. cit.; Suet. _Claud._ 9. 409. Plin _Ep._ v. 3. 5; Mart. i. praef. 410. Ap. Sid. _Ep._ ii. 10. 6. 411. v. 16; vi. 190, 331; vii. 71, 244, 245, 275, 354; xi. 409. 412. Baehrens, _Poet. Rom. Fragm._ p. 361. 413. Quint, x. 1.96 'at lyricorum Horatius fere solus legi dignus:... si quem adicere velis, is erit Caesius Bassus, quem nuper vidimus; sed eum longe praecedunt ingenia viventium'. 414. e.g. perhaps Martial, Sulpicia, and some of Pliny's poet friends, see pp. 170 sqq. 415. See p. 80. 416. See Teuffel and Schwabe, _Hist. Röm. Lit._ § 304; Schanz, _Gesch. Röm. Lit._ 384 a. 417. Schol. _Pers._ vi. 1. 418. Ithyphallicum, Archebulium, Philicium, Paeonicum, Proceleusmaticum, Molossicum. Baehrens, _Poet. Röm. Fragm._ p. 364. 419. Ioseph. _vita_ 65. 420. Suet. _Vesp._ 17, 18. 421. Ib. 8. 422. Ib. 19 'vetera quoque acroamata revocaverat'. 423. Ib. 18. 424. Dion. lxvi. 13, in 71 A.D. That this act was ineffectual is shown by Domitian's action in 89-93 A.D. 425. Plin. _N.H._ praef. 5 and 11. 426. Suet. _Dom._ 2; Tac. _Hist._ iv. 86; Quint, x. 1. 91. 427. Suet. _Dom._ 18. 428. Quint. loc. cit.; Val. Fl. i. 12; Mart. v. 5. 7. 429. Suet. _Dom._ 4. 430. 6 Stat. _Silv._ iv. 2. 65, v. 3. 227. 431. Suet. _Dom._ 20. This may have been creditable to him as ruler of the empire, though Suetonius undoubtedly wishes us to regard Tiberius' memoirs as a manual of tyranny. 432. Suet. _Dom._ 10. 433. Suet. loc. cit.; Hieronym. ad ann. 89 and 95 A.D. The latter date is wrong: cp. Mommsen, _Hermes_, iii (1869), p. 84. 434. Tac. _Agr._ 2. 435. Quint. x. 1. 89. There is no clear indication of his date, but he is coupled with Saleius Bassus by Juvenal (vii. 80), a fact which suggests that he belonged to the Flavian period. 436. x. 1. 90. 437. Juv. vii. 79. 438. Stat. _Silv._ v. 3. 439. Stat. _Silv._ i. 2. 253; Mart. iv. 6. 4, i. 7, vii. 14. 440. Schol. Vall, _ad Iuv._ i. 20; Mart. xi. 10; Rut. Nam. i. 603; Schol. _Iuv._ i. 71. For his brother Scaevus Memor see p. 30. 441. Plin. _Ep._ v. 3. 5, vi. 10. 4. 442. Ib. iii. 1. 11, ii. 7. 1 443. Mart. viii. 70. 7. 444. Plin. _Ep._ v. 3. 5. 445. Priscian, _Gr. Lat._ ii, p. 205, 6. 446. Plin. _Paneg._ 47; _Ep._ iii. 18. 5. 447. Dion. lxviii. 16; Gellius xi. 17. 1. 448. See p. 25. Other names are Octavius Rufus, Plin. _Ep._ i. 7; Titinius Capito, _C. I. L._ 798, Plin. _Ep._ i. 17. 3; viii. 12. 4; Caninius Rufus, Plin. _Ep._ viii. 4. 1; Calpurnius Piso, Plin. _Ep._ v. 17. 1. 449. _Ep._ vi. 15. 450. _Ep._ ix. 22. 451. Gaius Passennus Paulus Propertius Blaesus was his full title. He derives his chief interest from the fact that the inscription at Assisi which preserves his name is our most conclusive evidence for the birthplace of Propertius. Haupt, opusc. i. p. 283, Leipz. (1875). 452. _Ep._ iv. 27. 453. viii. 21. 14. 454. vii. 9. 10. 455. iv. 14. 2. 456. iv. 14. 4. 457. He also translated the Greek epigrams of Arrius Antoninus. Cp. _Ep._ iv. 3. 3, and xviii. 1. One of these translations is preserved. Baehrens, _P.L.M._ iv. 112. 458. ii. 90. 9. 459. In the sixth Satire. 460. See Schanz, _Gesch. Röm. Lit._ § 284. 461. Apoll. Sid. ix. 261 'quod Sulpiciae iocos Thalia scripsit blandiloquum suo Caleno'. Auson. _Cento. Nupt._, 4 'meminerint prurire opusculum Sulpiciae, frontem caperare'. Fulgentius, _Mythol._ 1 (p. 4, Helm.) 'Sulpicillae procacitas' 462. Schol. Vall, _ad Iuv._ vi. 537, unde ait Sulpicia: si me cadurcis dissolutis fasciis nudam Caleno concubantem proferat. 463. Mart. x. 38. 9: vixisti tribus, o Calene, lustris: aetas haec tibi tota computatur et solos numeras dies mariti. The first edition of Martial, Book x, was probably published in 95 A.D. If Sulpicia married Calenus at the age of 18-25, her birth will therefore fall between 55 and 62 A. D. 464. Cp. Mart. x. 38. 4-8. 465. Cp. Mart. x. 38. 9-11. It is, of course, possible that _mariti_ is a euphemism. 466. Mart. x. 35. 1. 467. See Ap. Sid. loc. cit. 468. Sulp. _Sat._, lines 4, 5. 469. _Raph. Volaterr. comment. urban._ (fol. lvi. 1506 A.D.), 'hic (sc. at Bobbio) anno 1493 huiuscemodi libri reperti sunt. Rutilius Namatianus. Heroicum Sulpici carmen.' The first edition was published in 1498, with the title _Sulpitiae carmina quae fuit Domitiani temporibus: nuper a Georgio Merula Allexandrino, cum aliis opusculis reperta. queritur de statu reipublicae et temporibus Domitiani_. The MS. is now lost. 470. Cp. line 62. Domitian's edict seems to have threatened the security of Calenus. In the lines which follow, Domitian's death and overthrow are foretold. The poem, therefore, if genuine, must have been published soon after Domitian's assassination in 96, though it may have been composed in part during his lifetime. 471. The work is generally rejected as spurious. Bachrens (_P. L. M._ v. p. 93, and _de Sulpiciae quae vocatur satira_, Jena, 1873) holds that the work is contemporary with Ausonius. Boot (_de Sulpiciae quae fertur satira_, Amsterdam, 1868) goes further, and regards the work as a renaissance forgery. He is followed by Bücheler. But there is no reason to doubt the existence of the Bobbian MS. The metrical difficulties can be remedied by emendation _palare_ for _palari_ (43) is a solecism, but many verbs are found in both active and deponent forms, and _palare_ may be a slip, or even an invention by analogy. _captiva_ (52) does not = the Italian _cattiva_ or the French _chétive_. The most that we can say is that the work shows no resemblance to any extant contemporary literature. That does not necessarily prove it to be of later date. The problem cannot be answered with certainty. On the whole, to us the difficulty of supposing it to be a late forgery seems greater than the difficulty of supposing it to be by Sulpicia. 472. An exception must be made of the _Silvae_ of Statius. 473. Or Balbus Setinus. 474. Schenkl, _Stud, zu V. F._ 272. 475. Mart. i. 61 and 76. 476. i. 5: Phoebe mone, si Cymaeae mihi conscia vatis stat casta cortina domo. In _Cymaeae vatis_ there is an allusion to the custody of the Sibylline books. 477. x, 1. 90. 478. i. 7-12. 479. i. 13, 14: Solymo nigrantem pulvere fratrem spargentemque faces et in omni turre furentem. Domitian pretended to be a poet and connoisseur of poetry. See p. 167. 480. iii. 207: ut mugitor anhelat Vesvius, attonitas acer cum suscitat urbes 481. vii. 645; viii. 228. If these allusions be to events of 89 A. D. they point to the view that the last two books were composed shortly before the poet's death, and confirm the opinion that the _Argonautica_ was never finished. 482. A few instances will suffice. In iii. 302 Jason asserts that seers had prophesied his father's death; this is nowhere else mentioned; on the contrary, at the beginning of the second book, it is specially told us that Juno concealed from Jason the fact of his father's death, while in vii. 494 Jason speaks of him as still alive. In vii. 394 Venus is represented as leaving Medea in terror at the sound of her magic chant, while five lines later it is implied that she is still holding Medea's hand. In viii. 24 Jason goes to the grove of Mars to meet Medea and to steal the fleece of gold; but no arrangement to this effect has been made between Jason and Medea at their previous meeting (vii. 516). Instances might be multiplied. See Schenkl, op. cit. 12 sqq.; Summers' _Study of Argonautica of Valerius Flaccus_, p. 2 sqq. The inconsistency which makes the _Argo_ to be at once the first ship and to meet many other ships by the way is perhaps the most glaring, but its rectification would have involved very radical alterations. 483. Cp. viii. 189: inde sequemur ipsius amnis iter, donec nos flumine certo perferat inque aliud reddat mare. 484. Summers, op. cit. 6. 485. e.g. Argous Portus, Cales, the portico of the Argonauts at Rome. 486. i. 7-12. 487. Summers, p. 7. 488. i. 806; ii. 4. 489. Valerius was no slavish imitator of Apollonius. Some of his incidents are new, such, as the rescue of Hesione (ii. 450 sqq.). Many of the incidents in Apollonius are omitted (e.g. Stymphalian birds, A.R. ii. 1033, and the encounter with the sons of Phrixus, A.R. ii. 1093). Other incidents receive a fresh turn. In both poets the Argonauts see traces of the doom of Prometheus. But in A. he is still being devoured, in V. he is being freed by Hercules amid an earthquake. Again V. often expands or contracts an incident related by A. E.g. Contraction: The launching of _Argo_, V.F. i. 184-91; A.R. i. 362-93. Expansion: The story of Lemnos V. ii. 72-427; A. i. 591-884: here there is not much difference in length, but V. tells us much more. The visit to Cyzicus, V. iii. 1-361; A. i. 947-1064: note also that in V. the purification of the Argonauts, 362-459, takes the place of the irrelevant founding of the temple of Rhea on Dindymus, A. i. 1103 sqq. The debate as to whether to abandon Hercules, who has gone in search of Hylas, V. iii. 598-714; in A. the Argonauts sail without noticing the absence of Hercules and Hylas, and the debate takes place at sea, A. i. 1273-1325. As a rule, however, V. is longer than A., partly owing to longer descriptions, partly owing to the greater complication of the plot at Colchis. On the other hand, there is much imitation of A. Cp. V.F. i. 255; A.R. i. 553; V.F. iii. 565-97; A. i. 1261-72; V.F. iv. 733; A. ii. 774; V.F. v. 73-100; A. ii. 911-929. 490. In Apollonius the aid of Aphrodite and Eros is requisitioned to make Medea fall in love with Jason, but there is no further conventional supernatural interference. In Valerius, Juno (v. 350, vi. 456-660, vii. 153-90) kindles Medea's passion with Venus's aid. In vii, 190 sqq., Venus goes in person. 491. As evidence for Apollonius' superiority cp. V.F. v. 329 sqq.; A.R. iii. 616 sq.; V.F. vii, 1-25; A.R. iii. 771 sq.; V.F v. 82-100; A.R. ii. 911-21. 492. v. 418. Cp. Apollon. iv. 272; Herod, ii. 103; Strab. xvi. 4. 4; Plin. _N.H._ xxxiii, 52. 493. vi. 118. Cp. also v. 423: Arsinoen illi tepidaeque requirunt otia laeta Phari. 494. Cp. vii. 35 sqq. 495. As, for instance, in the _Alcestis_ of Euripides and Callimachus' Hymn to Artemis. 496. A.R. i. 1167 [Greek: d_e tot anochliz_on tetr_echotos oidmatos olkous | messothen axen eretmon atar tryphos allo men autos | amph_o chersin ech_on pese dochmios, allo de pontos | klyze palirrothioisi pher_on. ana d' hezeto sig_e | paptain_on cheires gar a_etheon _eremeousai]. 497. Cp. also V.F. iv. 682-5; viii. 453-7. 498. For obscurity cp. also iii. 133-7, 336-7; vii. 55. 499. Valerius is fond of such inversions, especially in the case of particles, pronouns, &c.; cp. v. 187 _iuxta_; ii. 150 _sed_; vi. 452 _quippe_; vi. 543 _sed_. 500. Cp. i. 436-8; ii. 90; iii. 434; vi. 183, 260-4. 501. See p. 183. 502. The passage may conceivably be only a rough draft, cp p. 197 note. 503. Cp. also i. 130-48, 251-4. 504. There is little evidence that he had any influence on posterity, though there may be traces of such influence in Hyginus and the Orphic Argonautica. Of contemporaries Statius and Silius seem to have read him and at times to imitate him. See Summers, pp. 8, 9. Blass, however (_J. f. Phil. und Päd._ 109, 471 sqq.), holds that Valerius imitates Statius. 505. Cp. V. F. i. 833 sqq.; _Aen._ vi. 893, 660 sqq., 638 sqq.; V. F. i. 323; A. viii. 560 sqq.; V. F. vi. 331; A. ix. 595 sqq.; V. F. iii. 136; A. xii. 300 sqq.; V. F. viii. 358; A. x. 305; V. F. vi. 374; A. xi. 803. See Summers, pp. 30-3. His echoes from Vergil are perhaps more obvious in some respects than similar echoes in Statius, owing to the fact that he had a more Vergilian imagination than Statius, and lacked the extreme dexterity of style to disguise his pilferings. But in his general treatment of his theme he shows far greater originality; this is perhaps due to the fact that the Argonaut saga is not capable of being 'Aeneidized' to the same extent as the Theban legend. But let Valerius have his due. He is in the main unoriginal in diction, Statius in composition. 506. Cp. Summers, p. 49. See also note, p. 123. 507. Cp. beside the passages quoted below iii. 558 sqq., 724, 5; iv. 16-50, 230, 1; v. 10-12; vii. 371-510, 610, 648-53. 508. One is tempted at times to account for the profusion and lack of spontaneity of similes in poets of this age by the supposition that they kept commonplace books of similes and inserted them as they thought fit. 509. vi. 260: qualem populeae fidentem nexibus umbrae siquis avem summi deducat ab aere rami, ante manu tacita cui plurima crevit harundo; illa dolis viscoque super correpta sequaci inplorat ramos atque inrita concitat alas. 510. vii. 124: sic adsueta toris et mensae dulcis erili, aegra nova iam peste canis rabieque futura, ante fugam totos lustrat queribunda penates. 511. iv. 699: discussa quales formidine Averni Alcides Theseusque comes pallentia iungunt oscula vix primas amplexi luminis oras. 512. This simile is a free translation from Apollonius, iii. 966 [Greek: t_o d' aneo kai anaudoi ephestasan all_eloisin, | h_e drusin h_e makr_esin eeidomenoi elat_esin, | ai te parasson ek_eloi en ourresin erriz_ontai,| n_enemiae meta d' autis upo mip_es anemoio | kitumenai omad_esan apeiriton _os ara t_oge | mellon alis phthenchasthai upo pnoi_esin Er_otos.] Valerius has compressed the last three lines into _rapidus nondum quas miscuit Auster_. The effective _miscuit_ conveys nearly as much as the longer and not less beautiful version in the Greek. 513. This accumulation is probably due to the lack of revision. _obvius ... pavor_ fits the context ill and is curiously reminiscent of I. 392 ('iam stabulis gregibusque pavor strepitusque sepulcris inciderat'), while II. 400-2 would probably have been considerably altered had the poem undergone its final correction. There are other indications of the unfinished character of the work to be found in this passage (p. 181, note). 514. Cp. also viii. 10, where Medea bids farewell to her home. 'O my father, would thou mightest give me now thy last embrace, as I fly to exile, and mightest behold these my tears. Believe me, father, I love not him I follow more than thee: would that the stormy deep might whelm us both. And mayest thou long hold thy realm, grown old in peace and safety, and mayest thou find thy children that remain more dutiful than me.' 515. Ap. Rh. iii. 1105 sqq.; cp. also Murray on Apollonius in his _History of Greek Literature_, p. 382. 516. _Silv._ v. 3. 116 sqq. 517. Ib. 146 sqq. 518. Ib. 163. 519. Ib. 141. 520. Ib. 195-208. This passage suggests that the elder Statius died soon after 79 A.D. On the other hand, he probably lived some years longer as the _Thebais_, inspired and directed by him, was not begun till 80 A.D. He must, however, have died before 89 A.D., the earliest date assignable to Statius' victory at the Alban contest. 521. _Silv._ v. 3. 225. 522. Juv. vii. 86. Paris had fallen from imperial favour by 83 A.D. Dio. lxvii. 3. 1. 523. _Silv._ v. 3. 215. 524. Juv. vii. 82. 525. _Silv._ v. 3. 227. The subject of his prize recitation was the triumph of Domitian over the Germans and Dacians; i.e. after 89 A.D. 526. Praef. _Silv._ i. 'pro Thebaide quamvis me reliquerit timeo.' The first book of the _Silvae_ was published in 92 A.D. For the time taken for its composition and the poet's anticipations of immortality see _Th._ xii. 811 sqq. 527. See previous note. 528. _Silv._ iii. 5. 28, v. 3. 232. The Agon Capitolinus was instituted in 86 A.D. The contests falling in Statius' lifetime are those of 86, 90, 94 A.D. As his failure is always mentioned after the Alban victory, 94 A.D. would seem the most probable date. 529. Rutilius Gallicus had just died when the first book was published; cp. Praef., bk. i. This took place in 92 A.D.; cp. _C.I.L._ v. 6988, vi. 1984. 8. _Silv._ iv. 1 celebrates Domitian's seventeenth consulate (95 A.D.). 530. See previous note. 531. Such at least is a legitimate inference from the fact that it is not mentioned before the fourth and fifth books of the _Silvae_; cp. iv. 4. 94, iv. 7. 23, v. 2. 163. 532. Written probably in 95 A.D. Statius promises such a work in _Silv._ iv. 4. 95. Four lines are quoted from it in G. Valla's scholia on Juv. iv. 94: lumina: Nestorei mitis prudentia Crispi et Fabius Veiento (potentem signat utrumque purpura, ter memores implerunt nomine fastos), et prope Caesareae confinis Acilius aulae. 533. Praef. _Silv._ iv 'Maximum Vibium et dignitatis et eloquentiae nomine a nobis diligi satis eram testatus epistula quam ad illum de editione Thebaidos meae publicavi.' 534. Witness poems such as the Villa Surrentina Pollii. _Silv._ ii. 2. 3, 1. 535. _Silv._ iii. 5. 13. 536. Praef. _Silv._ iii. and iii. 5. He was married soon after beginning the _Thebais_, i.e. about 82 A.D. (cp. _S._ iii. 5. 35). Claudia had a daughter by her first husband, iii. 5. 52-4. 537. v. 5. 72-5. 538. iii. 5. 13, iv. 4. 69, v. 2. 158. It is worth noting how late in life all his best work was done, i.e. 80-95 A.D. 539. The well-known passage of Juvenal, vii. 86 ('cum fregit subsellia versu, esurit, intactam Paridi nisi vendit Agaven'), as has been pointed out, is only Juvenal's exaggerated way of saying that the _Thebais_ brought Statius no material gain. The family was not, however, rolling in wealth; cp. v. 3. 116 sqq. 540. His friendships do not throw much light on his life, though they show that he moved in high circles. Rutilius Gallicus (i. 4) had had a distinguished career and rose to be _praefectus urbis_; Claudius Etruscus (i. 5), originally a slave from Smyrna, had risen to the imperial post _a rationibus_; Abascantus (v. 1) held the office known as _ab epistulis_; Plotius Grypus (iv. 9) came of senatorial family; Crispinus (v. 2) was the son of Vettius Bolanus, Governor of Britain and afterwards of Asia; Vibius Maximus (iv. 7) became praefect of Egypt under Trajan; Polla Argentaria (ii. 7) was the widow of Lucan; Arruntius Stella (i. 2) was a poet, and rose to the consulship. Most of these persons must have been possessed of strong literary tastes. Some are mentioned by Martial, e.g. Stella, Claudius Etruscus, Polla Argentaria. Atedius Melior and Novius Vindex were also friends of the two poets. Both must have moved in the same circles, yet neither ever mentions the other. They were probably jealous of one another and on bad terms. 541. e.g. ii. 2. Cp. also i. 3. 64-89. 542. Dante regards him also as a Christian. This compliment was paid by the Middle Ages to not a few of the great classical authors. It was not even a fatal obstacle to have lived before the birth of Christ. Cicero, for instance, was believed to have been a Christian. The description of the Altar of Mercy at Athens (_Th._ xii. 493) has been regarded as a special reason for the Christianizing of Statius: cp. Verrall, _Oxford and Cambridge Review_, No. 1; Arturo Graf, _Roma nella memoria del medio evo_, vol. ii, ch. 17. 543. This statement does not, however, apply to the _Silvae_. 544. Ov. _Am_. i. 15. 14. 545. Merivale, _Rom. Emp_. viii. 80, 1. 546. Merivale, _Rom. Emp_. viii. 80, 1. 547. The sources for his story were the old Cyclic poem, the later epic of Antimachus, the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, that draw their plots from the Theban cycle of legend. The material thus given him he worked over in the Vergilian manner, remoulding incidents or introducing fresh episodes in such a fashion as to provide precise parallels to many episodes in the _Aeneid_. He also drew certain hints from the _Phoenissae_ and _Oedipus_ of Seneca: for details see Legras, _Étude sur la Thébaide de Stace_, part i, ch. 2, part ii, chh. 1 and 2. The subject had been treated also by one Ponticus, the friend of Propertius (Prop. i. 7. 1, Ov. _Tr_. iv. 10. 47) and possibly by Lynceus (Prop. ii. 34). 548. Legras, _Les Légendes Théb._, ch. iii. 4. The [Greek: Amphiaraou exelasis] mentioned by Suidas s.v. [Greek: Hom_eros] is sometimes identified with the _Thebais_; but it is more probably merely the title of a book of that epic. Still the fact that the [Greek: Amph. exel.] is given such prominence by Suidas does lend some support to the view that he was the chief character of the epic. He is certainly the most tragic figure. 549. Porphyr. ad Hor. _A.P._ 146. 550. Vergil had given six books to the wanderings of Aeneas; Statius must give six to the preparation and march of the Thebans! 551. See Legras, op. cit., pp. 183 ff. 552. x. 632. 553. xi. 457. Cp. also the strange and stilted description of the cave of sleep, x. 84, where Quies, Oblivio, Ignavia, Otium, Silentium, Voluptas, and even Labor and Amor are to be found. But with the exception of Amor these abstract personages are inventions of Statius. Virtus and Pietas had temples at Rome. 554. iv. 32-308; vii. 250-358. 555. x. 262-448. 556. vi. 1-921. Two other funerals are to be found, in. 114-217, xii. 22-104. 557. _Th._ i. 557 sqq.; Verg. _Aen._ viii. 190 sqq. 558. v. 17-498: with this compare the version of the story given by Valerius Maccus, ii. 78-305; except in point of brevity there is little to choose between the two versions. But it is not a digression in Valerius, and it is told at less inordinate length. The versions differ much in detail, and Statius owes little or nothing to Valerius. 559. Op. Legras, _Les légendes Thébaines_, ch. ii. 4, Welcker, _Ep. Cycl._ ii. 350. The story was well known. Aeschylus probably treated it in his [Greek: Nemea,] Euripides certainly in his [Greek: ypsipel_e]. The legend gives the origin of the Nemean games. 560. The speeches in the _Thebais_, though they lack variety, are almost always exceedingly clever and quite repay reading; see esp. i. 642; iii. 59, 151, 348; iv. 318; vi. 138; vii. 497, 539; ix. 375; xi. 155, 677, 708. 561. iii. 348. 562. v. 660. 563. vii. 538. 564. viii. 751. Tydeus bites the severed head of Melanippus to the brain, thereby losing the gift of immortality that Pallas was hastening to bring him. The incident is revolting, but Statius has merely followed the old legend recorded by Aesch. _Sept._ 587; Soph. _Fr._ 731; Eurip. _Fr._ 357. 565. Cp. in this context Atalanta's beautiful lament on his departure for the war, iv. 318. 566. Every book, however, abounds in echoes of Vergil, both in matter and diction; e.g. _Aen._ vii. 475, Allecto precipitates the war by making Ascanius kill a tame stag. _Theb._ vii. 562, an Erinnys brings about the war by causing the death of two pet tigers sacred to Bacchus. _Aen._ xi. 591, Diana orders one of her nymphs to kill the slayer of Camilla. _Theb._ ix. 665, she tells Apollo that the slayer of Parthenopaeus shall perish by her arrows, for which see _Th._ ix. 875. Cp. also _Th._ ii. 205; _Aen._ iv. 173, 189; _Th._ ii. 162; _Aen._ xi. 581. The passage previously referred to concerning the exploits of Dymas and Hopleus is especially noteworthy as openly challenging comparison with Vergil; cp. x. 445. For verbal imitations cp. _Aen._ v. 726, 7; _Th._ ii. 115; _Aen._ i. 106; _Th._ v. 366; _Aen._ vii. 397; _Th._ iv. 379, &c. It is no defence to urge that the ancients held different views on plagiarism, that Vergil and Ovid pilfered from their predecessors. For _they_ made their appropriations their own, and set the stamp of their genius upon what they borrowed. And, further, the process of borrowing cannot continue indefinitely. The cumulative effect of progressive plagiarism is distressing. For Statius' imitation of other Latin poets, notably Lucan, Seneca, and Ovid, see Legras, op. cit., i. 2. Such imitations, though not very rare, are of comparatively small importance. 567. ix. 315 sqq. 568. Statius is imitating early Greek epic. That might excuse him if these similes possessed either truth or beauty. 569. See p.123, note. 570. i. 841-85 gives a good idea of the _Achilleis_ at its best. The passage describes the unmasking of the disguised Achilles. 571. Quint, x. 3. 17. 572. _Silv._ i. 1. 6; iii. 4; iv. 1. 2, 3. 573. ii. 1. 6; iii. 3. 574. v. 1. 3, 5. 575. iii. 5; iv. 4. 5, 7; v. 2. 576. i. 4. 577. iii. 2. 578. i. 3. 5; ii. 2; iii. 1. 579. i. 2. 580. ii. 7. 581. iv. 6. 582. ii. 4. 5. 583. v. 4. 584. Cp. also the extravagant dedication of the _Thebais_. 585. It is hard to select from the _Silvae_. Beside, those poems from which quotations are given, iii. 5, v. 3 and 5 are best worth reading. But the average level is high. The Sapphic and Alcaic poems (iv. 5 and 7) and the hexameter poems in praise of Domitian (i. 1, iii. 4, iv. 1 and 2) are the least worth reading. 586. The poem on the death of his father (v. 3) shows genuine depth of feeling, but its elaborate artificiality is somewhat distressing, considering the theme. (The same is true to a less degree of v. 5.) V. 3 must be, in portions at any rate, the earliest of the _Silvae_, for (l. 29) the poet states that his father has been dead but three months. But it records (ll. 219-33) events which took place long after that time (i.e. victory at Alba and failure at Agon Capitolinus). The poem must have been rewritten in part, ll. 219-33 at least being later additions. The inconsistency between these lines and line 29 is probably due to the poet having died before revising bk. v for publication. 587. viii. 8; ii. 17; v. 6. 588. With Statius, as with Martial, the hendecasyllable always begins with a spondee. The Alcaics of iv. 5 and Sapphics of iv. 7 call for no special comment. They are closely modelled on Horace. The two poems fail because they are prosy and uninteresting, not through any fault of the metre, but it may be that Statius felt his powers hampered by an unfamiliar metre. 589. If _iuvenis_ be taken to refer to Statius, the poem must be an early work or depict an imaginary situation. The alternative is to take it as a vocative referring to Sleep. 590. _C.I.L._ vi. 1984. 9, in the 'fasti sodalium Augustalium Claudialium'. In MSS. Pliny and Tacitus, he is Silius Italicus, in Martial simply Silius or Italicus. 591. Plin. _Ep._ iii. 7. In the description of his life which follows, Pliny is the authority, where not otherwise stated. 592. Pliny writes in 101 A.D. to record Silius' death. Silius was over seventy-five when he died. 593. _Italicus_ might suggest that he came from the Spanish town of _Italica_. But Martial, who addresses him in several epigrams of almost servile flattery, would surely have claimed him as fellow-countryman had this been the case. 594. Pliny, loc. cit.; Tac. _Hist._ iii. 65. 595. His poem was already planned in 88; cp. Mart. iv. 14 (published 88 A.D.). Some of it was already written in 92; cp. _legis_, M. vii. 62 (published 92 A.D.). But the allusion to Domitian, iii. 607, must have been inserted after that date, while xiv. 686 points to the close of Nerva's principate. Statius, _Silv._ iv. 7. 14 (published 95 A.D.) seems to imitate Silius: Dalmatae montes ubi Dite viso pallidus fossor redit erutoque concolor auro. Sil. i. 233 'et redit infelix effosso concolor auro.' The last five books, compressed and markedly inferior to i-xii, may have been left unrevised. 596. In 101 A.D. at the age of seventy-five. 597. Epict. _diss._ iii. 8. 7. 598. Mart. xi. 48: Silius haec magni celebrat monumenta Maronis, iugera facundi qui Ciceronis habet. heredem dominumque sui tumulive larisve non alium mallet nec Maro nec Cicero. That it was the Tusculanum and not the Cumanum of Cicero that Silius possessed is an inference from _C.I.L._ xix. 2653, found at Tusculum: 'D.M. Crescenti Silius Italicus Collegium salutarem.' 599. Enn. _Ann._ vii, viii, ix. 600. Sec p. 103. 601. i. 55. 602. iv. 727. 603. viii. 28. 604. x. 349. 605. ix. 484. 606. xvii. 523. 607. iv. 675. 608. xi. 387. 609. ix. 439. 610. ii. 395. 611. xvi. 288. 612. ii. 36. 613. iii. 222 and viii. 356. 614. xiii. 395. 615. e.g. the Funeral Games, the choice of Scipio (xv. 20), the Nekuia. 616. At Nola. 617. Cp. x. 628 'quod ... Laomedontiadum non desperaverit urbi'. The tasteless _Laomedontiadum_ as a learned equivalent for _Romanorum_ is characteristic. Silius has the _Aeneid_ in his mind when he chooses this word: his literary proclivities lead him astray; where he should be most strong he is most feeble. 618. _Vide infra_ for his treatment of Paulus' dead body after Cannae. 619. Trebia, iv. 480-703; Trasimene, v. 1-678; Cannae, ix. l78-x. 578. 620. Mart, vii. 90. 621. See p. 123, note. 622. Bk. vi. 623. xii. 212-67, where the death of Cinyps clad in Paulus' armour is described, are pretty enough, but too frankly an imitation of Vergil to be worth quoting. The simile 247-50 is, however, new and quite picturesque. 624. Sights of Naples, xii. 85; Tides at Pillars of Hercules, iii. 46; Legend of Pan, xiii. 313; Sicily, xiv. 1-50; Fabii, vii. 20; Anna Perenna, viii. 50; Bacchus at Falernum, vii. 102; Trasimenus, v. ad init. 625. See note on p. 13. 626. Plin. _Ep._ i. 13. 627. Mart. vii. 63. 628. On the modern Cerro de Bambola near the Moorish town of El Calatayud. 629. Cp. ix. 52, x. 24, xii. 60. 630. Cp. v. 34. 631. ix. 73. 7. 632. In x. 103. 7, written in 98 A. D., he tells us that it is thirty-four years since he left Spain. 633. iv. 40, xii. 36. 634. He is found rendering poetic homage to Polla, the wife of Lucan, as late as 96 A. D., x. 64, vii. 21-3. For his reverence for the memory of Lucan, cp. i. 61. 7; vii. 21, 22; xiv. 194. 635. Cp. his regrets for the ease of his earlier clienthood and the generosity of the Senecas, xii. 36. 636. ii. 30; cp. 1. 5: is mihi 'dives eris, si causas egeris' inquit. quod peto da, Gai: non peto consilium. 637. Vide his epigrams _passim_. 638. xiii. 42, xiii. 119. Perhaps the gift of Seneca, cp. Friedländer on Mart. i. 105. 639. ix. 18, ix. 97. 7, x. 58. 9. 640. Such is the most plausible interpretation of iii. 95. 5, ix. 97. 5: tribuit quod Caesar uterque ius mihi natorum (uterque, i.e. Titus and Domitian). 641. iii. 95, v. 13, ix. 49, xii. 26. 642. iii. 95. 11, vi. 10. 1. 643. xiii. 4 gives Domitian his title of Germanicus, assumed after war with Chatti in 84; xiv. 34 alludes to peace; no allusion to subsequent wars. 644. I, II. Perhaps published together. This would account for length of preface. II. Largely composed of poems referring to reigns of Vespasian and Titus. Reference to Domitian's censorship shows that I was not published before 85. There is no hint of outbreak of Dacian War, which raged in 86. III. Since bk. IV contains allusion to outbreak of revolt of Antonius Saturninus towards end of 88 (11) and is published at Rome, whereas III was published at _Cornelii forum_ (1), III probably appeared in 87 or 88. IV. Contains reference to birthday of Domitian, Oct. 24 (1. 7), and seems then to allude to _ludi saeculares_ (Sept. 88). Reference to snowfall at Rome (2 and 13) suggests winter. Perhaps therefore published in _Saturnalia_ of 88. V. Domitian has returned to Italy (1) from Dacian War, but there is no reference to his triumph (Oct. 1, 89 A. D.). Book therefore probably published in early autumn of 89. VI. Domitian has held his triumph (4. 2 and 10. 7). Julia (13) is dead (end of 89). Book probably published in 90, perhaps in summer. Friedländer sees allusion to Agon Capitolinus (Summer, 90) in vi. 77. VII. 5-8 refer to Domitian's return from Sarmatic War. He has not yet arrived. These epigrams are among last in book. He returned in January 93. His return was announced as imminent in Dec. 92. VIII. 21 describes Domitian's arrival; 26, 30, and others deal with festivities in this connexion. 65 speaks of temple of Fortuna Redux and triumphal arch built in Domitian's honour. They are mentioned as if completed. 66 speaks of consulate of Silius Italicus' son beginning Sept. 1, 93. IX. 84 is addressed to Appius Norbanus Maximus, who has been six years absent from Rome. He went to Upper Germany to crush Antonius Saturninus in 88. 35 refers to Agon Capitolinus in summer of 94. X. Two editions published. We possess later and larger. Cp. x. 2. 70. 1 suggests a year's interval between IX and X. X, ed. 1 was therefore perhaps published in Dec. 95. X, ed. 2 has references to accession of Trajan, Jan. 25, 98 A. D. (6, 7 and 34). Martial's departure for Spain is imminent. XI. 1 is addressed to Parthenius, executed in middle of 97 A. D. xii. 5 refers to a selection made from X and XI, perhaps from presentation to Nerva; cp. xii. 11. XII. In preface Martial apologizes for three years' silence (1. 9) from publication of X. ed. 2. xii. 3. 10 refers to Stella's consulship, Oct. 101 or 102. Three years' interval points to 101. It was published late in the year; cp. 1 and 62. Some epigrams in this book were written at Rome. But M. says that it was written _paucissimis diebus_. This must refer only to Spanish epigrams, or the book must have been enlarged after M.'s death. For the whole question see Friedländer Introd., pp. 50 sqq. 645. iii. 1 and 4. 646. Cp. xi. 3. 647. xii. 21, xii. 31. There is no reason to suppose with some critics that she was his wife. 648. xii. praef. 'civitatis aures quibus adsueveram quaero.' 649. Ib. 'accedit his municipalium robigo dentium.' 650. See p. 271. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that this silence was due to dislike or jealousy. 651. Mackail, _Greek Anthol_., Introd., p. 5. 652. Domitius Marsus was famous for his epigrams, as also Calvus, Gaetulicus, Pedo, and others. 653. See p. 36. 654. See p. 134. 655. The best of his erotic poems is the pretty vi. 34, but it is far from original; cp. the last couplet: nolo quot (sc. basia) arguto dedit exorata Catullo Lesbia; pauca cupit qui numerare potest. 656. Cp. Cat. 5 and 7; Mart. vi. 34; Cat. 2 and 3; Mart. i. 7 and 109 (it is noteworthy that this last poem has itself been exquisitely imitated by du Bellay in his poem on his little dog Peloton). 657. Cp. Ov. _Tr._ ii. 166; Mart. vi. 3. 4; Ov. _F._ iii. 192; Mart, vi. 16. 2; Ov. _A._ i. 1. 20; Mart. vi. 16. 4; Ov. _Tr._ i. 5. 1, iv. 13. 1; Mart, i. 15. 1. His imitations of other poets are not nearly so marked. There are a good many trifling echoes of Vergil, but little wholesale borrowing. A very large proportion of the parallel passages cited by Friedländer are unjust to Martial. No poet could be original judged by such a test. 658. There is little of any importance to be said about Martial's metre. The metres most often employed are elegiac, hendecasyllabic, and the scazon. In the elegiac he is, on the whole, Ovidian, though he is naturally freer, especially in the matter of endings both of hexameter and pentameter. He makes his points as well, but is less sustainedly pointed. His verse, moreover, has greater variety and less formal symmetry than that of Ovid. On the other hand his effects are less sparkling, owing to his more sparing use of rhetoric. In the hendecasyllabic he is smoother and more polished. It invariably opens with a spondee. 659. Cp. vii. 72. 12, x. 3. 660. Cp. vii. 12. 9, iii. 99. 3. 661. Catull. xvi. 5; Ov. _Tr._ ii. 354; Apul. _Apol._ 11; Auson. 28, _cento nup._; Plin. _Ep._ vii. 8. 662. We might also quote the beautiful extra fortunam est quidquid donatur amicis: quas dederis solas semper habebis opes (v. 42). What thou hast given to friends, and that alone, Defies misfortune, and is still thine own. PROFESSOR GOLDWIN SMITH. But the needy poet may have had some _arrière-pensée_. We do not know to whom the poem is addressed. 663. Cp. the description of the villa of Faustinus, iii. 58. 664. Their only rival is the famous Sirmio poem of Catullus. 665. Even Tennyson's remarkable poem addressed to F. D. Maurice fails to reach greater perfection. 666. e.g. Arruntius Stella and Atedius Melior. Cp. p. 205. 667. Cp. the poems on the subject of Earinus, Mart. ix. 11, 12, 13, and esp. 16; Stat. _Silv._ iii. 4. 668. Mart. vi. 28 and 29. 669. The remaining lines of the poem are tasteless and unworthy of the portion quoted, and raise a doubt as to the poet's sincerity in the particular case. But this does not affect his general sympathy for childhood. 670. 101 provides an instance of Martial's sympathy for his own slaves. Cp. 1. 5:-- ne tamen ad Stygias famulus descenderet umbras, ureret implicitum cum scelerata lues, cavimus et domini ius omne remisimus aegro; munere dignus erat convaluisse meo. sensit deficiens mea praemia meque patronum dixit ad infernas liber iturus aquas. 671. i. 13. 672. i. 42. 673. i. 21. He is perhaps at his best on the death of Otho (vi. 32): cum dubitaret adhuc belli civilis Enyo forsitan et posset vincere mollis Otho, damnavit multo staturum sanguine Martem et fodit certa pectora tota manu. sit Cato, dum vivit, sane vel Caesare maior: dum moritur, numquid maior Othone fuit? When doubtful was the chance of civil war, And victory for Otho might declare; That no more Roman blood for him might flow, He gave his breast the great decisive blow. Caesar's superior you may Cato call: Was he so great as Otho in his fall? HAY. 674. It is to be noted that even in the most worthless of his epigrams he never loses his sense of style. If childish epigrams are to be given to the world, they cannot be better written. 675. Cp. Juv. 5; Mart. iii. 60, vi. 11, x. 49; Plin. _Ep_. ii. 6. 676. v. 18. 6. 677. This is doubly offensive if addressed to the poor Cinna of viii. 19. Cp. the similar vii. 53, or the yet more offensive viii. 33 and v. 36. 678. More excusable are poems such as x. 57, where he attacks one Gaius, an old friend (cp. ii. 30), for failing to fulfil his promise, or the exceedingly pointed poem (iv. 40) where he reproaches Postumus, an old friend, for forgetting him. Cp. also v. 52. 679. See p. 252. 680. Cp. the elaborate and long-winded poem of Statius on a statuette of Hercules (_Silv._ iv. 6) with Martial on the same subject, ix. 43 and 44. 681. Cp. viii. 3 and 56. 682. Bridge and Lake, Introd., _Select Epigrams of Martial_. 683. The ancient biographies of the poet all descend from the same source: their variations spring largely from questionable or absurd interpretations of passages in the satires themselves. The best of them, if not their actual source, is the life found at the end of the codex Pithoeanus, the best of the MSS. of Juvenal. It was in all probability written by the author of the scholia Pithoeana--to whom Valla, on the authority of a MS. now lost, gave the name of Probus--and dates from the fourth or fifth century. 684. L. 41. Cp. Plin. _Ep._ ii. 11. 685. xiii. 17 'sexaginta annos Fonteio consule natus'. xv. 27 'nuper consule Iunco'. 686. _Vita_ 1 (O. Jahn ed.): 1 a (Dürr, _Das Leben Juvenals_). A life contained in Cod. Barberin. viii. 18 (fifteenth century), says _Iunius Iuvenalis Aquinas Iunio Iuvenale patre, matre vero Septumuleia ex Aquinati municipio, Claudio Nerone et L. Antistio consulibus_ (55 A. D.) _natus est; sororem habuit Septumuleiam, quae Fuscino nupsit._ This may be mere invention on the part of a humanist of the fifteenth century. The life contains many improbabilities and the MS. is of suspiciously late date. But see Dürr, p. 28. 687. _Vitae_ 2 and 3 'oriundus temporis Neronis Claudii imperatoris'. _Vit._ 4 'decessit sub Antonino Pio'. 688. So Cod. Paris. 9345; Vossian. 18 and 64; Bodl. (Canon Lat. 41); Schol. Pith, ad _vit._ 1. 689. So all ancient biographies except 1. In _Sat._ iii, Umbricius, addressing Juvenal, speaks of _tuum Aquinum_: cp. also the inscription found near Aquinum and quoted later. 690. This is only conjecture, but the son of a rich citizen of Aquinum would naturally be sent to Rome for his education. For his rhetorical education cp. i. 15-17. 691. _Vita_ 1. 692. Cp. especially the whole of xvi; also i. 58, ii. 165, iii. 132, vii. 92, xiv. 193-7. 693. _C.I.L._ x. 5382. 694. _C.I.L._ vii, p. 85; Hübner, _Rhein. Mus._ xi (1857), p. 30; _Hermes_, xvi (1881), p. 566. 695. Satt. 3, 11, 12, 13. Trebius in 5 is perhaps an imaginary character. 696. vi. 75, 280, vii. 186. 697. vii, 82. 698. Mart. vii. 24, 91, xii. 18. 699. vi. 57. 700. xi. 65. 701. xi. 190, xii. 87. 702. _Vita_ 1. 703. There are, however, allusions to Domitian as dead in ii. 29-33, iv. 153. 704. Ap. Sid. ix. 269. 705. Joh. Mal. _Chron._ x, p. 341, _Chilm._ 706. _Vita_ 7. Schol. ad vii. 92. 707. _Vita_ 6. 708. _Vitae_ 1, 2, 4, 7. Perhaps an inference from _Sat._ xv. 45. 709. See 708. 710. _Vitae_ 5 and 6. If the inscription (see p. 288) refers to the poet, this view has further support. 711. Joh. Mal., loc. cit. 712. Trajan had, however, a favourite in the _pantomimus_ Pylades. Dio. Cass. Ixviii. 10. 713. The simplest suggestion is that Juvenal was at some time banished, that the reason for his banishment was forgotten and supplied by conjecture. Cp. Friedländer's ed., p. 44. There is no real evidence to prove that Juvenal was ever in Egypt or Britain. His topography in _Sat._ xv is faulty, and allusion to the oysters of Richborough (_ostrea Rutupina_, iv. 141) would be possible even in a poet who had never visited Britain. 714. i. 1-3, 17, 18 (Dryden's translation). 715. i. 79. 716. Ib. 85. 717. Ib. 147-50. 718. i. 165-71. 719. x. 356-66 (Dryden's translation). 720. There is nothing in this satire to suggest that Juvenal had or had not visited Egypt. The legend of his banishment to Egypt may be true, but it is quite as likely that this satire caused the scholiast to localize his traditional exile in Egypt. The theme of cannibalism was sometimes dealt with by the rhetoricians. Cp. Quintilian, _Decl._ 12. 721. e.g. Claudius Etruscus, who held the imperial secretaryship of finance under Nero and Vespasian, and Abascantus, the secretary _ab epistulis_ to Domitian. Stat. _Silv._ iii. 3, v. 1. 722. For a fine picture of the exclusive Roman spirit, cp. _Le procurateur de Judée_, by Anatole France in _L'Étui de nacre_. 723. iii. 60-125. 724. xiv. 96 sqq. 725. i. 130 sqq, and the whole of xv. Above all, he hates the Egyptian Crispinus, cp. iv. 2. 726. i. 102 sqq. 727. For the tradition of coarseness see chapter on Martial, p. 263. 728. It has been pointed out that the epigrams of Martial addressed to Juvenal are disfigured by gross obscenities. It is, however, a little unfair to make Juvenal responsible for his friend's observations. 729. The sixth satire abounds throughout its great length with sketches of the most appalling clearness and power, though they tend to crudeness of colour and are few of them suitable for quotation. 730. xiii. 120 sqq. 731. x. 346 sqq. 732. xiii. 180. 733. ix. 32, xii. 63. 734. vii. 194 sqq., ix. 33. 735. xiii. 192-249. 736. xii. 3-6, 89 sqq. 737. Such obscurity as he presents is due almost entirely to the fact that we have lost the key to his topical allusions. He has a strong affection for ingenious periphrases (e.g. v. 139, vi. 159, x. 112, xii. 70), but they are as a rule effective and amusing. 
38566	----	THE ROMAN POETS OF THE REPUBLIC BY W. Y. SELLAR, M.A., LL.D. PROFESSOR OF HUMANITY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH AND FORMERLY FELLOW OF ORIEL COLLEGE, OXFORD RE-ISSUE OF THE THIRD EDITION OXFORD AT THE CLARENDON PRESS M DCCCC V HENRY FROWDE, M.A. PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD LONDON, EDINBURGH NEW YORK AND TORONTO [_Dedication of the Edition of 1881._] TO J. C. SHAIRP, M.A., LL.D., PRINCIPAL OF THE UNITED COLLEGE, ST. ANDREWS, PROFESSOR OF POETRY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD, IN ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF MUCH ACTIVE AND GENEROUS KINDNESS, AND OF A LONG AND STEADY FRIENDSHIP, THIS VOLUME IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. In preparing a second edition of this volume, which has been for some years out of print, I have, with the exception of a few pages added to Chapter IV, retained the first five chapters substantially unchanged. Chapters VI and VII, on Roman Comedy, are entirely new. I have enlarged the account formerly given of Lucilius in Chapter VIII, and modified the Review of the First Period, contained in Chapter IX. The short introductory chapter to the Second Period is new. The four chapters on Lucretius have been carefully revised, and, in part, re-written. The chapter on Catullus has been re-written and enlarged, and the views formerly expressed in it have been modified. In the preface to the first edition I acknowledged the assistance I had derived from the editions of the Fragments of the early writers by Klussman, Vahlen, Ribbeck, and Gerlach; from the Histories of Roman Literature by Bernhardy, Bähr, and Munk, and from the chapters on Roman Literature in Mommsen's Roman History; from a treatise on the origin of Roman Poetry, by Corssen; from Sir G. C. Lewis's work on 'The Credibility of Early Roman History'; from the Articles on the Roman Poets by the late Professor Ramsay, contained in Smith's 'Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology'; and from Articles by Mr. Munro in the 'Journal of Classical and Sacred Philology.' In addition to these I have, in the present edition, to acknowledge my indebtedness to the History of Roman Literature by W. S. Teuffel, to Ribbeck's 'Römische Tragödie,' to Ritschl's 'Opuscula,' to the editions of some of the Plays of Plautus by Brix and Lorenz, to that of the Fragments of Lucilius by L. Müller, to the Thesis of M. G. Boissier, entitled 'Quomodo Graecos Poetas Plautus Transtulerit,' to Articles on Lucilius by Mr. Munro in the 'Journal of Philology,' and to the edition of Lucretius, and the 'Criticisms and Elucidations of Catullus' by the same writer, to Schwabe's 'Quaestiones Catullianae,' to Mr. Ellis's 'Commentary on Catullus,' to R. Westphal's 'Catull's Gedichte,' and to M. A. Couat's 'Étude sur Catulle.' I have more especially to express my sense of obligation to Mr. Munro's writings on Lucretius and Catullus. In so far as the chapters on these poets in this edition may be improved, this will, in a great measure, be due to the new knowledge of the subject I have gained from the study of his works. I have retained, with some corrections, the translations of the longer quotations, contained in the first edition, and have added a literal prose version of some passages quoted from Plautus and Terence. Instead of offering a prose version of the longer passages quoted from Catullus, I have again availed myself of the kind permission formerly given me by Sir Theodore Martin to make use of his translation. EDINBURGH, _Dec. 1880_. PREFATORY NOTE TO THE THIRD EDITION. In revising this work for a new edition the most important change I have made is in the account of Terence, contained in Chapter VII. I have to acknowledge the kind permission of Messrs. A. & C. Black to make use of the article on Terence which I wrote for the Encyclopaedia Britannica, in which I first expressed the modification of my views on that author. I have added some notes to the Chapter on Catullus, suggested by the opinions expressed in the Prolegomena to the Edition of B. Schmidt. In the Chapter on Naevius I have availed myself of a suggestion contained in a paper by Prof. A. F. West, 'On a Patriotic Passage in the Miles Gloriosus of Plautus,' which appeared in the American Journal of Philology, for my knowledge of which I am indebted to his courtesy in sending the article to me. I have introduced various verbal changes in different parts of the book, implying some slight modification of the opinions originally expressed. Several of these were suggested by critics who noticed the earlier editions of the book, to whom I beg to express my thanks. W. Y. S. _January, 1889._ CONTENTS CHAPTER I. GENERAL CHARACTER OF ROMAN POETRY. PAGE Recent change in the estimate of Roman Poetry 1 Want of originality 2 As compared with Greek Poetry 2 " " with Roman Oratory and History 3 The most complete literary monument of Rome 5 Partly imitative, partly original 6 Imitative in forms 7 " in metres 8 Imitative element in diction 9 " " in matter 11 Original character, partly Roman, partly Italian 13 National spirit 14 Imaginative sentiment 15 Moral feeling 16 Italian element in Roman Poetry 17 Love of Nature 17 Passion of Love 19 Personal element in Roman Poetry 20 Four Periods of Roman Poetry 23 Character of each 24 Conclusion 26 CHAPTER II. VESTIGES OF INDIGENOUS POETRY IN ROME AND ANCIENT ITALY. Niebuhr's theory of a Ballad-Poetry 28 The Saturnian metre 29 Ritual Hymns 31 Prophetic verses 33 Fescennine verses 34 Saturae 36 Gnomic verses 37 Commemorative verses 37 Inferences as to their character 38 " from early state of the language 39 No public recognition of Poetry 40 Roman story result of tradition and reflection 41 Inferences from the nature of Roman religion 43 " from the character and pursuits of the people 44 Roman Poetry of Italian rather than Roman origin 45 FIRST PERIOD. FROM LIVIUS ANDRONICUS TO LUCILIUS. CHAPTER III. BEGINNING OF ROMAN LITERATURE. LIVIUS ANDRONICUS, CN. NAEVIUS, 240-202 B.C. Contact with Greece after capture of Tarentum 47 First period of Roman literature 49 Forms of Poetry during this period 50 Livius Andronicus 51 Cn. Naevius, his life 52 Dramas 55 Epic poem 57 Style 59 Conclusion 60 CHAPTER IV. Q. ENNIUS, 239-170 B.C., LIFE, TIMES, AND PERSONAL TRAITS. VARIOUS WORKS. GENIUS AND INTELLECT. Importance of Ennius 62 Notices of his life 63 Influences affecting his career 64 Italian birth-place 64 Greek education 65 Service in Roman army 66 Historical importance of his age 68 Intellectual character of his age 69 Personal traits 71 Description of himself in the Annals 72 Intimacy with Scipio 74 His enthusiastic temperament 75 Religious spirit and convictions 77 Miscellaneous works 79 Saturae 81 Dramas 83 Annals 88 Outline of the Poem 89 Idea by which it is animated 92 Artistic defects 93 Roman character of the work 94 Contrast with the Greek Epic 96 Contrast in its personages 96 Contrast in supernatural element 97 Oratory in the Annals 98 Description and imagery 100 Rhythm and diction 102 Chief literary characteristics of Ennius 106 Energy of conception 107 Patriotic and imaginative sentiment 110 Moral emotion 112 Practical understanding 113 Estimate in ancient times 116 Disparaging criticism of Niebuhr 118 CHAPTER V EARLY ROMAN TRAGEDY. M. PACUVIUS, 219-129 B.C. L. ACCIUS, 170-ABOUT 90 B.C. Popularity of early Roman Tragedy 120 Partial adaptation of Athenian drama 121 Inability to reproduce its pure Hellenic character 123 Nearer approach to the spirit of Euripides than of Sophocles 125 Grounds of popularity of Roman Tragedy 126 Moral tone and oratorical spirit 129 Causes of its decline 131 M. Pacuvius, notices of his life 133 Ancient testimonies 135 His dramas 136 Passages illustrative of his thought 137 " " of his moral and oratorical spirit 139 Descriptive passages 141 Drama on a Roman subject 142 Character 142 L. Accius, notices of his life 143 His various works 145 Fragments illustrative of his oratorical spirit 147 " " of his moral fervour 148 " " of his sense of natural beauty 149 Conclusion as to character of Roman Tragedy 150 CHAPTER VI. ROMAN COMEDY. T. MACCIUS PLAUTUS, ABOUT 254 TO 184 B.C. Flourishing era of Roman Comedy 153 How far any claim to originality? 154 Disparaging judgment of later Roman critics 155 Connection with earlier Saturae 156 Naevius and Plautus popular poets 157 Facts in the life of Plautus 158 Attempt to fill up the outline from his works 160 Familiarity with town-life 161 Traces of maritime adventure 162 Life of the lower and middle classes represented in his plays 163 Love of good living 164 Love of money 166 Artistic indifference 166 Knowledge of Greek 167 Influence of the spirit of his age 167 Dramas adaptations of outward conditions of Athenian New Comedy 169 Manner and spirit, Roman and original 172 Indications of originality in his language 173 " " in his Roman allusions and national characteristics 174 Favourite plots of his plays 178 Pseudolus, Bacchides, Miles Gloriosus, Mostellaria 179 Aulularia, Trinummus, Menaechmi, Rudens, Captivi, Amphitryo 182 Mode of dealing with his characters 191 Moral and political indifference of his plays 192 Value as a poetic artist 195 Power of expression by action, rhythm, diction 200 CHAPTER VII. TERENCE AND THE COMIC POETS SUBSEQUENT TO PLAUTUS. Comedy between the time of Plautus and Terence 204 Caecilius Statius 204 Scipionic Circle 206 Complete Hellenising of Roman Comedy 207 Conflicting accounts of life of Terence 207 Order in which his Plays were produced 209 His 'prologues' as indicative of his individuality 210 'Dimidiatus Menander' 212 Epicurean 'humanity' chief characteristic 213 Sentimental motive of his pieces 214 Minute delineations of character 215 Diction and rhythm 217 Influence on the style and sentiment of Horace 218 Modern estimates of Terence 220 Comoedia Togata, Atellanae, Mimus 220 CHAPTER VIII. EARLY ROMAN SATIRE. C. LUCILIUS, DIED 102 B.C. Independent origin of Roman satire 222 Essentially Roman in form and spirit 224 " " in its political and censorial function 225 Personal and miscellaneous character of early satire 227 Critical epoch at which Lucilius appeared 229 Question as to the date of his birth 229 Fragments chiefly preserved by grammarians 232 Miscellaneous character and desultory treatment of subjects 233 Traces of subjects treated in different books 234 Impression of the author's personality 236 Political character of Lucilian satire 238 Social vices satirised in it 239 Intellectual peculiarities 243 Literary criticism 245 His style 246 Grounds of his popularity 249 CHAPTER IX. REVIEW OF THE FIRST PERIOD. Common aspects in the lives of poets in the second century B.C. 253 Popular and national character of their works 256 Political condition of the time reflected in its literature 257 Defects of the poetic literature in form and style 259 Other forms of literature cultivated in that age 260 Oratory and history 260 Familiar letters 262 Critical and grammatical studies 263 Summary of character of the first period 264 SECOND PERIOD. THE CLOSE OF THE REPUBLIC. CHAPTER X. TRANSITION FROM LUCILIUS TO LUCRETIUS. Dearth of poetical works during the next half century 269 Literary taste confined to the upper classes 271 Great advance in Latin prose writing 272 Influence of this on the style of Lucretius and Catullus 273 Closer contact with the mind and art of Greece 273 Effects of the political unsettlement on the contemplative life and thought 275 " on the life of pleasure, and the art founded on it 277 The two representatives of the thought and art of the time 278 CHAPTER XI. LUCRETIUS. PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS. Little known of him from external sources 280 Examination of Jerome's statement 284 Inferences as to his national and social position 287 Relation to Memmius 288 Impression of the author to be traced in his poem 290 Influence produced by the action of his age 290 Minute familiarity with Nature and country life 292 Spirit in which he wrote his work 294 His consciousness of power and delight in his task 295 His polemical spirit 298 Reverence for Epicurus 299 Affinity to Empedocles 300 Influence of other Greek writers 302 " of Ennius 303 His interests speculative, not national 304 His Roman temperament 305 CHAPTER XII. THE PHILOSOPHY OF LUCRETIUS. Three aspects of the poem 307 General scope of the argument 308 Analysis of the poem 308 Question as to its unfinished condition 321 What is the value of the argument? 324 Weakness of his science 329 Interest of the work as an exposition of ancient physical enquiry 331 " from its bearing on modern questions 332 Power of scientific reasoning, observation, and expression 335 Connecting links between his philosophy and poetry 340 Idea of law 341 " of change 344 " of the infinite 347 " of the individual 348 " of the subtlety of Nature 349 " of Nature as a living power 350 CHAPTER XIII. THE RELIGIOUS ATTITUDE AND MORAL TEACHING OF LUCRETIUS. General character of Greek epicureanism 356 Prevalence at Rome in the last age of the Republic 358 New type of epicureanism in Lucretius 360 Forms of evil against which his teaching was directed 363 Superstition 364 Fear of death 369 Ambition 374 Luxury 375 Passion of love 376 Limitation of his ethical views 378 His literary power as a moralist 381 CHAPTER XIV. THE LITERARY ART AND GENIUS OF LUCRETIUS. Artistic defects of the work 384 " arising from the nature of the subject 385 " from inequality in its execution 387 Intensity of feeling pervading the argument 388 Cumulative force in his rhythm 389 Qualities of his style 390 Freshness and sincerity of expression 392 Imaginative suggestiveness and creativeness 394 Use of analogies 395 Pictorial power 397 Poetical interpretation of Nature 398 Energy of movement in his descriptions 400 Poetic aspect of Nature influenced by his philosophy 402 Poetical interpretation of life 403 Modern interest of his poem 406 CHAPTER XV. CATULLUS. Contrast to the poetry of Lucretius 408 The poetry of youth 409 Accidental preservation of the poems 410 Principle of their arrangement 412 Vivid personal revelation afforded by them 413 Uncertainty as to the date of his birth 414 Birth-place and social standing 417 Influences of his native district 419 Identity of Lesbia and Clodia 422 Poems written between 61 and 57 B.C. 425 Poems connected with his Bithynian journey 429 Poems written between 56 and 54 B.C. 433 Character of his poems, founded on the passion of love 436 " " " on friendship and affection 439 His short satirical pieces 444 Other poems expressive of personal feeling 450 Qualities of style in these poems 452 " of rhythm 453 " of form 454 The Hymn to Diana 455 His longer and more purely artistic pieces 456 His Epithalamia 457 His Attis 461 The Peleus and Thetis 462 The longer elegiac poems 469 Rank of Catullus among the poets of the world 472 THE ROMAN POETS OF THE REPUBLIC. CHAPTER I. GENERAL CHARACTER OF ROMAN POETRY. A great fluctuation of opinion has taken place, among scholars and critics, in regard to the worth of Latin Poetry. From the revival of learning till the end of last century, the poets of ancient Rome, and especially those of the Augustan age, were esteemed the purest models of literary art, and were the most familiar exponents of the life and spirit of antiquity. Their works were the chief instruments of the higher education. They were studied, imitated, and translated by some of the greatest poets of modern Europe; and they supplied their favourite texts and illustrations to moralists and humourists, from Montaigne to the famous English essayists who flourished during the last century. Up to a still later period, their words were habitually used in political debate to add weight to argument and point to invective. Perhaps no other writers, during so long a period, exercised so powerful an influence, not on literary style and taste only, but on the character and understanding, of educated men in the leading nations of the modern world. It was natural that this excessive deference to their authority should be impaired both by the ampler recognition of the claims of modern poetry, and by a more intimate familiarity with Greek literature. They have suffered, in the estimation of literary critics, from the change in poetical taste which commenced about the beginning of the present century, and, in that of scholars, from the superior attractions of the great epic, dramatic, and lyrical poets of Greece. They were thus, for some time, the objects of undue disparagement rather than of undue admiration. The perception of the large debt which they owed to their Greek masters, led to some forgetfulness of their original merits. Their Roman character and Italian feeling were insufficiently recognised under the foreign forms and metres in which these qualities were expressed. It used to be said, with some appearance of plausibility, that Roman poetry is not only much inferior in interest to the poetry of Greece, but that it is a work of cultivated imitation, not of creative art; that other forms of literature were the true expression of the genius of the Roman people; that their poets brought nothing new into the world; that they enriched the life of after times with no pure vein of native feeling, nor any impressive record of national experience. It is, indeed, impossible to claim for Roman poetry the unborrowed glory or the varied inspiration of the earlier art of Greece. To the genius of Greece alone can the words of the bard in the Odyssey be applied, [Greek: autodidaktos d' eimi, theos de moi en phresin oimas pantoias enephysen[1].] Besides possessing the charm of poetical feeling and artistic form in unequalled measure, Greek poetry is to modern readers the immediate revelation of a new world of thought and action, in all its lights and shadows and moving life. Like their politics, the poetry of the Greeks sprang from many independent centres, and renewed itself in every epoch of the national civilisation. Roman poetry, on the other hand, has neither the same novelty nor variety of matter; nor did it, like the epic, lyric, dramatic, and idyllic poetry of Greece, adapt itself to the changing phases of human life in different generations and different States. But the poets of Rome have another kind of value. There is a charm in their language and sentiment distinct from that which is found in any other literature of the world. Certain deep and abiding impressions are stamped upon their works, which have penetrated into the cultivated sentiment of modern times. If, as we read them, the imagination is not so powerfully stimulated by the revelation of a new world, yet, in the elevated tones of Roman poetry, there is felt to be a permanent affinity with the strength and dignity of man's moral nature; and, in the finer and softer tones, a power to move the heart to sympathy with the beauty, the enjoyment, and the natural sorrows of a bygone life. If we are no longer moved by the eager hopes and buoyant fancies of the youthful prime of the ancient world, we seem to gather up, with a more sober sympathy, the fruits of its mature experience and mellowed reflexion. While the literature and civilisation of Greece were still unknown to them, the Romans had produced certain rude kinds of metrical composition; they preserved some knowledge of their history in various kinds of chronicles or annals: they must have been trained to some skill in oratory by the contests of public life, and by the practice of delivering commemorative speeches at the funerals of famous men. But they cannot be said to have produced spontaneously any works of literary art. Their oratory, history, poetry, and philosophy owed their first impulse to their intellectual contact with Greece. And while the form and expression of all Roman literature were moulded by the teaching of Greek masters and the study of Greek writings, the debt incurred by the poetry and philosophy of Rome was greater than that incurred by her oratory and history. The two latter assumed a more distinct type, and adapted themselves more naturally to the genius of the people and the circumstances of the State. They were the work of men for the most part eminent in the State; and they bore directly on the practical wants of the times in which they were cultivated. Even the structure of the Latin language testifies to the oratorical force and ardour by which it was moulded into symmetry; as the language of Greece betrays the plastic and harmonising power of her early poetry. There is no improbability in the supposition that, if Greek literature had never existed, or had remained unknown to the Romans, the political passions and necessities of the Republic would have called forth a series of powerful orators; and that the national instinct, which clung with such strong tenacity to the past, would, with the advance of power and civilisation, have produced a type of history, capable of giving adequate expression to the traditions and continuous annals of the commonwealth. But their poetry, on the other hand, came to the Romans after their habits were fully formed[2], as an ornamental addition to their power,--[Greek: kêpion kai enkallôpisma ploytou]. Unlike the poetry of Greece, it was not addressed to the popular ear, nor was it an immediate emanation from the popular heart. The poets who commemorated the greatness of Rome, or who sang of the passions and pleasures of private life, in the ages immediately before and after the establishment of the Empire, were, for the most part, men born in the provinces of Italy, neither trained in the formal discipline of Rome, nor taking any active part in practical affairs. Their tastes and feelings are, in some ways, rather Italian than purely Roman; their thoughts and convictions are rather of a cosmopolitan type than moulded on the national traditions. They drew the materials of their art as much from the stores of Greek poetry as from the life and action of their own times. Their art is thus a composite structure, in which old forms are combined with altered conditions; in which the fancies of earlier times reappear in a new language, and the spirit of Greece is seen interpenetrating the grave temperament of Rome, and the genial nature of Italy. But, although oratory and history may have been more essential to the national life of the Romans, and more adapted to their genius, their poetry still remains their most complete literary expression. Of the many famous orators of the Republic one only has left his speeches to modern times. The works of the two greatest Roman historians have reached us in a mutilated shape; and the most important periods in the later history of the Republic are not represented in what remains of the works of any Latin writer. Tacitus records only the sombre and monotonous annals of the early Empire; and the extant books of Livy contain the account of times and events from which he himself was separated by many generations. Roman poetry, on the other hand, is the contemporary witness of several important eras in the history of the Republic and the Empire. It includes many authentic and characteristic fragments from the great times of the Scipios,--the complete works of the two poets of finest genius, who flourished in the last days of the Republic,--the masterpieces of the brilliant Augustan era;--and, of the works of the Empire, more than are needed to exemplify the decay of natural feeling and of poetical inspiration under the deadening pressure of Imperialism. And, besides illustrating different eras, the Roman poets throw light on the most various aspects of Roman life and character. They are the most authentic witnesses both of the national sentiment and ideas, and of the feelings and interests of private life. They stamp on the imagination the ideal of Roman majesty; and they bring home to modern sympathies the charm and the pathos of the old Italian life, and the activities and humours of society in the great capital of pleasure and business. Roman poetry was the living heir, not the lifeless reproduction of the genius of Greece. If it seems to have been a highly-trained accomplishment rather than the irrepressible outpouring of a natural faculty, still this accomplishment was based upon original gifts of feeling and character, and was marked by its own peculiar features. The creative energy of the Greeks died out with Theocritus; but their learning and taste, surviving the decay of their political existence, passed into the education of a kindred race, endowed, above all other races of antiquity, with the capacity of receiving and assimilating alien influences, and of producing, alike in action and in literature, great results through persistent purpose and concentrated industry. It was owing to their gifts of appreciation and their capacity for labour, that the Roman poets, in the era of the transition from the freedom and vigour of the Republic to the pomp and order of the Empire, succeeded in producing works which, in point of execution, are not much inferior to the masterpieces of Greece. It was due to the spirit of a new race,--speaking a new language, living among different scenes, acting their own part in the history of the world,--that the ancient inspiration survived the extinction of Greek liberty, and reappeared, under altered conditions, in a fresh succession of powerful works, which owe their long existence as much to the vivid feeling as to the artistic perfection by which they are characterised. From one point of view, therefore, Roman poetry may be regarded as an imitative reproduction, from another, as a new revelation of the human spirit. For the form, and for some part of the substance, of their works, the Roman poets were indebted to Greece: the spirit and character, and much also of the substance of their poetry, are native in their origin. They betray their want of inventiveness chiefly in the forms of composition and the metres which they employed; occasionally also in the cast of their poetic diction, and in their conventional treatment of foreign materials. But, in even the least original aspects of their art, they still bear the impress of their nationality. Although, with the exception of Satire and the poetic Epistle, they struck out no new forms of poetic composition, yet those adopted by them assumed something of a new type, owing to the weight of their contents, the massive structure of the Roman language, the fervour and gravity of the Roman temperament, the practical bent and logical mould of the Roman understanding, the strong vitality and the emotional susceptibility of the Italian race. They were not equally successful in all the forms which they attempted to reproduce. They were especially inferior to their masters in tragedy. They betray the inferiority of their dramatic genius also in other fields of literature, especially in epic and idyllic poetry, and in philosophical dialogues. They express passion and feeling either directly from their own hearts and experience, or in great rhetorical passages, attributed to the imaginary personages of their story--to Ariadne or Dido, to Turnus or Mezentius. But this occasional utterance of passion and sentiment is not united in them with a vivid delineation of the complex characters of men; and it is only in their comic poetry that they are quite successful in reproducing the natural and lively interchange of speech. There is thus, as compared with Homer and Theocritus, some want of personal interest in the epic, descriptive, and idyllic poetry of Virgil. The natural play of characters, acting and reacting upon one another, enlivens the divinely-appointed action of the Aeneid, only in such exceptional passages as the episode of Dido; nor does it add the charm of human associations to the poet's deep and quiet pictures of rural beauty, and to his graceful expression of pensive and tender feeling. The Romans, as a race, were wanting in speculative capacity; and thus their poetry does not rise, or rises only in Lucretius, to those imaginative heights from which the great lyrical and dramatic poets of Greece contemplated the spectacle of human life in all its wonder and solemnity. Yet both the epic and the lyrical poetry of Rome have a character and perfection of their own. The Aeneid, with many resemblances in points of detail to the poems of Homer, is yet, in design and execution, a true national monument. The lyrical poetry of Rome, if inferior to the choral poetry of Greece in range of thought and in ethereal grace of expression, and, apparently, to the early Iambic and Melic poetry of Greece in the range of the emotions to which it appeals, is yet an instrument of varied power, capable of investing the more serious or more transient joys and sorrows of life with an unfading charm, and rising into fuller and more commanding tones to express the national sentiment and moral dignity of Rome. Didactic poetry obtained in Lucretius and Virgil ampler volume and profounder meaning than in their Greek models, Empedocles and Hesiod. It was by the skill of the two great Latin poets that poetic art was made to embrace within its province the treatment of a great philosophical argument, and of a great and ancient form of human industry. The Satires and Epistles of Horace showed, for the first time, how the didactic spirit could deal in poetry with the whole conduct and familiar experience of life. The elegiac poets of the Augustan age, while borrowing the metre of their compositions from the early poets of Ionia and the later writers at the court of Alexandria, have taken the substance of their poetry to a great extent from their own lives and interests; and have treated their materials with a fluent and varied brilliancy of style, and often with a graceful tenderness and sincerity of feeling, unborrowed from any foreign source. It may thus be generally affirmed that the Roman poets, although adding little to the great discoveries or inventions in literature, and although not equally successful in all their adaptations of the inventions of their predecessors, have yet left the stamp of their own genius and character on some of the great forms which poetry has assumed. The metres of Roman poetry are also adaptations to the Latin language of the metres previously employed in the epic, lyrical, dramatic and elegiac poetry of Greece. The Italian race had, in earlier times, struck out a native measure, called the Saturnian,--of a rapid and irregular movement,--in which their religious emotions, their festive and satiric raillery, and their commemorative instincts found a rude expression. But after this measure had been rejected by Ennius, as unsuited to the gravity of his greatest work, the Roman poets continued to imitate the metres of their Greek predecessors. But, in their hands, these became characterised by a slower, more stately, and regular movement, not only differing widely from the ring of the native Saturnian rhythm, but also, with every improvement in poetic accomplishment, receding further and further from the freedom and variety of the Greek measures. The comic and tragic measures, in which alone the Roman writers observed a less strict rule than their models, never attained among them to any high metrical excellence. The rhythm of the Greek poets, owing in a great measure to the frequency of vowel sounds in their language, is more flowing, more varied, and more richly musical than that of Roman poetry. Thus, although their verse is constructed on the same metrical laws, there is the most marked contrast between the rapidity and buoyancy of the Iliad or the Odyssey, and the stately and weighty march of the Aeneid. Notwithstanding their outward conformity to the canons of a foreign language, the most powerful and characteristic measures of Roman poetry,--such as the Lucretian and the Virgilian hexameter, and the Horatian alcaic,--are distinguished by a grave, orderly, and commanding tone, symbolical of the genius and the majesty of Rome. In such cases, as the Horatian sapphic and the Ovidian elegiac, where the structure of the verse is too slight to produce this impressive effect, there is still a remarkable divergence from the freedom and manifold harmony of the early Greek poets to a more uniform and monotonous cadence. The diction also of Roman poetry betrays many traces of imitation. Some of the early Latin tragedies were literal translations from the works of the Athenian dramatists; and fragments of the rude Roman copy may still be compared with the polished expression of the original. Some familiar passages of the Iliad may be traced among the rough-hewn fragments of the Annals of Ennius. Even Lucretius, whose diction, more than that of most poets, produces the impression of being the immediate creation of his own mind, has described outward objects, and clothed his thoughts, in language borrowed from Homer, Empedocles, and Euripides. The short volume of Catullus contains translations from Sappho and Callimachus, and frequent imitations of other Greek poets; and, from the extant fragments of Alcaeus, Anacreon, and others of the Greek lyric poets, it may be seen how frequently Horace availed himself of some turn of their expression to invest his own experience with old poetic associations. Virgil, whose great success is, in no slight measure, due to the skill and taste with which he used the materials of earlier Greek and native writers, has reproduced the heroic tones of Homer in his epic, and the mellow cadences of Theocritus in his pastoral poems; and has blended something of the antique quaintness and oracular sanctity of Hesiod with the golden perfection of his Georgics. But besides the direct debt which each Roman poet owed to the Greek author or authors whom he imitated, it is difficult to estimate the extent to which the taste of the later Romans was formed by the familiar study of Greek literature. The habitual study of any foreign language has an influence not on style only, but even on the structure of thought and the development of emotion. The Roman poets first learned, from the study of Greek poetry, to feel the graceful combinations and the musical power of expression, and were thus stimulated and trained to elicit similar effects from their native language. It is for this gift, or power over language, that Lucretius prays in his invocation to the creative power of Nature,-- Quo magis aeternum da dictis, diva, leporem; and those who came after him devoted still greater study to attain perfection in the diction and rhythm of poetry. But their success was gained with some loss of direct force and freshness in the expression of feeling. In Virgil and in Horace words are combined in a less natural order than in Homer and the Attic dramatists. Their language does not strike the mind with the spontaneous force of Greek poetry, nor does it seem equally capable of gaining and retaining the ear of a popular audience. Catullus alone among the great Roman poets combines in those short poems, which are the direct expression of his feeling, perfect grace with the happiest freedom and simplicity. Yet the studied and compact diction of Latin poetry, if wanting in fluency, ease, and directness, lays a strong hold upon the mind, by its power of marking with emphasis what is most essential and prominent in the ideas and objects presented to the imagination. The thought and sentiment of Rome have thus been engraved on her poetical literature, in deep and enduring characters. And, notwithstanding all manifest traces of imitation, the diction of the greatest Roman poets attests the presence of genuine creative power. A strong vital force is recognised in the direct and vigorous diction of Ennius and Lucretius; and, though more latent, it is felt no less really to pervade the stateliness and chastened splendour of Virgil, and the subtle moderation of Horace. Roman poetry owes also a considerable part of its substance to Greek thought, art, and traditions. This is the chief explanation of that conventional character which detracts from the originality of some of the masterpieces of Roman genius. The old religious belief of Rome and Italy became merged in the poetical restoration of the Olympian Gods; the story of the origin of Rome was inseparably connected with the personages of Greek poetry; the familiar manners of a late civilisation appear in unnatural association with the idealised features of the heroic age. Even the expression of personal feeling, experience, and convictions is often coloured by light reflected from earlier representations. Hence a good deal of Latin poetry appears to fit less closely to the facts of human life, than the best poetry of Greece and of modern nations. This imitative and composite workmanship is more apparent in the later than in the earlier poets. The substance and thought of Ennius, Lucretius, and Catullus, even when they reproduce Greek materials, appear to be more vivified by their own feeling than the substance and thought of the Augustan poets. The beautiful and stately forms of Greek legend, which lived a second life in the young imagination of Catullus, were becoming trite and conventional to Virgil:-- Cetera, quae vacuas tenuissent carmine mentes, Omnia jam vulgata. The ideal aspect of the golden morning of the world has been seized with a truer feeling in the Epithalamium of Peleus and Thetis than in the episode of the 'Pastor Aristaeus' in the Georgics. Not only are the main features in the story of the Aeneid of foreign origin, but the treatment of the story betrays some want of vital sympathy with the heterogeneous elements out of which it is composed. The poem is a religious as well as a great national work; but the religious creed which is expressed in it is a composite result of Greek mythology, of Roman sentiment, and of ideas derived from an eclectic philosophy. The manners represented in the poem are a medley of the Augustan and of the Homeric age, as seen in vague proportions, through the mists of antiquarian learning. It must, indeed, be remembered that Greek traditions had penetrated into the life of the whole civilised world, and that the belief in the connexion of Rome with Troy had rooted itself in the Roman mind for two centuries before the time of Virgil. Still, the tale of the settlement of Aeneas in Latium, as told in the great Roman epics, bears the mark of the artificial construction of a late and prosaic era, not of the spontaneous growth of imaginative legend, in a lively and creative age. So, also, in another sphere of poetry, while there are genuine touches of nature in all the odes of Horace, yet the reproduction of Greek mythology which plays so large a part in many of them is a result of his artistic sympathy, and has not any vital root in his own belief or the beliefs of his age. Roman poetry, from this point of view, appears to be the old Greek art reappearing under new conditions: or rather the new art of the civilised world, after it had been leavened by Greek thought, taste, and education. The poetry of Rome was, however, a living power, after the creative energy of Greece had disappeared, so that, were it nothing more, that literature would still be valuable as the fruit of the later summer of antiquity. As in Homer, the earliest poet of the ancient world, there is a kind of promise of the great life that was to be; so, in the Augustan poets, there is a retrospective contemplation of the life, the religion, and the art of the past,--a gathering up of 'the long results of time.' But the Roman poets had also a strong vein of original character and feeling, and many phases of national and personal experience to reveal. They had to give a permanent expression to the idea of Rome, and to perpetuate the charm of the land and life of Italy. In their highest tones, they give utterance to the patriotic spirit, the dignified and commanding attributes, and the moral strength of the Imperial Republic. But other elements in their art proclaim their large inheritance of the receptive and emotional nature which, in ancient as in modern times, has characterised the Southern nations. As the patrician and plebeian orders were united in the imperial greatness of the commonwealth, as the energy of Rome and of the other Italian communities was welded together to form a mighty national life, so these apparently antagonistic elements combined to create the majesty and beauty of Roman poetry. Either of these elements would by itself have been unproductive and incomplete. The pure Roman temperament was too austere, too unsympathetic, too restrained and formal, to create and foster a luxuriant growth of poetry: the genial nature of the south, when dissociated from the control of manlier instincts and the elevation of higher ideals, tended to degenerate into licentious effeminacy, both in life and literature. The fragments of the earlier tragic and epic poets indicate the predominance of the gravity and the masculine strength inherent in the Roman temper, almost to the exclusion of the other element. Roman comedy, on the other hand, gave full play to Italian vivacity and sensuousness with only slight restraint from the higher instincts inherited from ancient discipline. In Lucretius, Virgil, and Horace, moral energy and dignity of character are most happily combined with susceptibility to the charm and the power of Nature. Catullus and the elegiac poets of the Augustan age abandoned themselves to the passionate enjoyment of their lives, under little restraint either from the pride or the virtue of their forefathers. Their faults and weaknesses are of a type apparently most opposed to the tendencies of the higher Roman character. Yet even these may be looked upon as a kind of indirect testimony to the ancient vigour of the race. Catullus, in his very coarseness, betrays the grain of that strong nature, out of which the freedom and energy of the Republic had been developed. Ovid, in his libertinism, displays his vigorous and ardent vitality. The indifference of Tibullus and Propertius to the graver duties and interests of life, looks like a reaction from a standard of manliness too high to be permanently upheld. Among the most truly Roman characteristics of Latin poetry, national and patriotic sentiment is conspicuous. Among the poets of the Republic, Naevius and Lucilius were animated by political as well as national feeling. The chief work of Ennius was devoted to the commemoration of the ancient traditions, the august institutions, the advancing power, and the great character of the Roman State. In the works of the Augustan age, the fine episodes of the Georgics, the whole plan and many of the details of the Aeneid, show the spell exercised over the mind of Virgil by the ancient memories and the great destiny of his country, and bear witness to his deep love of Italy, and his pride in her natural beauty and her strong breed of men. Horace rises above his irony and epicureanism, to celebrate the imperial majesty of Rome, and to bear witness to the purity of the Sabine households, and to the virtues exhibited in the best types of Roman character. The Fasti of Ovid, also, is a national poem, owing its existence to the renewed interest imparted to the mythical and early story of Rome by the establishment of the Empire. The other elegiac poets, though they devote much less of their writings to the subject, yet betray a graver and deeper feeling in the rare passages in which they appeal to patriotic memories. The poets of the latest age of the Republic alone express little sympathy with national or public interests. The time in which they flourished was not favourable to the pride of patriotism or to political enthusiasm. The contemplative genius of Lucretius separated him from the pursuits of active life; and his philosophy taught the lesson that to acquiesce in any government was better than to engage in the strife of personal ambition:-- Ut satius multo jam sit parere quietum Quam regere imperio res velle et regna tenere. Catullus, while eagerly enjoying his life, seems, in regard to the political turmoil of his time, to 'daff the world aside, and bid it pass': yet there is, as has been well said[3], a rough republican flavour in his careless satire; and he retained to the last, and boldly asserted, what was the earliest, as well as the latest, instinct of ancient liberty--the spirit of resistance to the arbitrary rule of any single man. Roman poetry is pervaded also by a peculiar vein of imaginative emotion. There is no feeling so characteristic of the higher works of Roman genius as the sense of majesty. This feeling is called forth by the idea or outward manifestation of strength, stability, vastness, and order; by whatever impresses the imagination as the symbol of power and authority, whether in the aspect of Nature, or in the works, actions, and institutions of man. It is in their most serious and elevated writings, and chiefly in their epic and didactic poetry, that the Romans show their peculiar susceptibility to this grave and dignified emotion. Even the plain and rude diction of Ennius rises into rugged grandeur when he is moved by the vastness or massive strength of outward things, by 'the pomp and circumstance' of war, or by the august forms and symbols of government. The majestic tones of Lucretius seem to give a voice to the deep feeling of the order and immensity of the universe which possessed him. The sustained dignity of the Aeneid, and the splendour of some of its finest passages--such for instance as that which brings before us the solemn and magnificent spectacle of the fall of Troy--attest how the imagination of Virgil was moved to sympathy with the attributes of ancient and powerful sovereignty. Further, in the fervour and dignity of their moral feeling, the Roman poets are true exponents of the genius of Rome. Their spirit is more authoritative, and less speculative than that of Greek poetry. They speak rather from the will and conscience than from the wisdom that has searched and understood the ways of life. Greek poetry strengthens the will or purifies the heart indirectly, by its truthful representation of the tragic situations in human life; Roman poetry appeals directly to the manlier instincts and more magnanimous impulses of our nature. This glow of moral emotion pervades not the poetry only, but the oratory, history, and philosophy of Rome. It has cast a kind of religious solemnity around the fragments of the early epic, tragic, and satiric poetry: it has given an intenser fervour to the stern consistency and desperate fortitude of Lucretius: it has added the element of strength to the pathos and fine humanity in the Aeneid. It is by his moral, as well as his national enthusiasm, that Horace reveals the Roman gravity that tempered his genial nature. The language of Lucan, Persius, and Juvenal still breathed the same spirit in the deadening atmosphere of the Empire. Of the greater poets of Rome, Catullus alone shows little trace of this grave ardour of feeling, the more usual accompaniment of the firm temper of manhood than of the prodigal genius of youth. There are, however, as was said above, other feelings expressed in Roman poetry, more akin to modern sympathies. In no other branch of ancient literature is so much prominence given to the enjoyment of Nature, the passion of love, and the joys, sorrows, tastes, and pursuits of the individual. The gravity and austerity of the old Roman life, and the predominance of public over private interest in the best days of the Republic, tended to repress, rather than to foster, the birth of these new modes of emotion. They are like the flower of that more luxuriant but less stately Italian life which spread itself abroad under the shadow of Roman institutions, and came to a rapid maturity after her conquests had brought to Rome the accumulated treasures of the world, and left to her more fortunate sons ample leisure to enjoy them. The love of natural scenery and of country life is certainly more prominently expressed in Roman than in Greek poetry. Homer, indeed, among all the poets of antiquity, presents the most vivid and true description of the outward world; and the imagination of Pindar and the Attic dramatists appears to have been strongly, though indirectly, affected both by the immediate aspect and by the invisible power of Nature. Thucydides and Aristophanes testify to the enjoyment which the Athenians found in the ease and abundance of their country life, and to the affection with which they clung to the old religious customs and associations connected with it. The conscious enjoyment of Nature as a prominent motive of poetry first appears in the Alexandrian era. The great poets of earlier times were too deeply penetrated by the thought of the mystery and the grandeur in human life, to dwell much on the spectacle of the outward world. Though their delicate sense of beauty was unconsciously cherished and refined by the air which they breathed, and the scenes by which they were surrounded, yet they do not, like the Roman poets, yield to the passive pleasures derived from contemplating the aspect of the natural world; nor do they express the happiness of passing out of the tumult of the city into the peaceful security of the country. The difference between the two nations in social temper and customs is connected with this difference in their aesthetic susceptibility. The spirit in which a Greek enjoyed his leisure, was one phase of his sociability, his communicativeness, his constant passion for hearing and telling something new,--a disposition which made the [Greek: leschê] a favourite resort so early as the time of Homer, and which is seen still characterising the most typical representatives of the race in the days of St. Paul. The Roman statesman, on the other hand, prized his _otium_ as the healthy repose after strenuous exertion. The chief relaxation to his proud and self-dependent temper consisted in being alone, or at ease with his household and his intimate friends. This desire for rest and retirement was one great element in the Roman taste for country life;--a taste which was manifested among the foremost public men, such as the Scipios and Laelius, long before any trace of it is betrayed in Roman poetry. But, as the practice of spending the unhealthy months of autumn away from Rome became general among the wealthier classes, and as new modes of sentiment were fostered by greater leisure and finer cultivation, a genuine love of Nature,--taking the form either of attachment to particular places, or of enjoyment in the life and beautiful spectacle of the outward world,--was gradually awakened in the more refined spirits of the Italian race. The poetry of the Augustan age and of that immediately preceding it is deeply pervaded by this new sentiment. Each of the great poets manifests the feeling in his own way. Lucretius, while contemplating the majesty of Nature's laws, and the immensity of her range, is at the same time powerfully moved to sympathy with her ever-varying life. He feels the charm of simply living in fine weather, and looking on the common aspects of the world,--such as the sea-shore, fresh pastures and full-flowing rivers, or the new loveliness of the early morning. He represents the punishment of the Danaides as a symbol of the incapacity of the human spirit to enjoy the natural charm of the recurring seasons of the year. Catullus, too, although his active social temper did not respond to the spell which Nature exercised over the contemplative and pensive spirits of Lucretius and Virgil, has many fine images from the outward world in his poems. He delights in comparing the grace and the passion of youth with the bloom of flowers and the stateliness of trees; he associates the beauty of Sirmio with his bright picture of the happiness of home; he feels the return of the genial breezes of spring as enhancing his delight in leaving the dull plains of Phrygia, and in hastening to visit the famous cities of Asia. Virgil's early art was characterised by his friend and brother poet in the lines,-- Molle atque facetum Vergilio annuerunt gaudentes rure camenae[4]. The love of natural, and especially of Italian, beauty blends with all his patriotic memories, and with the charm which he has cast around the common operations of rustic industry. The freedom and peace of his country life, among the Sabine hills, kept the heart of Horace fresh and simple, in spite of all the pleasures and flatteries to which he was exposed; and enabled him, till the end of his course, to mingle the clear fountain of native poetry,--'ingeni benigna vena,'--with the stiller current of his meditative wisdom. The passion of love was a favourite theme both of the early lyrical poets of Greece, and of the courtly writers of Alexandria; but the works of the former have reached us only in inconsiderable fragments; and the latter, with the exception of Theocritus, are much inferior to the Roman poets who made them their models. It is in Latin literature that we are brought most near to the power of this passion in the ancient world. Few among the poets who have recorded their own experience of love, in any age, have expressed a feeling so true or so intense as Catullus. He has all the ardent, self-forgetful devotion, if he wants the chivalry and purity, of modern sentiment. He has painted the love of others also with grateful fidelity. He has shown the finest sense in discerning, and the finest power in delineating the charm of youthful passion, when first awakening into life, or first unfolding into true affection. It is by his delineation of the agony of Dido that Virgil has imparted the chief personal interest to the story of the Aeneid; and the love which finds a voice in his pastoral poems is as ideal as that which has found its truest voice in some of our great modern poets. Horace is the poet of the lighter and gayer moods of the passion. Without ever becoming a slave to it, he experienced enough of its pains and pleasures to enable him to paint the fascination or the waywardness of a mistress with the equable feeling of an epicurean, but, at the same time, with the refined observation of a poet. The elegiac poets of the Augustan age, making pleasure the chief pursuit of their lives, have made the more sensuous phases of this passion the predominant motive of their poetry. Yet the tenderness of Tibullus is as genuine as that of Virgil; there is ardent emotion expressed by Propertius for his living mistress, and deep feeling in the lines in which he recalls her memory after death; the license of Ovid is, if not redeemed, at least relieved, by his buoyant wit and his brilliant fancy. Roman poetry is also interesting as the revelation of personal experience and character. The biographies of ancient authors are, for the most part, meagre and untrustworthy; and thus it is chiefly through the conscious or unconscious self-portraiture in their writings that the actual men of antiquity are brought into close contact with the modern world. Few men of any age or country are so well known to us as Horace; and it is from his own writings, exclusively, that this intimate knowledge has been obtained. The lines in which he describes Lucilius are more applicable to himself than to any extant writer of Greece or Rome,-- Ille velut fidis arcana sodalibus olim Credebat libris: neque si male cesserat, unquam Decurrens alio, neque si bene: quo fit, ut omnis Votiva pateat veluti descripta tabella Vita senis[5]. He has described himself, his tastes and pursuits, his thoughts and convictions, with perfect frankness and candour, and without any of the triviality or affectation of literary egotism. Catullus, although sometimes wanting in proper reticence, and altogether devoid of that meditative art with which Horace transmutes his own experience into the common experience of human nature, is known also as a familiar friend, from the force of feeling with which he realised, and the transparent sincerity with which he recorded, all the pain and the pleasure of his life. The elegiac poets of the Augustan age have written, neither from so strong a heart as that of Catullus, nor with the self-restraint and self-respect of Horace; but yet one of the chief sources of interest in their poetry, as of that of Martial in a later age, arises from their strong realisation of life, their unreserved communicativeness, and the light they thus throw on one phase of personal and social manners in ancient times. Nor are these indications of individual character confined to the poets who profess to communicate their own feelings, and to record their own fortunes. All the works of Roman poetry bear emphatically the impress of their authors. While the finest Greek poetry seems like an almost impersonal emanation of genius, Roman poetry is, to a much greater extent, the impression of character. The great Roman writers manifest that kind of self-consciousness which accompanies resolute and successful effort; while the Greeks enjoy that happy self-forgetfulness which attends the unimpeded exercise of a natural gift. The epitaphs composed for themselves by Naevius, Plautus, Ennius, and Pacuvius, and the assertion of their own originality and of their hopes of fame which occurs in the poetry of Lucretius, Virgil, and Horace, were dictated by a strong sense of their own personality, and of the importance of the task on which they were engaged. Catullus, although he is much preoccupied with, and most frank in communicating his feelings and pursuits, has much less of the consciousness of genius, is much more humble in his aspirations, and more modest in his estimate of himself. In this, as in other respects, he approaches nearer to the type of Greek art than any of his brother-poets of Rome. It is a common remark that the very greatest poets are those about whose personal characteristics least is known. It is impossible in their case to determine how far they have expressed their real sympathies or convictions. They rise above the prejudices of their country and the accidents of their time, and can see the good and evil inseparably mixed in all human action. No criticism can throw any trustworthy light on the personal position, the pursuits and aims, the outward and inward experience of Homer. It cannot even be determined with certainty how much of the poetry which bears his name is the creation of one, seemingly, inexhaustible genius; and how much is the 'divine voice' of earlier singers still 'floating around him.' Such inquiries are ever attracting and ever baffling a high curiosity. They leave the mind perplexed with the doubt whether it is discerning, in the far distance, the outline of solid mountain-land, or only the transient shapes of the clouds. Hesiod, on the other hand, a poet of perhaps equal antiquity, but of an infinitely lower order of genius, has left his own likeness graphically delineated on his remains. There is much to interest a reader in the old didactic poem, 'The Works and Days,' but it is not the interest of studying a work of art or of creative genius. The charm of the book consists partly in its power of calling up the ideas of a remote antiquity and of human life in its most elemental conditions; partly in the distinct impression which it bears of a character of an antique and primitive and yet not unfamiliar type;--a character of deep natural piety and righteousness, but with a quaint intermixture of other qualities;--homespun sagacity and worldly wisdom; genuine thrift, and horror of idleness, of war, of seafaring enterprise;--sardonic dislike of the airs and vices of women, and a grim discontent with his own condition, and with the poor soil which it was his lot to till[6]. It is through his want of those gifts of genius which have made Homer immortal as a poet, and a mere name as a man, that Hesiod has left so distinct a picture of himself to the latest times. In like manner Roman poetry, while never rising to the heights of purely creative and impersonal genius, from this very defect, is a truer revelation of the poets themselves. The Aeneid supplies ample materials for understanding the affections and convictions of Virgil. Lucretius makes his personal presence felt through the whole march of his argument, and supports every position of his system not with his logic only, but with the whole force of his nature. The fragments of Ennius and of Lucilius afford ample evidence by which we may judge what kind of men they were. It thus appears that, over and above their higher and finer excellences, the Roman poets have this additional source of interest, that, more than any other authors in the vigorous times of antiquity, they satisfy the modern curiosity in regard to personal character and experience. These poets have themselves left the most trustworthy record of their happiest hours and most real interests; of their standard of conduct, their personal worth, and their strength of affection; of the studies and the occupations in which they passed their lives, and of the spirit in which they awaited the certainty of their end. It remains to say a few words in regard to the historical progress of this branch of literature. The history of Roman poetry may be divided into four great periods:-- I. The age of Naevius, Ennius, Lucilius, etc., extending from about B.C. 240 till about B.C. 100: II. The age of Lucretius and Catullus, whose active poetical career belongs to the last age of the Republic, the decennium before the outbreak of the Civil War between Caesar and Pompey: III. The Augustan age: IV. The whole period of the Empire after the time of Augustus. The poetry of each of these periods is distinctly marked in form, style, and character. There is evidently a great advance in artistic accomplishment and in poetical feeling, from the rude cyclopean remains of the annals of Ennius to the stately proportions and elaborate workmanship of the Aeneid. Yet this advance was attended with some loss as well as gain. With infinitely less accomplishment and less variety, the older writers show signs of a robuster life and a more vigorous understanding than some at least of those who adorn the Augustan era. They endeavoured to work in the spirit of the great masters, who had made the most heroic passions and most serious interests of men the subject of their art. They were men also of the same fibre as the chief actors on the stage of public affairs, living with them in familiar friendship, while at the same time maintaining a close sympathy with popular feeling and the national life. Their fragments are thus, apart from their intrinsic merits, especially valuable as the contemporary language of that great time, and as giving some expression to the strength, the dignity, and the freedom which were stamped upon the old Republic. For more than a generation after the death of Accius and Lucilius, no new poet of any eminence appeared at Rome. The vivid enjoyment of life and the sense of security which usually accompany and foster the successful cultivation of art had been rudely interrupted by the convulsions of the State. A new birth of Roman poetry took place during the brief lull between the storms of the first and second civil wars. The new poets arose independently of the old literature. They appealed not to popular favour, but to the tastes of the few and the educated; they gave expression not to any public or national sentiment, but to their individual thought and feeling. Their works reflect the restless agitation of a time of revolution; but they show also all the vigour and sincerity of republican freedom. While greatly superior to the fragments of the older poetry in refinement of style, and in depth and variety of poetical feeling, they want the simple strength of moral conviction, and the interest in great practical affairs, which characterised their predecessors. They are inferior to the poets of the Augustan age in artistic skill; but they show more force of thought, or more intensity of passion, a stronger and livelier inspiration, a bolder and more independent character. The short interval between the death of Catullus and the appearance of the Bucolics of Virgil marks the beginning of a new era in literature and in history: Magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo. Catullus, dying only a few years before the extinction of popular freedom, is, in every nerve and fibre, the poet of a republic. Virgil, even before the final success of Augustus, proclaimed the advent of the new Empire; and he became the sincere admirer and interpreter of its order and magnificence. Most of the other poets of that age, though born before the overthrow of the Republic, show the influence of their time, not only by sympathy with or acquiescence in the new order of things, but by a perceptible lowering in the higher energies of life. Still, the poetry of the Augustan age, if inferior in natural force to that of the Republic, is the culmination of all the previous efforts of Roman art; and presents at the same time the most complete and elaborate picture of Roman and Italian life. The chief interest of Roman poetry, considered as the work of men of natural genius and cultivated taste, and as the expression of great national ideas or of individual thought and impulse, ceases with the end of the Augustan age. Under the continued pressure of the Empire, true poetical inspiration and pure feeling for art were lost. One certain test of this decay is the absence of musical power and sweetness from the verse of the later poets. Yet some of the poets of the Empire have their own peculiar value. Lucan and Juvenal recall in their vigorous rhetoric the masculine tone and fervid feeling of the old Roman character, liberalised by the progress of thought and education. In the Satires of Persius, there is an atmosphere of purer morality than in any earlier Roman writer, with the exception of Cicero. There is much vigour, sense, wit, and a keen appreciation of life, intermingled with the coarseness of Martial. Yet it is owing rather to their rhetorical or their intellectual ability and to their historical interest, than to their poetical genius, that these writers are still read and admired. If good taste, culture, and devotion to the Muses could make a man a poet in an unpoetical age, Statius would be counted among the great poets of Rome. The artificial epics of Silius Italicus and Valerius Flaccus may be occasionally read in the interests of learning: but it is hardly probable that they will, or desirable that they should, ever be permanently restored from the neglect and oblivion into which they have long been sinking. This review of Roman poetry will bring before us the origin and progressive growth of a branch of literature, moulded, indeed, on the forms of a foreign art, but executed with native energy, and expressive of native character. In this poetry not the genius only, but the whole nature and sympathies of some of the more interesting men of antiquity are displayed. It throws light on the impulses of thought and feeling which influenced the action of different epochs in Roman history. The great qualities of Rome are seen to mould and animate her poetry. These qualities are found in harmonious union with the spirit of enjoyment and the sense of exuberant life, fostered by the genial air of Italy; and with a refinement of taste drawn from the purest source of human culture which the world has ever enjoyed. After all deductions have been made for their want of inventiveness, it still remains true, that the Roman poets of the last days of the Republic and of the Augustan age have added to the masterpieces of literature some great works of native feeling as well as of finished execution. [Footnote 1: Hom. Od. xxii. 347.] [Footnote 2: Cf. Cic. Tusc. Disp. i. 2, 3. Sero igitur a nostris poetae vel cogniti vel recepti. At contra oratorem celeriter complexi sumus: nec cum primo eruditum, aptum tamen ad dicendum.] [Footnote 3: Smith's Dict. of Greek and Roman Biography, art. Catullus.] [Footnote 4: Horace, Sat. i. 10. 45.] [Footnote 5: 'He used from time to time to intrust all his secret thoughts to his books, as to trusty friends; it was to them only he turned in evil fortune or in good; and thus it is, that the whole life of the old poet lies before our eyes, as if it were portrayed on a votive picture.'--Sat. ii. 1. 30.] [Footnote 6: The parallel which Mr. Ruskin draws (Modern Painters, vol. iii. p. 194) between an ancient Greek and 'a good, conscientious, but illiterate Scotch Presbyterian Border farmer of a century or two back,' becomes intelligible if we regard Hesiod as a normal type of the Greek mind.] CHAPTER II. VESTIGES OF EARLY INDIGENOUS POETRY IN ROME AND ANCIENT ITALY. The Romans themselves traced the origin of their poetry, as of all their literary culture, to their contact with the mind of Greece. Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit, et artes Intulit agresti Latio. The first productive literary impulse was communicated to the Roman mind by the Greek slave, Livius Andronicus, who, in the year B.C. 240--one year after the end of the First Punic War--brought out, before a Roman audience, a drama translated or imitated from the Greek. From this time Roman poetry advanced along the various channels which the creative energy of Greek genius had formed. But it has been maintained, in recent times, that this was but the second birth of Roman poetry, and that a golden age of native minstrelsy had preceded this historical development of literature. The most distinguished supporters of this theory were Niebuhr and Macaulay. In the preface to his _Lays of Rome_, Macaulay says that 'this early literature abounded with metrical romances, such as are found in every country where there is much curiosity and intelligence, but little reading and writing.' Niebuhr went so far as to assert that the Romans in early times possessed epic poems, 'which in power and brilliance of imagination leave everything produced by the Romans in later times far behind them.' He held that the flourishing period of this native poetry was the fifth century after the foundation of the city. He supposed that the early lays were of plebeian origin, strongly animated by plebeian sentiment, and familiarly known among the mass of the people; that they disappeared after the ascendency of the new literature, chiefly through the influence of Ennius; and that his immediate predecessor, Naevius, was the last of the genuine native minstrels. He professed to find clear traces of these ballads and epic poems in the fine legends of early Roman history. His theory was supported by arguments founded on the testimony of ancient writers, on indications of the early recognition of poetry by the Roman State (as, for instance, the worship of the Camenae), on the poetical character of early Roman story, and on the analogy of other nations. Although there may be no more ground for believing in a golden age of early Roman poetry than in a golden age of innocence and happiness, yet the question raised by Niebuhr deserves attention, not only on account of the celebrity which it obtained, but also as opening up an inquiry into the nature and value of the rude germs of literature which the Latin soil spontaneously produced. Though there is no substantial evidence of the existence among the Romans of anything corresponding to the modern ballad or the early epic of Greece, yet certain kinds of metrical composition did spring up and flourish among the Italians, previous to and independent of their knowledge of Greek literature. It is worth while to ascertain what these kinds of composition were, as they throw light on some natural tendencies of the race, which ultimately obtained their adequate expression, and helped to impart a native and original character to Latin literature. It was observed in the former chapter that while the metres of all the great Roman poets were founded on the earlier metres of Greece, there was a native Italian metre, called the Saturnian, which was employed apparently in various kinds of composition, and was quite different in character from the heroic and lyric measures adopted by the cultivated poets of a later age. This metre was used not only in rude extemporaneous effusions, but also in the long poem of Naevius, on the First Punic War. Horace indicates his sense of the roughness and barbarism of the metre, in the lines, Sic horridus ille Defluxit numerus Saturnius, et grave virus Munditiae pepulere[1]. Ennius speaks contemptuously of the verse of Naevius, as that employed by the old prophetic bards, before any of the gifts of poetry had been received or cultivated-- Quum neque musarum scopulos quisquam superarat Nec dicti studiosus erat. The irregularity of the metre may be inferred from a saying of an ancient grammarian, that, in the long epic of Naevius he could find no single line to serve as a normal specimen of its structure. From the few Saturnian lines remaining, it may be inferred that the verse had an irregular trochaic movement; and it seems first to have come into use as an accompaniment to the beating of the foot in a primitive rustic dance. The name, connected with Saturnus, the old Land-God of Italy, points to the rustic origin of the metre. It was known also by the name Faunian, derived from another of the Divinities worshipped in the rural districts of Italy. It seems first to have been employed in ritual prayers and thanksgiving for the fruits of the earth, and in the grotesque raillery accompanying the merriment and license of the harvest-home. It is of the Saturnian verse that Virgil speaks in the lines of the second Georgic-- Nec non Ausonii, Troja gens missa, coloni Versibus incomptis ludunt risuque soluto[2]. As the long roll of the hexameter and the stately march of the alcaic were expressive of the gravity and majesty of the Roman State, so the ring and flow of the Saturnian verse may be regarded as indicative of the freedom and genial enjoyment of life, characterising the old Italian peasantry. The most important kinds of compositions produced in this metre, under purely native influences, may be classed as, 1. Hymns or ritual verses. 2. Prophetic verses. 3. Festive and satiric verses, uttered in dialogue or in rude mimetic drama. 4. Short gnomic or didactic verses. 5. Commemorative odes sung or recited at banquets and funerals. 1. The earliest extant specimen of the Latin language is a fragment of the hymn of the Fratres Arvales, a priestly brotherhood, who offered, on every 15th of May, public sacrifices for the fertility of the fields. This fragment is variously written and interpreted, but there can be no doubt that it is the expression of a prayer for protection against pestilence, addressed to the Lares and the god Mars, and that it was uttered with the accompaniment of dancing. The following is the reading of the fragment, as given by Mommsen:-- Enos, Lases, juvate. Ne veluerve, Marmar, sins incurrere in pleores. Satur fu, fere Mars. Limen sali. Sta berber. Semunis alternis advocapit conctos. Enos, Marmar, juvato. Triumpe, triumpe, triumpe, triumpe, triumpe[3]. The address to Mars 'Satur fu,' or, according to another reading, 'Satur furere,' 'be satisfied or done with raging,' probably refers to the severity of the winter and early spring[4]. The words have reference to the attributes of the God in the old Italian religion, in which the powers of Nature were deified and worshipped long before Mars was identified with the Greek Ares. The other expressions in the prayer appear to be, either directions given to the dancers, or the sounds uttered as the dance proceeded. Another short fragment has been preserved from the hymn of the Salii, also an ancient priesthood, supposed to date from the times of the early kings. The hymn is characterised by Horace, among other specimens of ancient literature, as equally unintelligible to himself and to its affected admirers[5]. From the extreme antiquity of these ceremonial chants it may be inferred that metrical expression among the Romans, as among the Greeks and other ancient nations, owed its origin to a primitive religious worship. But while the early Greek hymns or chants in honour of the Gods soon assumed the forms of pleasant tales of human adventure, or tragic tales of human suffering, the Roman hymns retained their formal and ritual character unchanged among all the changes of creed and language. In the lines just quoted there is no trace of creative fancy, nor any germ of devotional feeling, which might have matured into lyrical or contemplative poetry. They sound like the words of a rude incantation. They are the obscure memorial of a primitive, agricultural people, living in a blind sense of dependence on their gods, and restrained by a superstitious formalism from all activity of thought or fancy. Such compositions cannot be attributed to the inspiration or skill of any early poet, but seem to have been copied from the uncouth and spontaneous shouts of a simple, unsophisticated priesthood, engaged in a rude ceremonial dance. If these hymns stand in any relation to Latin literature, they may perhaps be regarded as springing from the same vein of public sentiment, as called forth the hymn composed by Livius Andronicus during the Second Punic War, and as rude precursors of those composed by Catullus and Horace, and chanted by a chorus of youths and maidens in honour of the protecting Deities of Rome. 2. The verses of the Fauns and Vates spoken of by Ennius, with allusion to the poem of Naevius, in the lines, Scripsere alii rem, Versibu' quos olim Fauni vatesque canebant, were probably as far removed from poetry as the ritual chants of the Salii and the Fratres Arvales. The Fauni were the woodland gods of Italy, and were, besides their other functions, supposed to be endowed with prophetic power[6]. The word _Vates_, till the Augustan age, meant not a poet but a soothsayer. The Camenae or Casmenae (another form of which word appears in Carmenta, the prophetic mother of Evander) were worshipped, not as the inspirers of poetry, but as the foretellers of future events[7]. Both Greeks and Romans sought to obtain a knowledge of the future, either through the interpretation of omens, or through the voice of persons supposed to be divinely endowed with foresight. But the Greeks, even in the regard which they paid to auguries and oracles, were influenced, for the most part, by their lively imagination; while the Romans, from the earliest to the latest eras of their history, in all their relations to the supernatural world, adhered to a scrupulous and unimaginative ceremonialism. The notices in Latin literature of the functions of these early Vates--as, for instance, the counsel of the Etrurian seer to drain the Alban Lake during the war with Veii, and the prophecy of Marcius uttered during the Second Punic War, Amnem Trojugena Cannam Romane fuge, etc.[8], suggest no more idea of poetical inspiration than the occasional notices, in Latin authors, of the oracles of the Sibylline books. The language of prophecy naturally assumes a metrical or rhythmical form, partly as an aid to the memory, partly, perhaps, as a means of giving to the words uttered the effect of a more solemn intonation. In Greece, the oracles of the Delphian priestess, and the predictions of soothsayers, collected in books or circulating orally among the people, were expressed in hexameter verse and in the traditional diction of epic poetry; but they were never ranked under any form of poetic art. The verses of the Vates, so far as any inference can be formed as to their nature, appear to have been products and proofs of unimaginative superstition or imposture, rather than of any imaginative inspiration among the early inhabitants of Latium. 3. Another class of metrical compositions, of native origin, but of a totally opposite character, was known by the name of the 'Fescennine verses.' These arose out of a very different class of feelings and circumstances. Horace attributes their origin to the festive meetings and exuberant mirth of the harvest-home among a primitive, strong, and cheerful race of husbandmen. He points out how this rustic raillery gradually assumed the character of fierce lampoons, and had to be restrained by law:-- Fescennina per hunc inventa licentia morem Versibus alternis opprobria rustica fudit; Libertasque recurrentes accepta per annos Lusit amabiliter, donec jam saevus apertam In rabiem coepit verti jocus et per honestas Ire domos impune minax. Doluere cruento Dente lacessiti; fuit intactis quoque cura Conditione super communi; quin etiam lex Poenaque lata, malo quae nollet carmine quemquam Describi; vertere modum, formidine fustis Ad bene dicendum delectandumque redacti[9]. The change in character, here described, from coarse and good-humoured bantering to libellous scurrility, may be conjectured to have taken place when the Fescennine freedom passed from villages and country districts to the active social and political life within the city. That this change had taken place in Rome at an early period, is proved by the fact that libellous verses were forbidden by the laws of the Twelve Tables[10]. The original Fescennine verse appears, from the testimony of Horace, to have been in metrical dialogue. This rude amusement, in which a coarse kind of banter was interchanged during their festive gatherings, was in early times characteristic of the rural populations of Greece and Sicily, as well as Italy, and was one of the original elements out of which Greek comedy and Greek pastoral poetry were developed. These verses had a kindred origin with that of the Phallic Odes among the Greeks. They both appear to have sprung out of the rudest rites and the grossest symbolism of rustic paganism. The Fescennine raillery long retained traces of this original character. Catullus mentions the 'procax Fescennina locutio,' among the accompaniments of marriage festivals; and the songs of the soldiers, in the extravagant license of the triumphal procession, betrayed unmistakably this primitive coarseness. These rude and inartistic verses, which took their name either from the town of Fescennia in Etruria or from the word fascinum[11], were the first expression of that aggressive and censorious spirit which ultimately animated Roman satire. But the original satura, which also was familiar to the Romans before they became acquainted with Greek literature, was somewhat different both from the Fescennine verses, and from the lampoons which arose out of them. The more probable etymology[12] of the word _satura_ connects it in origin with the _satura lanx_, a plate filled with various kinds of fruit offered to the gods. If this etymology be the true one, the word meant originally a medley of various contents, like the Italian _farsa_[13], and it evidently had not lost this meaning when first employed in regular literature by Ennius and Lucilius. The original satura was a kind of dramatic entertainment, accompanied with music and dancing, differing from the Fescennine verses in being regularly composed and not extemporaneous, and from the drama, in being without a connected plot. The origin of this composition is traced by Livy[14] to the representation of Etrurian dancers, who were brought to Rome during a pestilence. The Roman youth, according to his account, being moved to imitation of these representations, in which there was neither acting nor speaking, added to them the accompaniment of verses of a humorous character; and continued to represent these jocular medleys, combined with music (_saturas impletas modis_), even after the introduction of the regular drama. These scenic saturae, which, from Livy's notice, appear to have been accompanied with good-humoured hilarity rather than with scurrilous raillery, prepared the way for the reception of the regular drama among the Romans, and will, to some extent, account for its early popularity among them. The later Roman satire long retained traces of a connexion with this primitive and indigenous satura, evinced both by the miscellaneous character of its topics, and by its frequent employment of dramatic dialogue. 4. The didactic tendency which is so conspicuous in the cultivated literature of Rome manifested itself also in the indigenous compositions of Italy. The popular maxims and precepts preserved by the old agricultural writers and afterwards embodied by Virgil in his Georgics, were handed down from generation to generation in the Saturnian rhythm. But, apparently, the first metrical composition committed to writing was a poem of an ethical or didactic character, written two generations before the first dramatic representation of Livius Andronicus, by Appius Claudius Caecus, who is also the earliest known to us in the long line of Roman orators[15]. 5. But it was not from any of these sources that Niebuhr supposed the poetical character of early Roman history to be derived. Nor is there any analogy between the religious hymns, or the Fescennine verses of Italy, and the modern ballad. But there is evidence of the existence, at one time, of other metrical compositions of which scarcely anything is definitely ascertained, except that they were sung at banquets, to the accompaniment of the flute, in celebration of the praises of great men. There is no direct evidence of the time when these compositions, some of which were believed by Niebuhr to have attained the dimensions of Epic poems, existed, or when they fell into disuse. Cato, as quoted by Cicero in the Tusculan Disputations, and in the Brutus[16], is our earliest authority on the subject. His testimony is to the effect that many generations before his time, the guests at banquets were in the habit of singing, in succession, the praises of great men, to the music of the flute. Cicero, in the Brutus, expresses a wish that these songs still existed in his own day; 'utinam exstarent illa carmina, quae multis saeculis ante suam aetatem in epulis esse cantitata a singulis convivis de clarorum virorum laudibus in Originibus scriptum reliquit Cato.' Varro again is quoted, to the effect that boys used to be present at banquets, for the purpose of singing 'ancient poems,' celebrating the praises of their ancestors. Valerius Maximus mentions 'that the older men used at banquets to celebrate in song the illustrious deeds of their ancestors, in order to stimulate the youth to imitate them.' Passages are quoted also from Horace, from Dionysius, and from Tacitus, implying a belief in the ancient existence of these compositions. Besides the odes sung or recited at banquets, there were certain funeral poems, called _Naeniae_, originally chanted by the female relatives of the deceased, but afterwards by hired women. As the practice of public speaking advanced, these gradually passed into a mere form, and were superseded by funeral orations. The facts ascertained about these commemorative poems amount to no more than this,--that they were sung at banquets and the funerals of great men--that they were of such length as to admit of several being sung in succession,--and that they fell into disuse some generations before the age of Cato. The inferences that may fairly be drawn from these statements are opposed to some of the conclusions of Niebuhr. The evidence is all in favour of their having been short lyrical pieces, and not long narrative poems. As they were sung at great banquets and funerals, it seems probable that, like the custom of exhibiting the ancestral images on the same occasions, they owed their origin to the patrician pride of family, and were not likely to have been animated by strong plebeian sentiment. If they had been preserved at all, they were thus more likely to have been preserved by members of the great houses living within the city walls, than by the peasantry living among the outlying hills and country districts. If ever there were any golden age of early Roman poetry, it had passed away long before the time of Ennius and Cato. The fact, however, remains, that the Romans did possess, in early times, some kind of native minstrelsy, in which they honoured the memory and the exploits of their great men. And this impulse of hero-worship became in later times an important factor in their epic poetry. But is there any reason to suppose that these compositions were of the nature and importance assigned to them by Niebuhr, and had any value in respect of invention and execution? It is difficult to believe that such a native force of feeling and imagination, pouring itself forth in stirring ballads and continuous epic poems, could have been frozen so near its source; or that a rich, popular poetry, not scattered through thinly-peopled districts, but the possession of a great commonwealth--one most tenacious of every national memorial--could have entirely disappeared, under any foreign influence, in the course of one or two generations. But even on the supposition that a great national poetry might have passed from the memory of men--as, possibly, the poems existing before the time of Homer may have been lost or merged in the greater glories of the Iliad and the Odyssey--this early poetry could not have perished without leaving permanent influence on the Roman language. The growth of poetical language necessarily accompanies the growth of poetical feeling and inspiration. The sensuous, passionate, and musical force by which a language is first moulded into poetry is transmitted from one generation of poets to another. The language of Homer, by its natural and musical flow, by its accumulated wealth of meaning, by the use of traditional epithets and modes of expression, that penetrate far back into the belief, the feelings, and the life of an earlier time, implies the existence of a long line of poets who preceded him. On the other hand, the diction of the fragments of Ennius, in its strength and in its rudeness, is evidently, in great measure, the creation of his own time and his own mind. He has no true discernment of the characteristic difference between the language of prose and of poetry. The materials of his art had not been smoothed and polished by any long, continuous stream of national melody, but were rough-hewn and adapted by his own energy to the rugged structure of his poem. While, therefore, it appears that the actual notices of the early commemorative poems do not imply that they were the products of imagination or poetical feeling, or that they excited much popular enthusiasm, and were an important element in the early State, their entire disappearance among a people so tenacious of all their gains, and, still more, the unformed and prosaic condition of the language and rhythm used by Naevius, Ennius, and the other early poets, lead to the presumption, that they were not much valued by the Romans at any time, and that they were not the creations of poetic genius and art. This presumption is further strengthened by such indications as there are of the recognition, or rather the non-recognition, of poets or of the poetic character at Rome in early times. The worship of the Camenae was indeed an old and genuine part of the Roman or Italian religion; but, as was said before, their original function was to predict future events, and to communicate the knowledge of divination; not like that of the Greek Muses, to imagine bright stories of divine and human adventure,-- [Greek: lêsmosynên te kakôn ampauma te mermêraôn.] Even the names by which two of the Camenae were known--Postvorta and Antevorta--suggest the prosaic and practical functions which they were supposed to fulfil. The Romans had no native word equivalent to the Greek word [Greek: aoidos], denoting the primary and most essential of all poetical gifts, the power to awaken the music of language. The word _vates_, as was seen, denoted a prophet. The title of _scriba_ was applied to Livius Andronicus; and Naevius, who has by some been regarded as the last of the old race of Roman bards, applies to himself the Greek name of _poeta_,-- Flerent divae Camenae Naevium poetam. The commemorative odes appear to have been recited or sung at banquets, not by poets or rhapsodists, but by boys or guests. There is one notice, indeed, of a class of men who practised the profession of minstrelsy. This passage, which is quoted by Aulus Gellius from the writings of Cato, implies the very lowest estimation of the position and character of the poet, and points more naturally to the composers of the libellous verses forbidden by the laws of the Twelve Tables, than to the authors of heroic and national lays:--'Poetry was not held in honour; if anyone devoted himself to it, or went about to banquets, he was called a vagabond[17].' It appears that, on this ground also, there is no reason for believing in the existence of any golden age of Roman poetry before the time of Ennius, or in the theory that the legendary tales of Roman history were created and shaped by native minstrels. To what cause, then, can we attribute their origin? These tales have a strong human interest, and represent marked and original types of antique heroism. They have the elements of true tragic pathos and moral grandeur. They could neither have arisen nor been preserved except among a people endowed with strong capacities of feeling and action. But the strength of the Roman mind consisted more in retentive capacity than in creative energy. Their art and their religion, their family and national customs, aimed at preserving the actual memory of men and of their actions: not like the arts, ceremonies, and customs of the Greeks, which aimed at lifting the mind out of reality into an ideal world. As one of the chief difficulties of the Homeric controversy arises from our ignorance of the power of the memory during an age when poetry and song were in the fullest life, but the use of letters was either unknown, or extremely limited; so there is a parallel difficulty in all attempts to explain the origin of early Roman history, from our ignorance of the power of oral tradition in a time of long established order, but yet unacquainted with any of the forms of literature. The indifference of barbarous tribes to their past history can prove little or nothing as to the tenacity of the national memory among a people far advanced towards civilisation like the Romans after the establishment of their Republican form of government. Nor can the analogy of early Greek traditions be fairly applied to those of Rome, owing to the great difference in the circumstances and the genius of the two nations. Many real impressions of the past might fix themselves indelibly in the grave and solid temperament of the Romans, which would have been lost amid the inexhaustible wealth of fancy that had been lavished upon the Greeks. The strict family life and discipline of the Romans, the continuity of their religious colleges, the unity of a single state as the common centre of all their interests, the slow and steady growth of their institutions, their strong regard for precedent, were all conditions more favourable to the preservation of tradition than the lively social life, the numerous centres of political organisation, and the rapid growth and vicissitudes of the Greek Republics. It cannot, indeed, be disputed that although the legendary tales of Roman history may have drawn more of their colour from life than from imagination, yet there is no criterion by which the amount of fact contained in them can be separated from the other elements of which they were composed. Oral tradition among the Romans, as among other nations, was founded on impressions originally received without any careful sifting of evidence; and these first impressions would naturally be modified in accordance with the feelings and opinions of each generation, through which they were transmitted. Aetiological myths, or the attempt to explain some institution or memorial by some concrete fact, and the systematic reconstruction of forgotten events, have also entered largely into the composition of Roman history. But these admissions do not lead to the conclusion that the art or fancy of any class of early poets was added to the unconscious operation of popular feeling in moulding the impressive tales of early heroism, partly out of the memory of real events and personages, partly out of the ideal of character, latent in the national mind. It has been remarked by Sir G. C. Lewis that many even of the Greek myths, abounding 'in striking, pathetic, and interesting events,' existed as prose legends, and were handed down in the common speech of the people. In like manner, such tales as those of Lucretia and Virginia, of Horatius and the Fabii, of Cincinnatus, Coriolanus, and Camillus, which stand out prominently in the twilight of Roman history, may have been preserved in _fama vulgaris_, or among the family traditions of the great houses, till they were gathered into the poem of Ennius and the prose narratives of the early annalists[18]. In so far as they are shaped or coloured by imagination, they do not bear traces of the conscious art of a poet, but rather of an unconscious conformity to the national ideal of character. The most impressive of these legendary stories illustrate the primitive virtues of the Roman character, such as chastity, frugality, fortitude, and self-devotion; or the national characteristics of patrician pride and a stern exercise of parental authority. There is certainly no internal evidence that any of them originated in a pure poetic impulse, or gave birth to any work of poetic art deserving a permanent existence in literature. The analogy of other nations might suggest the inference that a race which in its maturity produced a genuine poetic literature must, in the early stages of its history, have given some proof of poetic inspiration. It is natural to associate the idea of poetry with youth both in nations and individuals. Yet the evidence of their language, of their religion, and of their customs, leads to the conclusion that the Romans, while prematurely great in action and government, were, in the earlier stages of their national life, little moved by any kind of poetical imagination. The state of religious feeling or belief which gives birth to or co-exists with primitive poetry has left no trace of itself upon the early Roman annals. It is generally found that a fanciful mythology, of a bright, gloomy, or grotesque character, in accordance with the outward circumstances and latent spirit or humour of the particular race among whom it originates, precedes and for a time accompanies the poetry of romantic action. The creative faculty produces strange forms and conditions of supernatural life out of its own mysterious sympathy with Nature, before it learns to invent tales of heroic action and of tragic calamity out of its sympathy with human energy and passion, and its interest in marking the course of destiny, and the vicissitudes of life. The development of the Roman religion betrays the absence, or at least the weaker influence of that imaginative power which shaped the great mythologies of different races out of the primeval worship of nature. The later element introduced into Roman religion was due not to imagination but to reflection. The worship of Fides, Concordia, Pudicitia, and the like, marks a great progress from the early adoration of the sun, the earth, the vault of heaven, and the productive power of nature; but it is a progress in understanding and moral consciousness, not in poetical feeling nor imaginative power. It shows that Roman civilisation advanced without this vivifying influence,--that the mind of the race early reached the maturity of manhood, without passing through the dreams of childhood or the buoyant fancies of youth. The circumstances of the Romans, in early times, were also different from those by which the growth of a romantic poetry has usually been accompanied. Though, like all races born to a great destiny, they had much latent imaginative ardour of feeling, this was employed by them, unconsciously, in elevating and purifying the ideal of the State and the family, as actually realised in experience. Their orderly organisation,--the early establishment of their civic forms,--the strict discipline of family life among them,--the formal and ceremonial character of their national religion,--and their strong interest in practical affairs,--were not calculated either to kindle the glow of individual genius, or to dispose the mass of the people to listen to the charm of musical verse. The wars of the young Republic, carried on by a well-trained militia, for the acquisition of new territory, formed the character to solid strength and steady discipline, but could not act upon the fancy in the same way as the distant enterprise, the long struggles for national independence, or the daring forays, which have thrown the light of romance around the warlike youth of other races. The tillage of the soil, in which the brief intervals between their wars were passed, was a tame and monotonous pursuit compared with the maritime adventure which awoke the energies of Greece, or with the wild and lonely, half-pastoral, half-marauding life, out of which a true ballad poetry arose in modern times. Some traces of a wilder life, or some faint memories of their Sabine forefathers, may be dimly discerned in the earliest traditions of the Roman people; but their youth was essentially practical,--great and strong in the virtues of temperance, gravity, fortitude, reverence for law and the majesty of the State, combined with a strong love of liberty and sturdy resistance to wrong. These qualities are the foundations of a powerful and orderly State, not the root or the sap by which a great national poetry is nourished[19]. If the pure Roman intellect and discipline had spontaneously produced any kind of literature, it would have been more likely to have taken the form of history or oratory than of national song or ballad. It was from men of the Italian provinces, and not from her own sons, that Rome received her poetry. The men of the most genuinely Roman type and character long resisted all literary progress. The patrons and friends of the early poets were the more liberal members of the aristocracy, in whom the austerity of the national character and narrowness of the national mind had yielded to new ideas and a wider experience. The art of Greece was communicated to 'rude Latium,' through the medium of those kindred races who had come into earlier contact with the Greek language and civilisation. With less native strength, but with greater flexibility, these races were more readily moulded by foreign influences; and, leading a life of greater ease and freedom, they were more susceptible to all the impulses of Nature. While they were thus more readily prepared to catch the spirit of Greek culture, they had learned, through long years of war and subsequent dependence, to understand and respect the imperial State in which their own nationality had been merged. It is important to remember that the time in which Roman literature arose was not only that of the first active intercourse between Greeks and Romans, but also that in which a great war, against the most powerful State outside of Italy, had awakened the sense of an Italian nationality, of which Rome was the centre. The great Republic derived her education and literature from the accumulated stores of Greek thought and feeling; but these were made available to her through the willing service of poets who, though born in other parts of Italy, looked to Rome as the head and representative of their common country. [Footnote 1: Epist. ii. 1. 157.] [Footnote 2: Georg. ii. 385.] [Footnote 3: It is thus interpreted by the same author:--Nos, lares, juvate. Ne malam luem, Mamers, sinas incurrere in plures. Satur esto, fere Mars. In limen insili. Desiste verberare (limen)! Semones alterni advocate cunctos. Nos, Mamers, juvato. Tripudia. 'Help us, Lares. Suffer not, Mamers, pestilence to fall on the people. Be satisfied, fierce Mars. Leap on the threshold. Cease beating it. Call, in turn, on all the demigods. Help us, Mamers.'--Mommsen, Röm. Geschichte, vol. i. ch. xv.] [Footnote 4: Such is the interpretation of Corssen, Origines Poesis Romanae.] [Footnote 5: Epist. ii. 1. 86.] [Footnote 6: Cf. Virg. Aen. vii. 81, 82:-- At rex sollicitus monstris oracula Fauni, Fatidici genitoris, adit.] [Footnote 7: Cf. Schwegler, Röm. Gesch. i. 24, note 1.] [Footnote 8: Livy xxv. 12.] [Footnote 9: 'Through this fashion the Fescennine raillery arose and poured forth rustic banter in responsive verse; the spirit of freedom, made welcome, as the season came round, first played its part genially; but soon the jests grew cruel, then changed into sheer fury, and began, with impunity, to threaten and assail honourable households. Men smarted under the sharp edge of its cruel tooth: even those who were unassailed felt concern for the common weal. A law was passed, and a penalty enforced, forbidding any one to be lampooned in scurrilous verses. Thus they changed their style, and were brought back to a kindly and pleasant tone, under fear of a beating.'--Epist. ii. 1. 144-55.] [Footnote 10: Sei quis ocentasit, casmenue condisit, quod infamiam faxsit flacitiomque alterei, fuste feritor.] [Footnote 11: Teuffel quotes from Festus: Fescennini versus qui canebantur in nuptiis, ex urbe Fescennina dicuntur allati, sive ideo dicti quia fascinum putabantur arcere. It seems more natural to connect the name of these verses, which were especially characteristic of the Latin peasantry, with fascinum (the phallic symbol) than with any particular town of Etruria, though the name of that town may perhaps have the same origin.] [Footnote 12: Mommsen's explanation, 'the masque of the full men' ('saturi'), does not seem to meet with general acceptance.] [Footnote 13: Cf. Teuffel, vi. 2.] [Footnote 14: vii. 2.] [Footnote 15: Cf. Teuffel, Wagner's Translation, p. 102.] [Footnote 16: Tusc. Disp. iv. 2; Brutus, 19.] [Footnote 17: Noct. Att. xi. 2. A similar character at one time attached to minstrels in Scotland.] [Footnote 18: Some of these tales may have been originally aetiological, but the human interest even in these was probably drawn originally from actual incidents and personages of the Early Republic. Some of the aetiological myths, such as that of Attus Navius the augur, have no human interest, though they have an historical interest in connexion with early Roman religion or institutions.] [Footnote 19: Cf. Schwegler, Röm. Gesch. i. 1. 24.] CHAPTER III. THE BEGINNING OF ROMAN LITERATURE--LIVIUS ANDRONICUS--CN. NAEVIUS, B.C. 240-202. The historical event which first brought the Romans into familiar contact with the Greeks, was the war with Pyrrhus and with Tarentum, the most powerful and flourishing among the famous Greek colonies in lower Italy. In earlier times, indeed, through their occasional communication with the Greeks of Cumae, and the other colonies in Italy, they had obtained a vague knowledge of some of the legends of Greek poetry. The worship of Aesculapius was introduced at Rome from Epidaurus in B.C. 293, and the oracle of Delphi had been consulted by the Romans in still earlier times. As the Sibylline verses appear to have been composed in Greek, their interpreters must have been either Greeks or men acquainted with that language[1]. The identification of the Greek with the Roman mythology had probably commenced before Greek literature was known to the Romans, although the works of Naevius and Ennius must have had an influence in completing this process. Greek civilisation had come, however, at an earlier period into close relation with the south of Italy; and the natives of that district, such as Ennius and Pacuvius, who first settled at Rome, were spoken of by the Romans as 'Semi-Graeci.' But, until after the fall of Tarentum, there appears to have been no familiar intercourse between the two great representatives of ancient civilisation. Till the war with Pyrrhus, the knowledge that the two nations had of one another was slight and vague. But, immediately after that time, the affairs of Rome began to attract the attention of Greek historians[2], and the Romans, though very slowly, began to obtain some acquaintance with the language and literature of Greece. Tarentum was taken in B.C. 272, but more than thirty years elapsed before Livius Andronicus represented his first drama before a Roman audience. Twenty years of this intervening period, from B.C. 261 to B.C. 241, were occupied with the First Punic War; and it was not till the successful close of that war, and the commencement of the following years of peace, that this new kind of recreation and instruction was made familiar to the Romans. Serus enim Graecis admovit acumina chartis; Et post Punica bella quietus quaerere coepit, Quid Sophocles et Thespis et Aeschylus utile ferrent[3]. Two circumstances, however, must in the meantime have prepared the minds of the Romans for the reception of the new literature. Sicily had been the chief battle-field of the contending powers. In their intercourse with the Sicilian Greeks, the Romans had great facilities for becoming acquainted with the Greek language, and frequent opportunities of being present at dramatic representations. There was a theatre in every important town of Sicily, as may be seen in the ruins still remaining on the sites of Segesta, Syracuse, Tauromenium, and Catana; and the enjoyment of the drama entered largely into the life of the Sicilian, as it had into that of the Italian Greeks. Many Greeks also had been brought to Rome as slaves after the capture of Tarentum, and were employed in educating the young among the higher classes. Thus many Roman citizens were prepared, by their circumstances and education, to take interest in the legends and in the dramatic form of literature introduced from Greece; while the previous existence of the saturae, and other scenic exhibitions at Rome, tended to make the new comic drama at least acceptable to the mass of the population. The earliest period of Roman poetry extends from the close of the First Punic War till the beginning of the first century B.C. During this period of about a century and a half, in which Roman oratory, history, and comedy, were also actively cultivated, we hear only of five or six names as eminent in different kinds of serious poetry. The whole labour of introducing and of keeping alive, among an unlettered people, some taste for the graver forms of literature thus devolved upon a few men of ardent temperament, vigorous understanding, and great productive energy, but with little sense of art, and endowed with faculties seemingly more adapted to the practical business of life than to the idealising efforts of genius. They had to struggle against the difficulties incidental to the first beginnings of art and to the rudeness of the Latin language. They were exposed, also, to other disadvantages, arising from the natural indifference of the mass of the people to all works of imagination, and from the preference of the educated class for the more finished works already existing in Greek literature. Yet this long period, in which poetry, with so much difficulty and such scanty resources, struggled into existence at Rome, is connected with the age of Cicero by an unbroken line of literary continuity. Naevius, the younger contemporary of Livius, and the first native poet, was actively engaged in the composition of his poems till the time of his death; about which period his greater successor first appeared at Rome. For about thirty years, Ennius shone alone in epic and tragic poetry. The poetic successor of Ennius was his nephew, Pacuvius. He, in the later years of his life, lived in friendly intercourse with his younger rival Accius, who, again, in his old age, had frequently conversed with Cicero[4]. The torch, which was first lighted by Livius Andronicus from the decaying fires of Greece, was thus handed down by these few men, through this long period, until it was extinguished during the stormy times which fell in the youth of the great orator and prose writer of the Republic. The forms of serious poetry, prevailing during this period, were the tragic drama, the annalistic epic, and satire. Tragedy was earliest introduced, was received with most favour, and was cultivated by all the poets of the period, with the exception of Lucilius and the comic writers. The epic poetry of the age was the work of Naevius and Ennius. It has greater claims to originality and national spirit, both in form and substance, and it exercised a more powerful influence on the later poetry of Rome, than either the tragedy or comedy of the time. The invention of satire, the most purely original of the three, is generally attributed to Lucilius; but the satiric spirit was shown earlier in some of the dramas of Naevius; and the first modification of the primitive satura to a literary shape was the work of Ennius, who was followed in the same style by his nephew Pacuvius. No complete work of any of these poets has been preserved to modern times. Our knowledge of the epic, tragic, and satiric poetry of this long period is derived partly from ancient testimony, but chiefly from the examination of numerous fragments. Most of these have been preserved, not by critics on account of their beauty and worth, but by grammarians on account of the obsolete words and forms of speech contained in them,--a fact, which probably leads us to attribute to the earlier literature a more abnormal and ruder style than that which really belonged to it. A few of the longest and most interesting fragments have come down in the works of the admirers of those ancient poets, especially of Cicero and Aulus Gellius. The notion that can be formed of the early Roman literature must thus, of necessity, be incomplete. Yet these fragments are sufficient to produce a consistent impression of certain prevailing characteristics of thought and sentiment. Many of them are valuable from their own intrinsic worth; others again from the grave associations connected with their antiquity, and from the authentic evidence they afford of the moral and intellectual qualities, the prevailing ideas and sympathies of the strongest race of the ancient world, about, or shortly after, the time when they attained the acme of their moral and political greatness. The two earliest authors who fill a period of forty years in the literary history of Rome, extending from the end of the First to the end of the Second Punic War, are Livius Andronicus and Cn. Naevius. Of the first very little is known. The fragments of his works are scanty and unimportant, and have been preserved by grammarians merely as illustrative of old forms of the language. The admirers of Naevius and Ennius, in ancient times, awarded only scanty honours to the older dramatist. Cicero, for instance, says of his plays 'that they are not worth reading a second time[5].' The importance which attaches to Livius consists in his being the accidental medium through which literary art was first introduced to the Romans. He was a Greek, and, as is generally supposed, a native of Tarentum. He educated the sons of his master, M. Livius Salinator, from whom he afterwards received his freedom. The last thirty years of his life were devoted to literature, and chiefly to the reproduction of the Greek drama in a Latin dress. His tragedies appear all to have been founded on Greek subjects; most of them, probably, were translations. Among the titles, we hear of the _Aegisthus_, _Ajax_, _Equus Trojanus_, _Tereus_, _Hermione_, etc.--all of them subjects which continued to be popular with the later tragedians of Rome. No fragment is preserved sufficient to give any idea of his treatment of the subjects, or of his general mode of thought and feeling. Little can be gathered from the scanty remains of his works, except some idea of the harshness and inelegance of his diction. In addition to his dramas, he translated the Odyssey into Saturnian verse. This work long retained its place as a school-book, and is spoken of by Horace as forming part of his own early lessons under the rod of Orbilius[6]. One or two lines of the translation still remain, and exemplify its rough and prosaic diction, and the extreme irregularity of the Saturnian metre. The lines of the Odyssey[7], [Greek: ou gar egôge ti phêmi kakôteron allo thalassês andra ge syncheuai, ei kai mala karteros eiê], are thus rendered:-- Namque nilum pejus Macerat hemonem, quamde mare saevom, viris quoi Sunt magnae, topper confringent importunae undae. He was appointed also, on one occasion, near the end of the Second Punic War, to compose a hymn to be sung by 'virgines ter novenae,' which is described by Livy, the historian, as rugged and unpolished[8]. Livius was the schoolmaster of the Roman people rather than the father of their literature. To accomplish what he did required no original genius, but only the industry, knowledge, and tastes of an educated man. In spite of the disadvantage of writing in a foreign language, and of addressing an unlettered people, he was able to give the direction which Roman poetry long followed, and to awaken a new interest in the legends and heroes of his race. It was necessary that the Romans should be educated before they could either produce or appreciate an original poet. Livius performed a useful, if not a brilliant service, by directing those who followed him to the study and imitation of the great masters who combined, with an unattainable grace and art, a masculine strength and heroism of sentiment congenial to the better side of Roman character. Cn. Naevius is really the first in the line of Roman poets, and the first writer in the Latin language whose fragments give indication of original power. It has been supposed that he was a Campanian by birth, on the authority of Aulus Gellius, who characterised his famous epitaph as 'plenum superbiae Campanae.' But the phrase 'Campanian arrogance' seems to have been used proverbially for 'gasconade'; and as there was a plebeian _Gens Naevia_ in Rome, it is quite as probable that he was by birth a Roman citizen. The strong political partisanship displayed in his plays seems favourable to this supposition, as is also the active interference of the tribunes on his behalf. Weight must however be given to the remark of Mommsen, 'the hypothesis that he was not a Roman citizen, but possibly a citizen of Cales or of some other Latin town in Campania, renders the fact that the Roman police treated him so unscrupulously the more easy of explanation.' On the other hand it has been observed that had he been an alien the tribunes could not have interfered on his behalf. He served either in the Roman army or among the _Socii_ in the First Punic War, and thus must have reached manhood before the year 241 B.C. Cicero mentions that he lived to a good old age, and that he died in exile about the end of the third century B.C.[9]. The date of his birth may thus be fixed with approximate probability about the year 265 B.C. No particulars of his military service are recorded, but it is most probable that the scene of his service was the west of Sicily, on which the struggle was concentrated during the later years of the war. If we connect the newly developed taste for the drama with the intercourse of Romans with Sicilian Greeks during the war, we may connect another important influence on Roman literature and Roman belief which first appeared in the epic poem of Naevius with the Phoenician settlements in the west of Sicily. The origin of the belief in the mythical connexion of Aeneas and his Trojans with the foundation of Rome may probably be attributed to the Sicilian historian Timaeus; but the contact of the Romans and the Carthaginians in the neighbourhood of Mount Eryx, may have suggested that part of the legend which plays so large a part in the Aeneid, which brings Aeneas from Sicily to Carthage and back again to the neighbourhood of Mount Eryx. The actual collision of Roman and Phoenician on the western shores of Sicily, of which Naevius may well have been a witness, if it did not originate, gave a living interest to the mythical origin of that antagonism in the relations of Aeneas and Dido. The earliest drama of Naevius was brought out in B.C. 235, five years after the first representation of Livius Andronicus. The number of dramas which he is known to have composed affords proof of great industry and activity, from that time till the time of his banishment from Rome. He was more successful in comedy than in tragedy, and he used the stage, as it had been used by the writers of the old Attic comedy, as an arena of popular invective and political warfare. A keen partisan of the commonalty, he attacked with vehemence some of the chiefs of the great senatorian party. A line, which had passed into a proverb in the time of Cicero, is attributed to him,-- Fato Metelli Romae fiunt consules; to which the Metelli are said to have replied in the pithy Saturnian, Dabunt malum Metelli Naevio poetae. In the year 206 B.C. Q. Caecilius Metellus was Consul, his brother M. Metellus Praetor Urbanus, an office that held out an almost certain prospect of the Consulship; and it has been suggested[10], with much probability, that it was against them that this sneer was directed. The Metelli carried out their threat, as Naevius was imprisoned, a circumstance to which Plautus[11] alludes in one of the few passages in which Latin comedy deviates from the conventional life of Athenian manners to notice the actual circumstances of the time. While in prison, he composed two plays (the _Hariolus_ and _Leon_), which contained some retractation of his former attacks, and he was liberated through the interference of the Tribunes of the Commons. But he was soon after banished, and took up his residence at Utica, where he is said by Cicero, on the authority of ancient records, to have died, in B.C. 204[12], though the same author adds that Varro, 'diligentissimus investigator antiquitatis,' believed that he was still alive for some time after that date[13]. It is inferred, from a passage in Cicero[14], that his poem on the First Punic War was composed in his old age. Probably it was written in his exile, when removed from the sphere of his active literary efforts. As he served in that war, some time between B.C. 261 and B.C. 241, he must have been well advanced in years at the time of his death. The best known of all the fragments of Naevius, and the most favourable specimen of his style, is his epitaph:-- Mortales immortales flere si foret fas, Flerent divae Camenae Naevium poetam, Itaque postquam est Orcino traditus thesauro, Obliti sunt Romae loquier Latina lingua. It has been supposed that this epitaph was written as a dying protest against the Hellenising influence of Ennius; but as Ennius came to Rome for the first time about B.C. 204, it is not likely, even if the life of Naevius was prolonged somewhat beyond that date, that the fame and influence of his younger rival could have spread so rapidly as to disturb the peace of the old poet in his exile. It might as fairly be regarded as proceeding from a jealousy of the merits of Plautus, as from hostility to the innovating tendency of Ennius. The words of the epitaph are simply expressive of the strong self-assertion and independence which Naevius maintained till the end of his active and somewhat turbulent career. He wrote a few tragedies, of which scarcely anything is known except the titles,--such as the _Andromache_, _Equus Trojanus_, _Hector Proficiscens_, _Lycurgus_,--the last founded on the same subject as the Bacchae of Euripides. The titles of nearly all these plays, as well as of the plays of Livius, imply the prevailing interest taken in the Homeric poems, and in all the events connected with the Trojan War. The following passage from the Lycurgus has some value as containing the germs of poetical diction:-- Vos, qui regalis corporis custodias Agitatis, ite actutum in frundiferos locos, Ingenio arbusta ubi nata sunt, non obsita[15]. He composed a number of comedies, and also some original plays, founded on events in Roman history,--one of them called _Romulus_, or _Alimonia Romuli et Remi_. The longest of the fragments attributed to him is a passage from a comedy, which has been, with less probability, attributed to Ennius. It is a description of a coquette, and shows considerable power of close satiric observation:-- Quasi pila In choro ludens datatim dat se, et communem facit: Alii adnutat, alii adnictat, alium amat, alium tenet; Alibi manus est occupata, alii percellit pedem; Alii spectandum dat annulum; a labris alium invocat; Cum alio cantat, attamen dat alii digito literas[16]. The chief characteristic illustrated by the scanty fragments of his dramas is the political spirit by which they were animated. Thus Cicero[17] refers to a passage in one of his plays (_ut est in Naevii ludo_) where, to the question, 'Who had, within so short a time, destroyed your great commonwealth?' the pregnant answer is given, Proveniebant oratores novi, stulti adolescentuli[18]. The nobles, whose enmity he provoked, were probably attacked by him in his comedies. One passage is quoted by Aulus Gellius, in which a failing of the great Scipio is exposed[19]. Other fragments are found indicative of his freedom of speech and bold independence of character:-- Quae ego in theatro hic meis probavi plausibus, Ea nunc audere quemquam regem rumpere? Quanto libertatem hanc hic superat servitus[20]? and this also[21]:-- Semper pluris feci potioremque ego Libertatem habui multo quam pecuniam. He is placed in the canon of Volcatius Sedigitus immediately after Plautus in the rank of comic poets. He has more of the stamp of Lucilius than of his immediate successor Ennius. By his censorious and aggressive vehemence, by boldness and freedom of speech, and by his strong political feeling, Naevius in his dramas represents the spirit of Roman satire rather than of Roman tragedy. He holds the same place in Roman literature as the Tribune of the Commons in Roman politics. He expressed the vigorous independence of spirit that supported the Commons in their long struggle with the patricians, while Ennius may be regarded as expressing the majesty and authority with which the Roman Senate ruled the world. But the work on which his fame as a national and original poet chiefly rested was his epic or historical poem on the First Punic War. The poem was originally one continuous work, written in the Saturnian metre; though, at a later time, it was divided into seven books. The earlier part of the work dealt with the mythical origin of Rome and of Carthage, the flight of Aeneas from Troy, his sojourn at the court of Dido, and his settlement in Latium. The mythical background of the poem afforded scope for imaginative treatment and invention. Its main substance, however, appears to have been composed in the spirit and tone of a contemporary chronicle. The few fragments that remain from the longer and later portion of the work, evidently express a bare and literal adherence to fact, without any poetical colouring or romantic representation. Ennius and Virgil are both known to have borrowed much from this poem of Naevius. There are many passages in the Aeneid in which Virgil followed, with slight deviations, the track of the older poet. Naevius (as quoted by Servius) introduced the wives of Aeneas and of Anchises, leaving Troy in the night-time,-- Amborum Uxores noctu Troiade exibant capitibus Opertis, flentes abeuntes lacrimis cum multis. He represents Aeneas as having only one ship, built by Mercury,--a limitation which did not suit Virgil's account of the scale on which the war was carried on, after the landing in Italy. The account of the storm in the first Aeneid, of Aeneas consoling his followers, of Venus complaining to Jupiter, and of his comforting her with the promise of the future greatness of Rome (one of the cardinal passages in Virgil's epic), were all taken from the old Saturnian poem of Naevius. He speaks also of Anna and Dido, as daughters of Agenor, though there is no direct evidence that he anticipated Virgil in telling the tale of Dido's unhappy love. He mentioned also the Italian Sibyl and the worship of the Penates--materials which Virgil fused into his great national and religious poem. Ennius followed Naevius in representing Romulus as the grandson of Aeneas. The exigencies of his chronology compelled Virgil to fill a blank space of three hundred years with the shadowy forms of a line of Alban kings. Whatever may have been the origin of the belief in the connexion of Rome with Troy, it certainly prevailed before the poem of Naevius was composed, as at the beginning of the First Punic War the inhabitants of Egesta opened their gates to Rome, in acknowledgment of their common descent from Troy. But the story of the old connexion of Aeneas and Dido, symbolising the former league and the later enmity between Romans and Carthaginians, most probably first assumed shape in the time of the Punic Wars. The belief, as shadowed forth in Naevius, that the triumph of Rome had been decreed from of old by Jupiter, and promised to the mythical ancestress of Aeneas, proves that the Romans were possessed already with the idea of their national destiny. How much of the tale of Aeneas and Dido is due to the imagination of Naevius it is impossible to say; but his treatment of the mythical part of his story,--his introduction of the storm, the complaint of Venus, etc.,--merits the praise of happy and suggestive invention, and of a real adaptation to his main subject. The mythical part of the poem was a prelude to the main subject, the events of the First Punic War. Naevius and Ennius, like others among the Roman poets of a later date, allowed the provinces of poetry and of history to run into one another. They composed poetical chronicles without any attempt to adhere to the principles and practice of the Greek epic. The work of Naevius differed from that of Ennius in this respect, that it treated of one particular portion of Roman history, and did not profess to unfold the whole annals of the State. The slight and scanty fragments that remain from the latter part of the poem, are expressed with all the bareness, and, apparently, with the fidelity of a chronicle. They have the merit of being direct and vigorous, but are entirely without poetic grace and ornament. Rapid and graphic condensation is their chief merit. There is a dash of impetuosity in some of them, suggestive of the bold, impatient, and energetic temperament of the poet; as for instance in the lines, Transit Melitam Romanus exercitus, insulam integram Urit, populatur, vastat, rem hostium concinnat[22]. But the fragments of the poem are really too unimportant to afford ground for a true estimate of its general merit. They supply some evidence in regard to the irregularity of the metre in which it was written. The uncertainty which prevails as to its structure may be inferred from the fact that different conjectural readings of every fragment are proposed by different commentators. A saying of an old grammarian, Atilius Fortunatianus, is quoted to the effect that he could not adduce from the whole poem of Naevius any single line, as a normal specimen of the pure Saturnian verse. Cicero bears strong testimony to the merits of the poem in point of style. He says in one place, 'the Punic War delights us like a work of Myron[23].' In the dialogue 'De Oratore,' he represents Crassus as comparing the idiomatic purity which distinguished the conversation of his mother-in-law, Laelia, and other ladies of rank, with the style of Plautus and Naevius. 'Equidem quum audio socrum meam Laeliam (facilius enim mulieres incorruptam antiquitatem conservant, quod, multorum sermonis expertes, ea tenent semper, quae prima didicerunt); sed eam sic audio, ut Plautum mihi aut Naevium videar audire. Sono ipso vocis ita recto et simplici est, ut nihil ostentationis aut imitationis afferre videatur; ex quo sic locutum ejus patrem judico, sic majores[24].' Expressions from his plays were, from their weight and compact brevity, quoted familiarly in the days of Cicero, such as 'sero sapiunt Phryges' and 'laudari a laudato viro,' which, like so many other pithy Latin sayings, is still in use to express a distinction that could not be characterised in happier or shorter terms. It is to be remarked also that the merit, which he assumes to himself in his epitaph, is the purity with which he wrote the Latin language. Our knowledge of Naevius is thus, of necessity, very limited and fragmentary. From the testimony of later authors it may, however, be gathered that he was a remarkable and original man. He represented the boldness, freedom, and energy, which formed one side of the Roman character. Like some of our own early dramatists, he had served as a soldier before becoming an author. He was ardent in his national feeling; and, both in his life and in his writings, he manifested a strong spirit of political partisanship. As an author, he showed great productive energy, which continued unabated through a long and vigorous lifetime. His high self-confident spirit and impetuous temper have left their impress on the few fragments of his dramas and of his epic poem. Probably his most important service to Roman literature consisted in the vigour and purity with which he used the Latin language. But the conception of his epic poem seems to imply some share of the higher gift of poetical invention. He stands at the head of the line of Roman poets, distinguished by that force of speech and vehemence of temper, which appeared again in Lucilius, Catullus, and Juvenal; distinguished also by that national spirit which moved Ennius and, after him, Virgil, to employ their poetical faculty in raising a monument to commemorate the power and glory of Rome. [Footnote 1: Cf. Lewis, Credibility of Early Roman History, vol. i. chap. ii. 14.] [Footnote 2: Cf. Lewis, Credibility of Early Roman History, vol. i. chap. ii. 14, 15.] [Footnote 3: Horace, Epist. ii. 1. 161-3.] [Footnote 4: Cic. Brutus, ch. 28.] [Footnote 5: Brutus, 18.] [Footnote 6: Epist. ii. 1. 71.] [Footnote 7: viii. 138.] [Footnote 8: xxvii. 17.] [Footnote 9: Brutus 15.] [Footnote 10: By Prof. A. F. West of Princeton College, U.S. 'On a patriotic passage of the Miles Gloriosus of Plautus.'] [Footnote 11: Plautus, Miles Gloriosus, ii. 2. 27.] [Footnote 12: Brutus, 15.] [Footnote 13: Mommsen remarks that he could not have retired to Utica till after it fell into the possession of the Romans.] [Footnote 14: De Senectute, 14.] [Footnote 15: 'Ye who keep watch over the person of the king, hasten straightway to the leafy places, where the copsewood is of nature's growth, not planted by man.'] [Footnote 16: 'Like one playing at ball in a ring, she tosses about from one to another, and is at home with all. To one she nods, to another winks; she makes love to one, clasps another. Her hand is busy here, her foot there. To one she gives a ring to look at, to another blows a kiss; with one she sings, with another corresponds by signs.'] [Footnote 17: The reading of the passage here adopted is that given by Munk.] [Footnote 18: De Senectute, 6.] [Footnote 19: Etiam qui res magnas manu saepe gessit gloriose, Cujus facta viva nunc vigent, qui apud gentes solus praestat, Eum suus pater cum pallio ab amica abduxit uno.] [Footnote 20: 'What I in the theatre here have made good by the applause given to me, to think that any of these great people should now dare to interfere with! How much better thing is the slavery _here_' (_i.e._ represented in this play), 'than the liberty we actually enjoy?'] [Footnote 21: 'I have always held liberty to be of more value and a better thing than money.' The reading is that given by Munk.] [Footnote 22: Mommsen remarks that, in the fragments of this poem, the action is generally represented in the _present tense_.] [Footnote 23: Brutus, 19.] [Footnote 24: 'I, for my part, as I listen to my mother-in-law, Laelia (for women more easily preserve the pure idiom of antiquity, because, from their limited intercourse with the world, they retain always their earlier impressions), in listening, I say to her, I fancy that I am listening to Plautus or Naevius. The very tones of her voice are so natural and simple, that she seems absolutely free from affectation or imitation; from this I gather that her father spoke, and her ancestors all spoke, in the very same way.'--Cicero, De Oratore iii. 12.] CHAPTER IV. ENNIUS. The impulse given to Latin literature by Naevius was mainly in two directions, that of comedy and of a rude epic poetry, drawing its subjects from Roman traditions and contemporary history. In comedy the work begun by him was carried on with great vigour and success by his younger contemporary Plautus; and, in a strictly chronological history of Roman literature, his plays would have to be examined next in order. But it will be more convenient to defer the consideration of Roman comedy, as a whole, till a later chapter, and for the present to direct attention to the results produced by the immediate successor of Naevius in epic poetry, Q. Ennius. The fragments of Ennius will repay a more minute examination than those of any author belonging to the first period of Roman literature. They are of more intrinsic value, and they throw more light on the spirit of the age in which they were written. It was to him, not to Naevius or to Plautus, that the Romans looked as the father of their literature. He did more than any other man to make the Roman language a vehicle of elevated feeling, by forcing it to conform to the metrical conditions of Greek poetry; and he was the first fully to elicit the deeper veins of sentiment latent in the national imagination. The versatility of his powers, his large acquaintance with Greek literature, his sympathy with the practical interests of his time, the serious purpose and the intellectual vigour with which he carried out his work, enabled him to be in letters, what Scipio was in action, the most vital representative of his epoch. It has happened too that the fragments from his writings and the testimonies concerning him are more expressive and characteristic than in the case of any other among the early writers. There are none of his contemporaries, playing their part in war or politics, and not many among the writers of later times, of whom we can form so distinct an image. I. LIFE, TIMES, AND PERSONAL TRAITS. I. He was born at Rudiae, a town of Calabria, in B.C. 239, the year after the first representation of a drama on the Roman stage. He first entered Rome in B.C. 204, in the train of Cato, who, when acting as quaestor in Sardinia, found the poet in that island serving, with the rank of centurion, in the Roman army. In the poem of Silius Italicus, he is fancifully represented as distinguishing himself in personal combat like one of the heroes of the Iliad. After this time he resided at Rome, 'living,' according to the statement of Jerome, 'very plainly, on the Aventine' (the Plebeian quarter of the city), 'attended only by a single maid-servant[1],' and supporting himself by teaching Greek and by his writings. He accompanied M. Fulvius Nobilior in his Aetolian campaign. Through the influence of his son, he obtained the honour of Roman citizenship, probably at the time when the colony of Pisaurum was planted in B.C. 184. This distinction Ennius has himself recorded in a line of the Annals which indicates the high value which the Roman allies attached to this privilege:-- Nos sumu' Romani qui fuvimus ante Rudini. He lived on terms of intimacy with influential members of the noblest families in Rome, and became the familiar friend of the great Scipio. When he died at the age of seventy, his bust was believed to be placed in the tomb of the Scipios, between those of the conqueror of Hannibal and of the conqueror of Antiochus. He died in the year B.C. 169. The most famous of his works were his Tragedies and the Annals, a long historical poem written in eighteen books. But, in addition to these, he composed several miscellaneous works, of which only very scanty fragments have been preserved. Among the circumstances which prepared him to be the principal creator of the national literature, his birthplace and origin, the kind of education available to him in his early years, and the experience which awaited him when first entering on life, had a strong determining influence. His birthplace, Rudiae, is called by Strabo 'a Greek city'; but it was not a Greek colony, like Tarentum and the other cities of Magna Graecia, but an old Italian town, (the epithet _vetustae_ is applied to it by Silius) which had been partially Hellenised, but still retained its native traditions and the use of the Oscan language. Ennius is thus spoken of as 'Semi-Graecus.' He laid claim to be descended from the old Messapian kings, a claim which Virgil is supposed to acknowledge in the introduction of Messapus leading his followers in the gathering of the Italian races, Ibant aequati numero regemque canebant. This claim to royal descent indicates that the poet was a member of the better class of families in his native district; and the consciousness of old lineage, which prompted the claim, probably strengthened the high self-confidence by which he was animated, and helped to determine the strong aristocratic bias of his sympathies. He bore witness to his nationality in the saying quoted by Gellius[2] that 'in the possession of the Greek, Oscan, and Latin speech, he possessed three hearts.' Of these three languages the Oscan, as the one of least value to acquire for the purposes of literature or of social intercourse, was most likely to have been his inherited tongue. Rudiae, from its Italian nationality, from its neighbourhood to the cities of Magna Graecia, and from its relation of dependence on Rome, must have been in the time of the boyhood of Ennius a meeting-place, not only of three different languages,--that of common life, that of culture and education, that of military service--but of the three different spirits or tendencies which were operative in the creation of the new literature. To his home among the hills overlooking the Grecian seas[3]--referred to in the expression of Ovid,-- Calabris in montibus ortus-- and in the phrase of Silius,-- Hispida tellus Miserunt Calabri; Rudiae genuere vetustae, the poet owed the 'Italian heart,' the virtue of a race still uncorrupted and unsophisticated, the buoyant energy and freshness of feeling which enabled him to apprehend all the novelty and the greatness of the momentous age through which he lived. The South of Italy afforded, at this time, means of education, which were denied to Rome or Latium; and the peace enjoyed by his native district for the first twenty years of his life granted to Ennius leisure to avail himself of these means, which he could not have enjoyed had he been born a few years later. In the short account of his life in Jerome's continuation of the Eusebian Chronicle, it is stated that he was born at Tarentum. Though this is clearly an error, it seems probable that the poet may have spent the years of his education there. Though Tarentum, since its capture by the Romans, had lost its political importance, it still continued to be a centre of Greek culture and of social pleasure. Dramatic representations had been especially popular among a people who had drifted far away 'ex Spartana dura illa et horrida disciplina[4]' of their ancestors. From the knowledge of the Attic tragedians displayed by Ennius in his later career it is likely that he had witnessed representations of their works on a Greek stage, before he began, in middle life, to direct his own genius to dramatic composition. The knowledge and admiration of Homer which stimulated him to the composition of his greatest work, might have been acquired in any centre of Greek culture. But the intellectual interests indicated in some of his miscellaneous writings have a kind of local character, distinguishing them alike from the older philosophies of Athens and from the more recent science of Alexandria. His acceptance of the doctrine of the transmigration of souls and the physical fancies expressed in some of the fragments of the Epicharmus probably came to him from the teaching of the Neo-Pythagoreans, who were widely spread among the Greeks of Southern Italy. The rationalistic speculations of Euhemerus, which appear in strange union with the 'somnia Pythagorea' of the Annals, were of Sicilian origin. The gastronomic treatise, which Ennius afterwards translated into Latin, was the work of Archestratus of Gela. The class of persons for whom such a work would originally be written was likely to be found among the luxurious livers of Sicily and Magna Graecia. Thus while the serious poetry of Ennius was inspired by the older and nobler works of Greek genius, the influence of a more vulgar and prosaic class of teachers, transmitted by him to Roman thought and literature, was probably derived from the place of his early education. His Italian spirit, and the Greek culture acquired by him in early youth, were two of the conditions out of which the new literature was destined to arise. The third condition was his steadfast and ardent Roman patriotism. Born more than a generation after his native district had ceased to be at war with Rome, he grew up to manhood during the years of peace between the first and second Carthaginian wars, when the supremacy of Rome was loyally accepted. Between early manhood and middle life he was a witness of and an actor in the protracted and long doubtful struggle between the two great Imperial States, on the issue of which hung the future destinies of the world:-- Omnia cum belli trepido concussa tumultu Horrida contremuere sub altis aetheris oris; In dubioque fuere utrorum ad regna cadendum Omnibus humanis esset terraque marique[5]. Though during that struggle the loyalty of some of the Italian communities was shaken, yet the aristocratic party in every city, and the Greek States generally, were true to the Roman alliance[6]. Thus his political sympathies, as well as his Greek education, would incline Ennius to identify himself with the cause of Rome, and his ardent imagination apprehended the grandeur and majesty with which she played her part in the contest. It was in the Second Punic War that the ideal of what was greatest in the character and institutions of Rome was most fully realised. Her good fortune supplied from among the contingent furnished to the war by her Messapian allies a man of a nature so sympathetic with her own and an imagination so vivid as to gain for the ideal thus created a permanent realisation. Of the share which Ennius had in the war we know only that he served in Sardinia with the rank of centurion. That he had become a man of some note in that capacity is suggested by the fact that he attracted the attention of the Roman quaestor Cato, and accompanied him to Rome. A certain dramatic interest attaches to this first meeting of the typical representative of Roman manners and traditions and great enemy of foreign innovations, with the man by whom, more than by any one else, the mind of Rome was enlarged and liberalised, and many of her most cherished convictions were most seriously undermined. This actual service in a great war left its impress on the work done by Ennius. Fragments both of his tragedies and his Annals prove how thoroughly he understood and appreciated the best qualities of the soldierly character. This fellowship in hardship and danger fitted him to become the national poet of a race of soldiers. He has drawn from his own observation an image of the fortitude and discipline of the Roman armies, and of the patriotic devotion and resolution of the men by whom these armies were led. There is a strong realism in the expression of martial sentiment in Ennius, marking him out as a man familiar with the life of the camp and the battle-field, and quite distinct from the idealising enthusiasm of Livy and Virgil[7]. Ennius entered on his career as a writer at a time when the long strain of a great struggle was giving place to the confidence and security of a great triumph. He lived for thirty-five years longer, witnessing the rapid advance of Roman conquest in Greece and Asia, and over the barbarous tribes of the West. He died one year before the crowning victory of Pydna. During all his later life his sanguine spirit and patriotic enthusiasm were buoyed up by the success of the Roman and Italian arms abroad; while his political sympathies were in thorough accord with the dominant influences in the government of the State. At no other period of Roman history was the ascendency of the Senate and of the great houses more undisputed, or, on the whole, more wisely and ably exercised. In the lists of those who successively fill the great curule magistracies, we find almost exclusively the names of members of the old patrician or of the more recent plebeian nobility. At no other period does the tribunician opposition to the senatorian direction of affairs and to the authority of the magistrate appear weaker or more intermittent. It was not till a generation after the death of Ennius that the moral corruption and political and social disorganisation--the ultimate results of the great military successes gained under the absolute ascendency of the Senate,--became fully manifest. It is difficult to say how far the aristocratic and antipopular bias of all Roman literature may have been determined by the political conditions of the time in which that literature received the most powerful impulse, and by the personal relations and peculiar stamp of character of the man by whom that impulse was given. Along with the military and political activity of the time, during which Ennius lived in Rome, the stirring of a new intellectual life was apparent. Even during the war dramatic representations continued to take place, and the most active part of the career of Naevius, and a considerable part of that of Plautus, belong to the years during which Hannibal was still in Italy. After the cessation of the war, we note in the pages of Livy that much greater prominence is given to the celebration of public games, of which at this time dramatic representations formed the chief part. The regular holidays for which the Aediles provided these entertainments became more numerous; and the art of the dramatist was employed to enhance the pomp of the spectacle on the occasion of a great triumph, or of the funeral of an illustrious man. The death of Livius Andronicus and the banishment of Naevius, which must have happened about the time that Ennius arrived at Rome, had deprived the Roman stage of the only writers of any name, who had attempted to introduce upon it the works of the Greek tragedians. Ennius had, indeed, rather to create than to revive the taste for tragedy. The prologue to the Amphitryo[8] shows how much more congenial the reproduction of the ordinary life of the Greeks was to the uneducated audiences of Rome than the higher effort to familiarise them with the personages and adventures of the heroic age. The great era of Roman comedy was coincident with the literary career of Ennius. It was then that the best extant plays of Plautus were produced, and that Caecilius Statius, whom ancient critics ranked as his superior, flourished. The quality attributed to the latter in the line of Horace, Vincere Caecilius gravitate, Terentius arte, indicates a closer affinity with the spirit of Ennius, than the moral and political indifference of the older dramatist. The aim of Ennius was to raise literature from being a mere popular recreation, and to bring it into accord with the higher mood of the nation; to use it as a medium both of elevation and enlightenment. In carrying out this aim he appealed to the temper and to the newly awakened interests of members of the aristocratic class, who were coming into close contact with educated Greeks, and were beginning to appreciate the treasures of art and literature now opened up to them. The career of Q. Fabius Pictor, the first historian of Rome, and the first who made a name for himself in painting, who lived at this time, attests this twofold attraction. The friendly relations which Roman generals, such as T. Quintius Flamininus, established with the famous Greek cities, in which they appeared as liberators rather than conquerors, were the result of intellectual enthusiasm as much as of a definite policy. With the wars of Pyrrhus and the capture of Tarentum, the first stage of the process described in the lines of Horace began[9]: the end of the Second Punic War was the second stage in the process. It is to this period, rather than to the progress of the war, that the words of the Grammarian, Porcius Licinus, most truly apply, Poenico bello secundo Musa pinnato gradu Intulit se bellicosam in Romuli gentem feram. The more frequent and closer contact with the mind of Greece not only refined the taste and enlarged the intelligence of those capable of feeling its influence, but produced at the same time a change in men's deepest convictions. Though the definite tenets of Stoicism and Epicureanism did not acquire ascendency till a later time, the dissolving force of Greek speculative thought and Greek views of life forced its way into Rome through various channels,--especially through the adaptations of the tragedies of Euripides and of the comedy of Menander. All these tendencies of the time acted on Ennius, stimulating his mental activity in various directions. His natural temperament and his acquired culture brought him into harmony with the spirit of his age without raising him too much above it. A poet of more delicacy of taste and perfection of execution would have been unintelligible to his contemporaries. A more systematic thinker would have been out of harmony with the conditions of life by which he was surrounded. Breadth, vigour, a spirit clinging to what was most vital in the old state of things, and yet readily adapting itself to what was new, were the qualities needed to establish a literature true to the genius of Rome in the second century B.C., and containing the promise of the more perfect accomplishment of a later age. And these qualities belonged to Ennius by natural gifts and the experience and culture of his earlier years. There is no reason to believe that he had obtained any eminence in literature before he settled in middle age at Rome. His genius was of that robust order which grows richer and livelier with advancing years. The Annals was the work of his old age,--the ripe fruit of a strong and energetic manhood, prolonged to the last in hopeful activity. Cicero speaks of 'the cheerfulness with which he bore the two evils of old age and poverty[10].' Wherever the poet speaks of himself, his words reveal a sanguine and contented spirit; as, in that fine simile, where he compares himself, at the close of his active and successful career, to a brave horse which has often won the prize at the Olympian games, and in old age obtains his well-deserved repose:-- Sicut fortis equus, spatio qui saepe supremo Vicit Olimpia, nunc senio confectu' quiescit. In none of his fragments is there any trace of that melancholy after-thought which pervades the poetry of his greatest successors, Lucretius and Virgil. From the humorous exaggeration of Horace, Ennius ipse pater nunquam, nisi potus, ad arma Prosiluit dicenda; and from the poet's own confession, Nunquam poetor, nisi si podager, it may be inferred that he belonged to the class of poets of a lusty and social nature, of which Dryden is a type in modern times, who enjoyed the pleasures of wine and good fellowship. The well-known anecdote, told by Cicero, of the interchange of visits between Scipio Nasica and Ennius[11], though not a brilliant specimen of Roman wit, is interesting from the light which it throws on the easy terms of intimacy in which the poet lived with the members of the most eminent Roman families. Such testimonies and traits of personal character make us think of Ennius as a man of genial and social temper, as well as of 'an intense and glowing mind.' It was probably through his position as a teacher of Greek that Ennius first became known to the leading men of Rome. If this position was at first one of dependence, similar to that in which in earlier times the client stood to his patron, it soon changed into one of mutual esteem and admiration. We can best understand the relation in which he stood to men eminent in the state and in the camp, from a passage from the seventh book of the Annals quoted by Aulus Gellius. In that passage the poet is stated, on the authority of L. Aelius Stilo[12] (an early grammarian, a friend of Lucilius, and one of Cicero's teachers), to have drawn his own portrait, under an imaginary description of a confidential friend of the Roman general, Servilius Geminus. The portrait has the air of being drawn from the life, with a rapid and forcible hand, and with a minuteness of detail significant of close personal observation:-- Haece locutu' vocat quocum bene saepe libenter Mensam sermonesque suos rerumque suarum Congeriem partit, magnam cum lassu' diei Partem fuisset de summis rebu' regendis Consilio, indu foro lato sanctoque senatu: Cui res audacter magnas parvasque jocumque Eloqueretur, cuncta simul malaque et bona dictu Evomeret, si qui vellet, tutoque locaret. Quocum multa volup ac gaudia clamque palamque! Ingenium cui nulla malum sententia suadet Ut faceret facinus levis aut malu', doctu', fidelis, Suavis homo, facundu', suo contentu', beatus, Scitu', secunda loquens in tempore, commodu', verbum Paucum, multa tenens antiqua sepulta, vetustas Quem fecit mores veteresque novosque tenentem, Multorum veterum leges divumque hominumque; Prudenter qui dicta loquive tacereve possit. Hunc inter pugnas Servilius sic compellat[13]. There are many touches in this picture, which suggest the kind of intimacy in which Ennius may have lived with Fulvius Nobilior when accompanying him in his Aetolian campaign, or his bearing when taking part in the light or serious talk of the Scipios. The learning and power of speech, the knowledge of antiquity and of the manners of the day, attributed to this friend of Servilius, were gifts which we may attribute to the poet both on ancient testimony and on the evidence afforded by the fragments of his writings. The good sense, tact, and knowledge of the world, the cheerfulness in life and conversation, the honour and integrity of character represented in the same passage, are among the personal qualities which, in all ages, form a bond of union between men eminent in great practical affairs and men eminent in literature. Such were the qualities which, according to his own account, recommended Horace to the intimate friendship of Maecenas. Many expressive fragments from the lost poetry of Ennius give assurance that he was a man in whom learning and the ardent temperament of genius were happily united with the worth and sense described in this nameless portrait. By his personal merit he broke through the strongest barriers ever raised by national and family pride, and made the name of poet, instead of a reproach, a name of honour with the ruling class at Rome. The favourable impression which he produced on the 'primitive virtue' of Cato, by whom he was first brought to Rome, was more probably due to his force of character and social qualities than to his genius and literary accomplishment,--qualities seemingly little valued by his earliest patron, who, in one of his speeches, reproached Fulvius Nobilior with allowing himself to be accompanied by a poet in his campaign. But the strongest proof of the worth and the wisdom of Ennius is his intimate friendship with the greatest Roman of the age, and the conqueror of the greatest soldier of antiquity. It is honourable to the friendship of generous natures, that the poet neither sought nor gained wealth from this intimacy, but continued to live plainly and contentedly on the Aventine. Yet after death it was believed that the two friends were not divided; and the bust of the provincial poet found a place among the remains of that time-honoured family, the record of whose grandeur has been preserved, even to the present day, in the august simplicity of their monumental inscriptions. The elder Africanus may have been attracted to Ennius not only by his passion for Greek culture, but by a certain community of nature. The mystical enthusiasm, the high self-confidence, the direct simplicity combined with majesty of character, impressed on the language of the poet were equally impressed on the action and bearing of the soldier. The feeling which Ennius in his turn entertained for Scipio was one of enthusiastic admiration. While paying due honour to the merits and services of other famous men, even of such as Cato and Fabius, who were most opposed to his idol, of Scipio he said that Homer alone could worthily have uttered his praises[14]. In addition to the part which he assigned to him in the Ninth Book of the Annals, he devoted a separate poem to commemorate his achievements. He has left also two short inscriptions, written in elegiac verse, in which he proclaims in words of burning enthusiasm the momentous services and transcendent superiority of the 'great world's victor's victor'-- Hic est ille situs cui nemo civi' neque hostis Quivit pro factis reddere opis pretium[15]; and this also, A sole exoriente supra Maeoti' paludes Nemo est qui factis me aequiperare queat. Si fas endo plagas caelestium ascendere cuiquam est, Mi soli caeli maxima porta patet[16]. With many marked differences, which distinguish a man of active, social, and national sympathies from a student of Nature and a thinker on human life, there is a certain affinity of character and genius between Ennius and Lucretius. Enthusiastic admiration of personal greatness is one prominent feature in which they resemble one another. But while Lucretius is the ardent admirer of contemplative and imaginative greatness, it is greatness in action and character which moves the admiration of Ennius. They resemble each other also in their strong consciousness of genius and their high estimate of its function and value. Cicero mentions that Ennius applied the epithet _sanctus_ to poets. Lucretius applies the same epithet to the old philosophic poets, as in the lines of strong affection and reverence which he dedicates to Empedocles, Nil tamen hoc habuisse viro praeclarius in se, Nec _sanctum_ magis, et mirum carumque videtur[17]. The inscription which Ennius composed for his own bust directly expresses his sense of the greatness of his work, and his confident assurance of fame, and of the lasting sympathy of his countrymen-- Aspicite, O cives, senis Enni imagini' formam, Hic vestrum panxit maxima facta patrum. Nemo me lacrimis decoret nec funera fletu Faxit. Cur? Volito vivu' per ora virum[18]. Two lines from one of his satires-- Enni poeta salve qui mortalibus Versus propinas flammeos medullitus[19], indicate in still stronger terms his burning consciousness of power. Some of the greatest of modern poets, such as Dante, Milton, and Wordsworth, have manifested a feeling similar to that expressed by Ennius and Lucretius. Although appearing in strange contrast with the self-suppression of the highest creative art (as seen in Homer, in Sophocles, and in Shakspeare), this proud self-confidence, 'disdainful of help or hindrance,' is the usual accompaniment of an intense nature and of a genius exercised with some serious moral, religious, or political purpose. The least pleasing side of the feeling, even in men of generous nature, is the scorn,--not of envy, but of imperfect sympathy,--which they are apt to entertain towards rival genius or antagonistic convictions. Something of this spirit appears in the disparaging allusion of Ennius to his predecessor Naevius:-- Scripsere alii rem Versibu', quos olim Fauni vatesque canebant, Quum neque Musarum scopulos quisquam superarat Nec dicti studiosus erat[20]. The contempt here expressed for the metre employed by the older poet seems to be the counterpart of his own exultation in being the first to introduce what he called 'the long verses' into Latin literature. Another point in which there is some affinity between Ennius and Lucretius is their religious temper and convictions. There is indeed no trace in Ennius of the rigid intellectual consistency of Lucretius, nor in Lucretius any sympathy with those mystic speculations which Ennius derived from the lore attributed to Pythagoras. But in both deep feelings of awe and reverence are combined with a scornful disbelief of the superstition of their time. They both apply the principles of Euhemerism to resolve the bright creations of the old mythology into their original elements. Ennius, like Lucretius, seems to deny the providence of the gods. He makes one of the personages of his dramas give expression to the thought which perplexed the minds of Thucydides and Tacitus--the thought, namely, of the apparent disconnexion between prosperity and goodness, as affording proof of the divine indifference to human well-being-- Ego deum genus esse semper dixi et dicam caelitum, Sed eos non curare opinor, quid agat humanum genus; Nam si curent, bene bonis sit, male malis, quod nunc abest[21]: and he exposed, with caustic sense, the false pretences of augurs, prophets, and astrologers. His translation of the Sacred Chronicle of Euhemerus exercised a permanent influence on the religious convictions of his countrymen. But while led to these conclusions by the spirit of his age, and by the study of the later speculations of Greece, he believed in the soul's independence of the body, and of its continued existence, under other conditions, after death. He declared that the spirit of Homer, after many changes,--at one time having animated a peacock[22], again, having been incarnate in the sage of Crotona,--had finally passed into his own body: and he told how the shade--which he regards as distinct from the soul or spirit--of his great prototype had appeared to him from the invisible world,-- Quo neque permaneant animae neque corpora nostra Sed quaedam simulacra modis pallentia miris, and explained to him the whole plan of nature. These dreams of the imagination may not have been without effect in enabling Ennius to escape from the gloom which 'eclipsed the brightness of the world' to Lucretius. The light in which the world appeared to the older poet was that of common sense strangely blended with imaginative mysticism. He thus seems to stand midway between the spiritual aspirations of Empedocles and the negation of Lucretius. Born in the vigorous prime of Italian civilisation he came into the inheritance of the bold fancies of the earlier Greeks and of the dull rationalism of their later speculation. His ideas on what transcends experience appear thus to have been without the unity arising from an unreflecting acceptance of tradition, or from the basis of philosophical consistency. II. HIS WORKS.--(1) MISCELLANEOUS WORKS. II. (1) In laying the foundations of Roman literature, Ennius displayed not only the fervent sympathies and active faculty of genius, but also great energy and industry, and a many-sided learning. The composition of his tragedies and of the Annals, while making most demand on his original gifts, implied also a diligent study of Homer and of the Greek tragedians, and a large acquaintance with the traditions and antiquities of Rome. But besides the works on which his highest poetical faculty was employed, other writings, of a philosophical, didactic, and miscellaneous character, gave evidence of the versatility of his powers and interests. It does not appear that he was the author of any prose writing. His version of the Sacred Chronicle of Euhemerus was more probably a poetical adaptation than a literal prose translation of that work. The work of Euhemerus was conceived in that spirit of vulgar rationalism, which is condemned by Plato in the Phaedrus. He explained away the fables of mythology, by representing them as a supernatural account of historical events. Several extracts of the work quoted by Lactantius, as from the translation of Ennius, look as if they had been reduced from a form originally metrical into the prose of a later era[23]. There is thus no evidence, direct or indirect, to prove that Ennius had any share in forming the style of Latin prose. But if verse was the sole instrument which he used, this was certainly not due to the poetical character of all the topics which he treated, but, more likely, to the fact that his acquired aptitude, and the state of the Latin language in his time, made metrical writing more natural and easy than prose composition. One of his works in verse was a treatise on good living, called Hedyphagetica, founded on the gastronomic researches of Archestratus of Gela,--a sage who is said to have devoted his life to the study of everything that contributed to the pleasures of the table, and to have recorded his varied experience and research with the grave dignity of epic verse. A few lines from this translation or adaptation of Ennius, giving an account of the coasts on which the best fish are to be found, have been preserved by Apuleius. The lines are curious as exemplifying that tone of half-serious enthusiasm, which all who treat, either in prose or verse, of the pleasures of eating seem naturally to adopt, as for instance the Catius of Horace in his discourse on gastronomy[24]. The language in which the _scarus_, a fish unhappily lost to the modern epicure, is described as 'the brain almost of almighty Jove,' fits all the requirements of gastronomic rapture:-- Quid turdum, merulam, melanurum umbramque marinam Praeterii, atque scarum, cerebrum Jovi' paene supremi? Nestoris ad patriam hic capitur magnusque bonusque. He wrote also a philosophical poem in trochaic septenarian verse, called Epicharmus, founded on writings attributed to the old Sicilian poet, which appear to have resolved the gods of the Greek mythology into natural substances[25]. A few slight fragments have been preserved from this poem. They speak of the four elements or principles of the universe as 'water, earth, air, the sun'; of 'the blending of heat with cold, dryness with moisture'; of 'the earth bearing and supporting all nations and receiving them again back into herself.' The following is the longest fragment from the poem:-- Istic est is Jupiter quem dico, quem Graeci vocant Aërem: qui ventus est et nubes; imber postea Atque ex imbre frigus: ventus post fit, aër denuo, Haece propter Jupiter sunt ista quae dico tibi, Quoniam mortalis atque urbes beluasque omnis juvat[26]. These fragments and a passage from the opening lines of the Annals, where the shade of Homer was introduced as discoursing to Ennius (like the shade of Anchises to Aeneas), on 'the nature of things,' are specimens of that vague curiosity about the facts and laws of Nature, which, in ancient times, supplied the absence of scientific knowledge. Such physical speculations possessed a great attraction for the Roman poets. The spirit of the Epicharmus, as well as of the Sacred Chronicle of Euhemerus, reappears in the poem of Lucretius. Ennius was the first among his countrymen who expressed that curiosity as to the ultimate facts of Nature and that sense of the mysterious life of the universe, which acted as the most powerful intellectual impulse on the mind of Lucretius, and which fascinated the imagination of Virgil. Another of his miscellaneous works, probably of a moral and didactic character, was known by the name of Protreptica. It is possible that all of these works[27], as well as the Scipio, formed part of the Saturae, or Miscellanies, under which title Ennius composed four, or, according to another authority, six books. The Romans looked upon Lucilius as the inventor of satire in the later sense of that word[28];--he having been the first to impress upon the satura the character of censorious criticism, which it has borne since his time. But there was another kind of satura, of which Ennius and Pacuvius in early times, and Varro at a somewhat later time, were regarded as the principal authors. This was really a miscellany treating of various subjects, in various metres, and, as employed by Varro, was written partly in prose, partly in verse. This kind of composition, as well as the Lucilian satire, arose out of the old indigenous satura or dramatic medley, familiar to the Romans before the introduction of Greek literature. When the scenic element in the original satura was superseded by the new comedy introduced from Greece, the old name was first applied to a miscellaneous kind of composition, in which ordinary topics were treated in a serious but apparently desultory way; and even as employed by Lucilius and Horace the satura retained much of its original character. The satires of Ennius were written in various metres, iambic, trochaic, and hexameter, and treated of various topics of personal and public interest. The few passages which ancient authorities quote as fragments from them are not of much value in themselves, but when taken in connexion with the testimonies as to their character, they are of some interest as showing that this kind of composition was a form intermediate between the old dramatic satura and the satire of Lucilius and Horace. It is recorded that in one of these pieces, Ennius introduced a dialogue between Life and Death;--thus transmitting in the use of dialogue (which appears very frequently in Horace and Persius) some vestige of the original scenic medley. Ennius also appears, like Lucilius and Horace, to have communicated in his satires his own personal feelings and experience, as in the fragment already quoted:-- Nunquam poetor, nisi si podager. Further satire, in the hands of its chief masters, aimed at practical moral teaching, not only by precept, ridicule, and invective, and by portraiture of individuals and of types, but also by the use of anecdotes and fables. This last mode of inculcating homely lessons on the conduct of life is common in Horace. It appears, however, to have been first used by Ennius. Aulus Gellius mentions that Aesop's fable of the field-lark and the husbandman 'is very skilfully and gracefully told by Ennius in his satires'; and he quotes the advice appended to the fable, 'Never to expect your friends to do for you what you can do for yourself': Hoc erit tibi argumentum semper in promptu situm: Nequid expectes amicos, quod tute agere possies[29]. These miscellaneous works of Ennius were the fruits of his learning and literary industry, rather than of his genius. Such works might have been written in prose, if the art of prose composition had been as familiar as that of verse. It is in the fragments of his dramas, and still more of the Annals, that his poetic power is most apparent, and that the influence which he exercised over the Roman mind and literature is discerned. (2) DRAMAS. (2) Before the time of Ennius, the Roman drama, both tragic and comic, had established itself at Rome, in close imitation of the tragedy and the new comedy of Athens. The latter had been most successfully cultivated by Naevius and his younger contemporary, Plautus. The advancement of tragedy to an equal share of popular favour was due to the severer genius of Ennius. He appears however to have tried, though without much success, to adapt himself to the popular taste in favour of comedy. The names of two of his comedies, viz. _Cupuncula_ and _Pancratiastae_, have come down to us; but their fragments are too insignificant to justify the formation of any opinion on their merits. His admirers in ancient times nowhere advance in his favour any claim to comic genius. Volcatius Sedigitus, an early critic, who wrote a work _De Poetis_, and who has already been referred to as assigning the third rank in the list of comic poets to Naevius, mentions Ennius as tenth and last, solely 'antiquitatis causa.' Any inference that might be drawn from the character exhibited in the other fragments of Ennius, would accord both with the negative and positive evidence of antiquity, as to his deficiency in comic power. He has nothing in common with that versatile and dramatic genius, in which occasionally the highest imagination has been united with the most abundant humour. The real bent of his mind, as revealed in his higher poetry, is grave and intense, like that of Lucretius or Milton. Many of the conceits, strained effects, and play on words, found in his fragments, imply want of humour as well as an imperfect poetic taste. Thus, in the following fragment from one of his satires, the meaning of the passage is more obscured than pointed by the forced iteration and play upon the word _frustra_:-- Nam qui lepide postulat alterum frustrari, Quom frustrast, frustra illum dicit frustra esse. Nam qui se frustrari quem frustra sentit, Qui frustratur frustrast, si ille non est frustra[30]. The love of alliteration and assonance, which is conspicuous also in Plautus and in the fragments of Pacuvius and Accius, and which seems to have been the natural accompaniment of the new formative energy imparted to the Latin language by the earliest poets and orators, appears in its most exaggerated form in such lines as the O Tite tute Tati tibi tanta tiranne tulisti, quoted from the Annals. Many of his fragments show indeed that he possessed the caustic spirit of a satirist; but it was in the light of common sense, not of humour, that he regarded the follies of the world. The general character of Roman tragedy, so far as it can be ascertained from ancient testimony and the extant fragments of the early tragedians, will be examined in the following chapter. It is not possible to determine what dramatic power Ennius may have displayed in the evolution of his plots or the delineation of his characters. His peculiar genius is more distinctly stamped on his epic than on his dramatic fragments. Still many of the latter, in their boldness of conception and expression, and in their strong and fervid morality, are expressive of the original force of the poet, and of the Roman temper of his mind. Some of them will be brought forward in the sequel, along with passages from the Annals, as important contributions to our estimate of the poet's genius and intellect. It was certainly due to Ennius that Roman tragedy was first raised to that pitch of popular favour which it enjoyed till the age of Cicero. While actively employed in many other fields of literature, he carried on the composition of his tragedies till the latest period of his life. Cicero records that the _Thyestes_ was represented at the celebration of the Ludi Apollinares, shortly before the poet's death[31]. The titles of about twenty-five of his tragedies are known, and a few fragments remain from all of them. About one half of these bear the titles of the heroes and heroines connected with the Trojan cycle of events, such as the _Achilles_, _Achilles Aristarchi_, _Ajax_, _Alexander_, _Andromache Aechmalotis_, _Hectoris Lutra_, _Hecuba_, _Iphigenia_, _Phoenix_, _Telamo_. One at least of his tragedies, the _Medea_, was literally translated from the Greek of Euripides, whom he seems to have made his model, in preference to the older Attic dramatists. Cicero[32] speaks of it, along with the Antiope of Pacuvius, as being translated word for word from the Greek; and a comparison of the fragments of the Latin with the passages in the Medea of Euripides shows how closely Ennius followed his original. In one place he has mistranslated his author,--the passage (Eur. Med. 215), [Greek: oida gar pollous brotôn semnous gegôtas, tous men ommatôn apo tous d' en thyraiois], being thus rendered in Latin,-- Multi suam rem bene gessere et publicam patria procul. The opening lines of the Medea of Ennius may be quoted as probably a fair specimen of the degree of faithfulness with which the early Roman tragedians translated from their originals. There is some nervous force, but little either of poetical grace or musical flow in the language:-- Utinam ne in nemore Pelio securibus Caesa cecidisset abiegna ad terram trabes, Neve inde navis inchoandae exordium Coepisset, quae nunc nominatur nomine Argo, quia Argivi in ea dilecti viri Vecti petebant pellem inauratam arietis Colchis, imperio regis Peliae, per dolum; Nam nunquam era errans mea domo ecferret pedem Medea, animo aegra, amore saevo saucia[33]. In his Hecuba, also, and probably in his Iphigenia, Ennius made free use of the dramas founded on the same subjects by Euripides. But in many of his dramatic fragments the sentiment expressed is clearly that of a Roman, not of a Greek mind[34]. The subjects of many of his dramas, such as the Achilles, the Ajax, the Hectoris Lutra, the Telamon, the Iphigenia, afforded scope for the exhibition of the soldierly character. Cicero[35] adduces the wounded Eurypylus as an example of the kind of fortitude and superiority to pain produced by the discipline of the Roman armies. The same author quotes with great admiration scenes from the Alexander and from the Andromache Aechmalotis, in which pathos is the predominant sentiment. He adds to his quotations the comments 'O poema tenerum, et moratum, et molle'; and again, 'O poetam egregium, quamquam ab his cantoribus Euphorionis contemnitur! Sentit omnia repentina et necopinata esse graviora ... praeclarum carmen est enim et rebus et verbis et modis lugubre[36].' In the former of these scenes Cassandra, under the influence of Apollo, reluctant and _ashamed_ (perhaps in this feeling the hand of a Roman rather than of a Greek poet may be recognised), yet mastered by prophetic fury, bursts forth in these wild, agitated tones:-- Adest, adest fax obvoluta sanguine atque incendio: Multos annos latuit: cives ferte opem et restinguite. Iamque mari magno classis cita Texitur: exitium examen rapit. Advenit, et fera velivolantibus Navibus complevit manus litora[37]. We see in this passage how the passionate character of the situation is enhanced by the mysterious power attributed to Cassandra. A similar excitement of feeling, produced by supernatural terror, appears in a fragment of the Alcmaeon, quoted also by Cicero, and of another the motive is the awe associated with the dim and pale realms of the dead[38]. In these and similar passages we note the power of expressing the varying moods of passion by varied effects of metre. Horace characterises his ordinary verse in the line, In scaenam missos cum magno pondere versus; and this slow and weighty movement seems to have been the general character of his metre in the calmer parts of his dramas. But in a large number of the fragments of the dialogue, where there is any excitement of feeling or intensity of thought, we find him using the more rapid trochaic septenarian, with quick transitions to the anapaestic dimeter, or tetrameter, as the passion passes beyond the control of the speaker. In two of his dramas, the Sabinae and Ambracia, he made use of materials supplied by the early legendary history of Rome, and by a great contemporary event. The first of these, like the Romulus of Naevius, belonged to the class of 'fabulae Praetextatae,' and was founded on the intervention of the Sabine women in the war between Romulus and Tatius. The second, representing the capture of the town of Ambracia, in the Aetolian war, may, like the Clastidium of the older poet (written in celebration of the victory of Marcellus over the Gauls), have had more of the character of a military pageant and, in all probability, was composed for representation at the games celebrated on the triumphal return of M. Fulvius Nobilior from that war. (3) THE ANNALS. (3) But the poem which was the chief result of his life, and made an epoch in Latin literature, was the Annals. On the composition of this work he rested his hopes of popular and permanent fame-- Hic vestrum panxit maxima facta patrum: and again, apparently at the opening of the poem, he wrote,-- Latos per populos terrasque poemata nostra Clara cluebunt. At its conclusion, he claimed for his old age the repose due to a brave and triumphant career. He composed the eighteenth book, the last, in his sixty-seventh year, three years before his death[39]. The great length to which the poem extended, and the vast amount of materials which it embraced, imply a long and steady concentration of his powers on the task. It was one requiring much learning as well as original conception. The fragments of the poem afford proofs of a familiarity with Homer, and of acquaintance with the Cyclic poets[40]. It is impossible to say how much of the early Roman history, as it has come down to modern times, is due to the diligence of Ennius in collecting, and to his genius in giving life to the traditions and ancient records of Rome. He was certainly the earliest writer who gathered them up, and united them in a continuous narrative. The work accomplished by him required not only the antiquarian lore of a man Multa tenens, antiqua, sepulta, and the power of imagination to give a new shape to the past, but an intimate knowledge of the great events and the great men of his own time, and a strong sympathy with the best spirit of his age. The poem was written in eighteen books. Of these books about six hundred lines have been preserved in fragments, varying from about twenty lines to half a line in length. From the minuteness with which comparatively unimportant matters are described, it is inferred that the separate books extended to a much greater length than those either of the Iliad or of the Aeneid. Of the first book there remain about 120 lines, including the dream of Ilia in seventeen lines, and the auspices of Romulus in twenty lines. In it were narrated the mythical events from the time Quum veter occubuit Príamus sub marte Pelasgo, to the death and deification of Romulus; Romulus in caelo cum dis genitalibus aevum Degit. There is no allusion in these fragments to the Carthaginian adventures of Aeneas, which Naevius had introduced into his poem on the First Punic War. Aeneas seems at once to have been brought to Hesperia, a land, Quam prisci casci populi tenuere Latini. Ilia is represented as the daughter of Aeneas. The birth and infancy of Romulus and Remus appear to have been described at great length. In commenting on Virgil's lines at Aeneid viii. 630-- Fecerat et viridi fetam Mavortis in antro Procubuisse lupam: geminos huic ubera circum Ludere pendentes pueros, et lambere matrem Impavidos; illam tereti cervice reflexam Mulcere alternos, et corpora fingere lingua,-- Servius says 'Sane totus hic locus Ennianus est.' The second and third books contained the history of the remaining Roman kings. Virgil imitated the description given in these books of the destruction of Alba (the story of which is told by Livy also with much poetic power, perhaps reproduced from the pages of Ennius), in his account of the capture of Troy, at Aeneid ii. 486-- At domus interior gemitu miseroque tumultu, etc. One short fragment of the third book contains a picturesque notice of the founding of Ostia-- Ostia munita est; idem loca navibu' pulchris Munda facit; nautisque mari quaesentibu' vitam. This line also Postquam lumina sis oculis bonus Ancu' reliquit is familiar from its reappearance in one of the most impressive passages of Lucretius. The fourth and fifth books contained the history of the State from the establishment of the Republic till just before the beginning of the war with Pyrrhus. One short fragment is taken from the night attack of the Gauls upon the Capitol. The sixth book was devoted to the war with Pyrrhus; the seventh, eighth, and ninth, to the First and Second Punic Wars. In the fragments of the sixth are found a few lines of the speeches of Pyrrhus, and of Appius Claudius Caecus. In the account of the First Punic War, the disparaging allusion to Naevius occurs-- Scripsêre alii rem, etc. It is mentioned by Cicero that Ennius borrowed much from the work of Naevius; and also that he passed over (_reliquisse_) the First Punic War, as it had been treated by his predecessor. Several fragments however must certainly refer to this war; but it is probable that that part of the subject was treated more cursorily than either the war with Pyrrhus, or the later wars. The passage in which the poet is supposed to have painted his own character, under the form of a friend of Servilius Geminus, occurred in the seventh book. Two well-known passages have been preserved from the ninth book--viz. that characterising the 'sweet-speaking' orator, M. Cornelius Cethegus-- Flos delibatus populi suadaeque medulla, and the lines in honour of Q. Fabius Maximus, Unus homo nobis cunctando restituit rem, etc. The tenth and eleventh books, beginning with a new invocation to the muse-- Insece Musa manu Romanorum induperator Quod quisque in bello gessit cum rege Philippo, treated of the Macedonian war, and of the deeds of T. Quintius Flamininus. In the later books, Ennius told the history of the war with Antiochus, of the Aetolian War carried on by his friend, M. Fulvius Nobilior, of the exploits of L. Caecilius Denter and his brother (of whom scarcely anything is known except that the sixteenth book of the Annals was written in consequence of the poet's especial admiration for them), and lastly, of the Istrian War, which took place within a few years of the author's death. Neither in general design nor in detail could the Annals be regarded as a pure epic poem. Like the Aeneid, which connects the mythical story of Aeneas with the glories of the Julian line and the great destiny of Rome, the poem of Ennius treated of fabulous tradition, of historical fact, and of great contemporary events; but it did not, like the Aeneid, unite these varied materials in the representation of the fortunes of one individual hero. The action of the poem, instead of being limited to a few days or months, extended over many generations. Nor could the poem terminate with any critical catastrophe, as its object was to unfold the continuous, still advancing progress of the State. From the name it might be inferred that the Annals must have been more like a metrical chronicle than like an epic poem; yet, as being inspired and pervaded by a grand and vital idea, the work was elevated above the level of matter of fact into the region of poetry. The idea of a high destiny, unfolding itself under the old kingly dynasty and the long line of consuls,--through the successive wars with the Italian races, with Pyrrhus and the Carthaginians,--rapidly advancing, though not fully accomplished in the age when the poem was written,--gave unity of plan and consistency of form to its rude and colossal structure. The word Annales, as applied to Roman story, suggests something more than the mere record of events in regular annual sequence. It involves also the idea of unbroken continuity. In the Roman Republic, the unity and vital action of the State were maintained and manifested by the delegation of the functions of government on magistrates appointed from year to year, just as the life of a monarchical state is maintained and manifested in its line of kings. In the spirit animating the work,--in the conception of a past history, stretching back in unbroken grandeur until it is lost in fable, but yet vitally linked to the interests of the present time,--the Annals of Ennius may be compared with the dramas in which Shakspeare has represented the national life of England--in all its greatness and vicissitudes--with the glory and splendour as well as the dark and tragic colours with which that story is inwoven. The poem, although laying no claim to the perfection of epic form, had thus something of the genuine epic inspiration. While treating both of a mythical past and of real historical events, it was pervaded by a living and popular idea,--faith in the destiny of Rome. It was through the power and presence of that same idea in his own age, that Virgil was able to impart a vital and enduring meaning to a fabulous tradition, and to create, out of the imaginary fortunes of a Trojan hero, a poem most truly representative of his age and country. It is the absence of any such living idea which renders the artificial epics of refined and civilised eras,--such poems, for instance, as the _Thebais_ of Statius, or the _Argonautics_ of Valerius Flaccus,--in general so flat and unprofitable. Regarded, on the other hand, as a historical poem, the Annals was written under more favourable conditions than the _Pharsalia_ of Lucan, or the _Punic Wars_ of Silius Italicus--in being the work of an age to which the past had come down as popular tradition, not as recorded history. The imagination of the poet employs itself more happily and legitimately in filling up or modifying a story that has been shaped by the fancies and feelings of successive generations, than in venturing to recast the facts that stand out prominently in the actual march of human affairs. By treating of contemporary events, the poem must have receded still further from the pure type of epic poetry; yet the later fragments of the work, while written with something of the minute and literal fidelity of a chronicle, may yet lay claim to poetic inspiration. They prove that the author was no unconcerned spectator and reporter of the events going on around him, but that his imagination was fired and his sympathies keenly interested by whatever, in speech or action, was worthy to live in the memory of the world. There must have been many drawbacks to the popularity of the poem in a more critical time, when strong enthusiasm and forcible conception fail to interest, unless they are combined with the harmonious execution of a work of art. Even from the extant fragments the rude proportions and the unwieldy mass of the original work may be inferred. It is still possible to note the bare, annalistic style of many passages which sink below the level of dignified prose, the barbarisms of taste shown by a fondness for alliterative lines and plays upon words, the more common faults of careless haste and redundance of expression, and of a rugged and irregular cadence. There must have been some peculiar excellences or adaptation to the Roman taste, through which, in spite of these defects, the popularity of the poem was sustained far into the times of the Empire. This late popularity may have been due in part to antiquarian zeal or affectation, but some degree of it, as well as the favour of the age in which the poem was written, must have been founded on more substantial grounds. Apart from other literary interest, this poem first drew forth and established, for the contemplation of after times, the ideal latent in the national mind. The patriotic tones of Virgil have the same kind of ring as these in the older poet-- Audire est operae pretium procedere recte Qui rem Romanam Latiumque augescere vultis, and this other line which Cicero compared to the utterance of an oracle-- Moribus antiquis stat res Romana virisque. While in his other works Ennius was the teacher of an alien culture to his countrymen, in his Annals he represented them. He set before them an image of what was most real in themselves;--an image combining the strength and commanding features of his own time, with the proud memories and traditional traits of the past. As it is by sympathy with what is most vital and of deepest meaning in actual experience that a great poet forms his ideal of what transcends experience, so it is by a vivid apprehension of the present that he is able to re-animate the past. Dante and Milton gained their vision of other worlds through their intense feeling of the spiritual meaning of this life; and, in another sphere of art, Scott was enabled to immortalise the romance and humour of past ages, partly through the chivalrous and adventurous spirit which he inherited from them, partly through the strong interest and enjoyment with which he entered into the actual life and pursuits of his contemporaries. It is in ages of transition, such as were the ages of Sophocles, of Shakspeare, and of Scott, in which the traditions of the past seem to blend with and colour the activity and enjoyment of a new time of great issues, that representative works of genius are produced. Living in such an era, deeply moved by all the memories, the hopes, and the impulses which acted upon his contemporaries, living his own life happily and vigorously in the chief centre of the world's activity, Ennius was enabled to gather the life of centuries into one representation, and to tell the story of Rome, if without the accomplished art, yet with something of the native force and spirit of early Greece; to fix in language the patriotic traditions which had hitherto been kept alive by the statues, monuments, and commemorative ceremonies of earlier times; to uphold the standard of national character with a fervent enthusiasm; and to address the understanding of his contemporaries with a practical wisdom like their own, and a large knowledge both of 'books and men':-- Vetustas Quem fecit mores veteresque novosque tenentem. The manifest defects, as well as the peculiar power of the poem, show how widely it departed from the standard of the Greek epic which it professed to imitate. Its vast dimensions and solid structure are proofs of that capacity of long labour and concentrated interest on one great object, which was the secret of Roman success in other spheres of action. So large a mass of materials held in union only by a pervading national enthusiasm would have been utterly repugnant to Greek taste, intolerant above all things of monotony, and most exacting in its demands of artistic unity and completeness. The fragments of the poem give no idea of careful finish; they produce the impression of massiveness and energy, strength and uniformity of structure, unaccompanied by beauty, grace, or symmetry. The creation of an untutored age may be recognised in the rudeness of design,--of a Roman mind in the national spirit, the colossal proportions, and the strong workmanship of the poem. The originality of the Roman epic will be still more apparent if we compare the fragments of the Annals, in some points of detail, with the complete works of the poet, whom Ennius regarded as his prototype. There was, in the first place, a marked difference between Homer and the Roman poet in their modes of representing human life and character. The personages of the Iliad and of the Odyssey are living and forcible types of individual character. In Achilles, in Hector, and in Odysseus,--in Helen, Andromache, and Nausicaa, we recognise embodiments the most real, yet the most transcendent, of the grandeur, the heroism, the courage, and strong affection of manhood, and of the grace, the gentleness, and the sweet vivacity of woman. The work of Ennius, on the other hand, instead of presenting varied types of human nature, appears to have unfolded a long gallery of national portraits. The fragments of the poem still afford glimpses of the 'good Ancus'; 'of the man of the great heart, the wise Aelius Sextus'; 'of the sweet speaking orator,' Cethegus, 'the marrow of persuasion.' The stamp of magnanimous fortitude is impressed on the fragmentary words of Appius Claudius Caecus; and sagacity and resolution are depicted in the lines which have handed down the fame of Fabius Maximus. This idea of the poem, as unfolding the heroes of Roman story in regular series, may be gathered also from the language of Cicero: 'Cato, the ancestor of our present Cato, is extolled by him to the skies; the honour of the Roman people is thereby enhanced: finally all those Maximi, Fulvii, Marcelli, are celebrated with a glory in which we all participate[41].' This portraiture of the kings and heroes of the early time, of the orators, soldiers, and statesmen of the Republic, could not have exhibited the variety, the energy, the passion, and all the complex human attributes of Homer's personages. The men who stand prominently out in the annals of Rome were of a more uniform type. They were men of one common aim,--the advancement of Rome; animated with one sentiment,--devotion to the State. All that was purely personal in them seems merged in the traditional pictures which express only the fortitude, dignity, and sagacity of the Republic. Ennius also followed Homer in introducing the element of supernatural agency into his poem. The action of the Annals, as well as of the Iliad, was made partially dependent on a divine interference with human affairs, though exercised less directly, and, as it were, from a greater distance. Yet how great is the difference between the life-like representation of the eager, capricious, and passionate deities of Homer's Olympus and that outline which may still be traced in Ennius, and which is seen filled up in Virgil and Horace, of the gods assembled, like a grave council of state, to deliberate on the destiny of Rome. In one fragment, containing the familiar line,-- Unus erit quem tu tolles in caerula caeli Templa,-- they are introduced as debating, 'tectis bipatentibus,' on the admission of Romulus into heaven. Again, in the account of the Second Punic War, Jupiter is introduced as promising to the Romans the destruction of Carthage; and Juno abandons her resentment against the descendants of the Trojans,-- Romanis coepit Juno placata favere. It may be remarked, as a strong proof of the hold which their mythology had on the minds of the ancients, that men so sincere as Ennius and Lucretius, while openly expressing opposition to that system of religious belief, cannot separate themselves from its influence and associations in their poetry. But it is not to be supposed that Ennius, in the passages just referred to, was merely using an artificial machinery to which he attached no meaning. In this representation of the councils of the gods, he embodies that faith in the Roman destiny, which was at the root of the most serious convictions of the Romans, in the most sceptical as well as the most believing ages of their history. This, too, is the real belief, which gives meaning to the supernatural agency in the Aeneid. Aeneas is an instrument in the hands of Fate; Jupiter merely foreknows and pronounces its decrees; the parts assigned to Juno and Venus, in thwarting and advancing these decrees, seem to be an artistic addition to this original conception, suggested perhaps as much by the experience of female influence and intrigue in the poet's own age as by the memories of the Iliad. Homer makes his personages known to us in speech as well as in action. Among epic poets he alone possessed the finest dramatic genius. But over and above the natural dialogue or soliloquy, in which every feeling of his various personages is revealed, he has invested his heroes with the charm of fluent and powerful oratory, in the council of chiefs and before the assembled people. The words of his speakers pour on, as he says of the words of Odysseus,-- [Greek: niphadessin eoikota cheimeriêsi], in the rapid vehemence of passion or the subtle fluency of persuasion. The fragments of Ennius, on the other hand, scarcely afford sufficient ground for attributing to him a genuine dramatic faculty. But, as the citizen of a republic in which action was first matured in council, and living in the age when public speech first became a recognised power in the State, it was incumbent on him to embody in 'his abstract and chronicle of the time' the speech of the orator no less than the achievement of the soldier. In his estimate of character this power of speech is honoured as the fitting accompaniment of the wisdom of the statesman. In the following lines, for instance, he laments the substitution of military for civil preponderance in public affairs. Pellitur e medio sapientia, vi geritur res: Spernitur orator bonus, horridu' miles amatur: Haut doctis dictis certantes, sed maledictis Miscent inter sese inimicitiam agitantes; Non ex jure manu consertum, sed magi' ferro Rem repetunt, regnumque petunt, vadunt solida vi[42]. Many lines of the Annals are evidently fragments of speeches. The most remarkable of these passages is one from a speech of Pyrrhus, and is characterised by Cicero as expressing 'sentiments truly regal and worthy of the race of the Aeacidae[43].' This fragment, although evincing nothing of the fluency, the passion, or the argumentative subtlety of debate, yet suggests the power of a great orator by its grave authoritative appeal to the moral dignity of man:-- Nec mi aurum posco, nec mi pretium dederitis: Non cauponantes bellum, sed belligerantes, Ferro non auro vitam cernamus utrique. Vosne velit an me regnare era quidve ferat Fors, Virtute experiamur. Et hoc simul accipe dictum: Quorum virtutei belli fortuna pepercit, Eorundem libertati me parcere certum est. Dono ducite, doque volentibu' cum magnis dis[44]. Of the same severe and lofty tone is that appeal of Appius Claudius, blind and in extreme old age, to the Senate, when wavering in its resolution, and inclined to make peace with Pyrrhus:-- Quo vobis mentes rectae quae stare solebant Antehac, dementes sese flexere viai[45]? As Milton, in his representation of the great debate in Pandemonium, idealised and glorified the stately and serious speech of his own time, so Ennius, in his graphic delineation of the age in which he lived, gave expression to that high magnanimous mood in accordance with which the acts of Roman statesmen were assailed or vindicated, and the policy of the State was shaped before Senate and people-- indu foro lato sanctoque senatu. The great poets of human action and passion are for the most part to be ranked among the great poets of the outward world. If they do not seem to have penetrated with so much personal sympathy into the inner secret of the life of Nature, as the great contemplative poets of ancient and modern times, yet they show, in different ways, that their sense and imagination were powerfully affected both by her outward beauty and by her manifold energy. Homer, not so much by direct description of the scenes in which the action of his poems is laid, as by many indirect touches, by vivid imagery and picturesque epithets, reveals the openness of his mind to every impression from the outward world, and the fresh delight with which his imagination reproduced the impressions immediately received from the 'world of eye and ear.' If he has left any personal characteristic stamped upon his poetry, it is the trace of adventure and keen enjoyment in the open air, among the most stirring sights and sounds and forces of Nature. The imagery of Virgil is of a more peaceful cast. It seems rather to be 'the harvest of a quiet eye,' gathered in the conscious contemplation of rural beauty, and stored up for after use along with the products of his study and meditation. The fragments of Ennius, on the other hand, afford few indications either of active toil and unconscious enjoyment among the solitudes of Nature, or of the luxurious and pensive susceptibility to beauty by which the poetry of Virgil is pervaded. He was the poet, not of the woods and rivers, but, essentially, of the city and the camp. No sentiment could appear less appropriate to him than that of Virgil's modest prayer,-- Flumina amem silvasque inglorius. Yet both in his illustrative imagery and in his narrative, he occasionally reproduces with lively force, if not with much poetical ornament, some aspects of the outward world, as well as many real scenes from the world of action. His imagery is sometimes borrowed from that of Homer; as, for instance, the following simile, which is also imitated by Virgil:-- Et tum sic ut equus, qui de praesepibu' fartus, Vincla suis magnis animis abrupit, et inde Fert sese campi per caerula laetaque prata Celso pectore, saepe jubam quassat simul altam, Spiritus ex anima calida spumas agit albas[46]. Other illustrations are taken from circumstances likely to have been familiar to the men of his own time, but without any apparent intention of adding poetical beauty to the object he is representing. Thus the silent expectation with which the assembled people watch the rival auspices of Romulus and Remus is brought before the mind by an illustration suggested by, and suggestive of, the passionate eagerness with which the public games were witnessed by the Romans of his own age:-- Expectant vel uti consul cum mittere signum Volt, omnes avidi spectant ad carceris oras, Quam mox emittat pictis e faucibu' currus[47]. There may be noticed also, in fragments of the narrative, occasional expressions and descriptive touches implying some sense of what is sublime or picturesque in the familiar aspects of the outward world. The sky, with its starry host, is poetically presented in that expression, which has been adopted by Virgil, 'stellis ingentibus aptum'; and in the following line, Vertitur interea caelum cum ingentibu' signis. In the description of the auspices of Romulus, the scene is enlivened by this vivid flash, 'simul aureus exoritur Sol,' following instantaneously upon the appearance of the first bird of omen. A lively sense of natural scenery is implied in these lines from the dream of Ilia-- Nam me visus homo pulcher per amoena salicta Et ripas raptare locosque novos; in this description of a river, afterwards imitated both by Lucretius and Virgil-- Quod per amoenam urbem leni fluit agmine flumen; and in these lines which recall a familiar passage in the Aeneid:-- Jupiter hic risit tempestatesque serenae Riserunt omnes risu Jovis omnipotentis.[48] The rhythm and the diction of these fragments suggest another point of contrast between the father of Greek and the father of Roman literature. For the old Saturnian verse of the Fauns and Bards, which had been employed by Livius Andronicus and Naevius, Ennius substituted the heroic hexameter, which he moulded to the use of Roman poetry, with little art and grace, but with much energy and weight. As he imitated the metre of Homer, he has in several places (as in a simile already quoted, and again in describing the conduct of a brave tribune in the Istrian war), attempted to reproduce his language. Nothing, however, can show more clearly the vast original difference between the genius of Greece and of Rome than the contrast presented between the rhythm and style of their earliest epic poets. In regard for law and civil order, in military and political organisation, in practical power of understanding, and in the command which that power gave them over the world, the Romans of the second century B.C. had made a great and permanent advance beyond the Greeks of the time of Homer. But the Greeks, when they first become known to us, appear in possession of a gift to which all later generations have been unable to attain. The genius of poetry has never, since the time of Homer, appeared in union with a faculty of expression so true and spontaneous, so faultless in purity, so inexhaustible in resources. It is difficult to imagine a greater contrast than that between the varied and harmonious power of the earliest Greek epic, and the rugged rhythm and diction of the Annals. Yet the very rudeness of that work is significant of the energy of a man who had to accomplish a gigantic task by his own unaided efforts. His ear had not been passively trained by the musical echoes transmitted by earlier minstrels; nor did he inherit the fluency and richness of expression which a long line of poets hands on to their successors. While professing to imitate the structure of the Homeric verse, he was unable to seize its finer cadences. Nor had he learned the stricter conditions under which that metre could be adapted to the powerful and weighty movement of the Latin language. If he did much to establish Latin prosody on principles deviating considerably from those observed by the contemporary comic poets, yet many points which were regulated unalterably for Virgil were left quite unsettled by Ennius. There are found occasionally in these fragments lines without any _caesura_ before the fifth foot, as the following, in one of the longest and least imperfect of his remains-- Corde capessere: semita nulla pedem stabilibat. and this in a passage in which the sound seems intended to imitate the sense-- Poste recumbite vestraque pectora pellite tonsis. And though such marked violations of harmony are rare, yet there is a large proportion of lines in which the laws for the caesura observed by later poets are violated. Again, while the final 's' is in most cases not sounded before a word beginning with a consonant (a usage which finally disappears only in the Augustan poets) the final 'm,' on the other hand, is sometimes left without elision before a vowel, as in the following line-- Miscent inter sese inimicitiam agitantes. The quantity of syllables and the inflexions of words were so far unsettled, that such lines as the following are read, Partem fuisset de summis rebu' regendis; and this, Noenum rumores ponebat ante salutem; and Volturus in spinis miserum mandebat homonem. Among the ruder characteristics of his diction, his use of prosaic and technical terms is especially to be noticed. The following lines, for instance, read more like the bare statement of a chronicle, or of a legal document, than an extract from a poetical narrative:-- Cives Romani tunc facti sunt Campani; and this Appius indixit Karthaginiensibu' bellum; and these lines enumerating the various priesthoods established by Numa,-- Volturnalem Palatualem Furrinalem Floralemque Falacrem et Pomonalem fecit Hic idem. Yet, in spite of these imperfections, both his rhythm and language produce the impression of power and originality. With all the roughness and irregularity of his measure, and notwithstanding the inharmonious structure of continuous passages, his lines often have a weighty and impressive effect, like that produced by some of the great passages in Lucretius and Virgil. It is said of the rhetorician Aelian that he excessively admired in Ennius both 'the greatness of his mind and the grandeur of his metre[49].' Something of this sonorous grandeur may be recognised in a fragment descriptive of the havoc made by woodcutters in a great forest,--a passage in which the language of Ennius again appears as a connecting link between that of Homer and of Virgil:-- Incedunt arbusta per alta, securibu' caedunt, Percellunt magnas quercus, exciditur ilex, Fraxinu' frangitur, atque abies consternitur alta. Pinus proceras pervortunt: omne sonabat Arbustum fremitu siluai frondosai[50]. In the longest consecutive passages,--the dream of Ilia, the auspices of Romulus, and that from book seventh, already quoted as illustrative of the poet's character,--there is, notwithstanding the roughness of the lines, something also of Homeric rapidity;--a quality which the Latin hexameter never afterwards attained in elevated poetry. The diction also of the Annals is generally fresh and forcible, sometimes vividly imaginative. But perhaps the most admirable quality of its style is a grave simplicity and sincerity of tone. Especially is this the case in passages expressing appreciation of strength and grandeur of character, as in those fragments from the speeches of Pyrrhus and of Appius Claudius Caecus, already quoted, and in the famous lines commemorative of the resolute character and momentous services of Fabius Maximus:-- Unus homo nobis cunctando restituit rem: Noenum rumores ponebat ante salutem: Ergo plusque magisque viri nunc gloria claret[51]. These lines leave on the mind the same impression of antique majesty, as is produced by the unadorned record of character and work accomplished inscribed on the tombs of the Scipios. This truly Roman quality of style, depending on a strong imaginative sense of reality, is one of the great elements of power in the language of Lucretius. III. CHIEF CHARACTERISTICS OF HIS GENIUS AND INTELLECT. III.--From a review of the extant fragments both of the Tragedies and the Annals of Ennius, it appears that his prominent place in Roman literature, and influence over his countrymen, were due much more to a great productiveness and activity, and to an original force of mind and character, than to any artistic skill displayed in the conception or execution of his works. A consideration of the spirit and purpose of his greatest works has led to the conclusion that they were, in a considerable measure, inspired by the genius of Rome, and were thus rather the starting-point of a new literature than the mechanical reproduction of the literature of the Greeks. It remains to consider what inference may be formed from these fragments as to the character of his genius, of his imaginative sentiment and moral sympathies, and of his intellectual power. The force of many single expressions in these fragments, and the power with which various incidents, situations, and characters, are brought before the mind indicate an active imagination. A sense of energy and life-like movement is the prevailing impression produced by a study of the language and the longer passages in these remains. Many single lines and expressions that have been gathered accidentally, as mere isolated phrases, disjoined from the context in which they originally occurred, bear traces of the ardour with which they were cast into shape. In longer passages, the whole heart, sense, and understanding of the writer seem to be thrown into his narrative. He has not the eye of a poetic artist who observes, as it were, from a distance, and fixes as in a picture, some phase of passionate feeling or some beautiful aspect of repose. He suggests rather the idea of a man of practical energy, who has been present and taken part in the action described, who enters with living interest into every detail, and watches it at the same time with a sagacious discernment and a strong enthusiasm. His power as a narrative poet is the power of forcibly reproducing the outward movement and the inward meaning of an action, and of identifying himself with the hearts and minds of the actors on the scene. Several passages, wanting altogether in poetical beauty, yet arrest the attention by this energy and realism of conception; as, for example, this short and rugged fragment, descriptive of a commander in the crisis of a battle (probably that of Cynoscephalae),-- Aspectabat virtutem legioni' suai, Expectans, si mussaret, quae denique pausa Pugnandi fieret, aut duri fini' laboris[52]. Even in the abrupt dislocation from their context these lines leave on the mind an impression of the calm vigilance of a general, and of his confidence, not unmixed with anxiety, in 'the long-enduring hearts' of his men. The same truth and energy of conception, with more poetical accompaniment, may be recognised in the longer passages, from Book vii. and Book i., already quoted or referred to. But the imaginative power which gives poetical meaning to familiar objects and ideas is revealed by the force of many single expressions and by the delineation of more passionate situations. Such expressions as the following, most of which reappear with an antique lustre in the gold of Virgil's diction, are indicative of this higher power:-- Musae quae pedibus magnum pulsatis Olympum. Transnavit cita per teneras caliginis auras. Postquam discordia taetra Belli ferratos postes portasque refregit. Quem super ingens Porta tonat caeli. Spiritus austri imbricitor. Naves velivolae, etc. etc. These and similar phrases, some of which have already been quoted, imply poetical creativeness. They tend to justify the estimate of the genius of Ennius, indicated in the language of high admiration applied to him by Lucretius,-- Ennius ut noster cecinit, qui primus amoeno Detulit ex Helicone perenni fronde coronam, Per gentes Italas hominum quae clara clueret[53]; and in the signs of the careful study of the Annals which may be traced in the elaborate workmanship of the Aeneid. The longest specimen of narrative vivified by poetical feeling, from the hand of Ennius, is the passage in which the vestal Ilia relates to her sister the dream that portended her great and strange destiny:-- Excita cum tremulis anus attulit artubu' lumen, Talia commemorat lacrimans, exterrita somno. Eurudica prognata, pater quam noster amavit, Vires vitaque corpu' meum nunc deserit omne. Nam me visus homo pulcher per amoena salicta Et ripas raptare locosque novos; ita sola Postilla, germana soror, errare videbar Tardaque vestigare et quaerere te neque posse Corde capessere: semita nulla pedem stabilibat. Exin compellare pater me voce videtur His verbis: 'O gnata, tibi sunt ante ferendae Aerumnae, post ex fluvio fortuna resistet.' Haec ecfatu' pater, germana, repente recessit Nec sese dedit in conspectum, corde cupitus, Quanquam multa manus ad caeli caerula templa Tendebam lacrimans et blanda voce vocabam: Vix aegro cum corde meo me somnu' reliquit[54]. Though these lines are rough and inharmonious as compared with the rhythm of Catullus or Virgil, yet they flow more smoothly and rapidly than any of the other fragments preserved from Ennius. The impression of gentleness and tender affection produced by the speech of Ilia, implies some dramatic skill in the conception of character. And there is real imaginative power shown in the sense of hurry and surprise, of vague awe and helplessness conveyed in the lines-- Nam me visus homo pulcher per amoena salicta, etc. From this passage Virgil has borrowed one of the finest touches in his delineation of the passion of Dido, the sense of horror and desolation haunting the Carthaginian queen in her dreams-- Agit ipse furentem In somnis ferus Aeneas: semperque relinqui Sola sibi, semper longam incomitata videtur Ire viam, et Tyrios deserta quaerere terra. Another of the most impressive passages in the early books of the Aeneid--the dream in which Hector appears to Aeneas[55]--was evidently suggested by the description which Ennius gave of the appearance of the shade of Homer to himself. Some of his dramatic fragments, also, as for instance the scene between Hecuba and Cassandra already referred to, show a real power of conceiving and representing passionate situations. Among the modes of imaginative sentiment by which the poetry of Ennius is pervaded, those kindled by patriotic enthusiasm are most conspicuous. In the manifestation of his enthusiasm, he shows an affinity to Virgil in ancient, and to Scott in modern times. He resembles them in their mingled feelings of veneration and affection which they entertain towards the national heroes of old times, and the great natural features of their country, associated with historic memories and legendary renown. Such feelings are shown by Ennius in the lines of tender regret and true hero-worship, which express the sorrow of Senate and people at the death of Romulus-- Pectora ... tenet desiderium, simul inter Sese sic memorant, O Romule, Romule die Qualem te patriae custodem di genuerunt! O pater, O genitor, O sanguen dis oriundum! Tu produxisti nos intra luminis oras[56]. They appear also in the language applied by him to the sacred river of Rome, which had preserved the founder of the city from his untimely fate, and which was thus inseparably identified with the national destiny-- Teque pater Tiberine tuo cum flumine sancto. and also in this fragment-- Postquam consistit fluvius qui est omnibu' princeps Qui sub caeruleo. The enumeration of the great warlike races in the line Marsa manus, Peligna cohors, Vestina virum vis, may recall the pride and enthusiasm which are kindled in the heart of Virgil by the names of the various tribes of Italy, and of places renowned for their fame in story, or their picturesque environment[57]. This fond use of proper names recalling old associations or the charm of natural scenery is also among the most familiar characteristics of the poetry of Scott. It was seen in the introductory chapter that the Roman mind was peculiarly susceptible of that kind of feeling, which perhaps may best be described as the sense of majesty. This vein of poetical emotion is also conspicuous in the fragments of Ennius. His language shows a deep sense of greatness and order, both in the material world and in human affairs. Thus his style appears animated not only by vital force, but by an impressive solemnity, befitting the grave and dignified emotion which responds to such ideas. This susceptibility of his genius appears in such expressions as these-- Magnum pulsatis Olympum. Indu mari magno. Litora lata sonant. Latos per populos terrasque. Magnae gentes opulentae. Quis potis ingentis oras evolvere belli? Vertitur interea caelum cum ingentibu' signis; and again in the following-- Indu foro lato sanctoque senatu. Augusto augurio postquam incluta condita Roma est. Omnibu' cura viris uter esset induperator, and in the epithet which Cicero quotes as applied to cities-- Urbes magnas atque _imperiosas_. His imagination appears also to have been impressed by that sense of outward pomp and magnificence which exercised a strong spell on the Roman mind in all ages, and obtained its most complete and permanent realisation in the architecture of the Empire. A short passage from one of his tragedies, the Andromache, may be quoted as illustrative of this influence, even in the writings of Ennius, though naturally it is much more apparent in the style of those poets who witnessed the grandeur of Rome in her later era:-- O pater, O patria, O Priami domus, Saeptum altisono cardine templum! Vidi ego te, astante ope barbarica, Tectis caelatis, lacuatis, Auro ebore instructum regifice![58] While his peculiar poetical feeling is present chiefly in the fragments of the Annals, the moral elements of his poetry may be gathered both from his epic and dramatic remains. Strength and dignity of character are the qualities with which his own nature was most in sympathy. Yet in delineating the agitation of Ilia, the shame of Cassandra, and the sorrow of Andromache, he reveals also much tenderness of feeling,--the not unusual accompaniment of the manly genius of Rome. A similar tenderness is found in union with the grave tones of Pacuvius and Accius, and in still greater measure with the fortitude of Lucretius and the majesty of Virgil. The masculine qualities which most stir his enthusiasm are the Roman virtues of resolution (constantia), sincerity, magnanimity, capacity for affairs. Thus a latent glow of feeling may be discerned in the lines which record the brave resolution of the Roman people during the first hardships of the war with Pyrrhus-- Ast animo superant atque aspera prima Volnera belli dispernunt[59]; and in this strong and scornful triumph over natural sorrow, from the Telamon:-- Ego cum genui tum morituros scivi, et ei rei sustuli: Praeterea ad Trojam cum misi ob defendendam Graeciam, Scibam me in mortiferum bellum, non in epulas mittere[60]. The generosity and courage of a magnanimous nature are stamped upon the kingly speech which he puts into the mouth of Pyrrhus. A frank sincerity of character reveals itself in such passages as the following:-- Eo ego ingenio natus sum, Aeque inimicitiam atque amicitiam in frontem promptam gero[61]. There is no subtlety nor rhetorical point in the expression of his serious convictions. The very style of the tragedies, which, as Cicero says[62], 'does not depart from the natural order of the words,' is a symbol of frankness and straightforwardness. He shows also, in his delineations of character, high appreciation of practical wisdom, and of its most powerful instrument in a free State, the persuasive power of oratory. This appreciation is expressed in the lines so much admired by Cicero and Aulus Gellius[63], though ridiculed by the purism of Seneca:-- Is dictus 'st ollis popularibus olim Qui tum vivebant homines, atque aevum agitabant, Flos delibatus populi suadaeque medulla[64]. He seems to admire the sterling qualities of character and intellect rather than the brilliant manifestations of impulse and genius. He celebrates the heroism of brave endurance rather than of chivalrous daring[65]: the fortitude that, in the long run, wins success, and saves the State[66], rather than the impetuous valour which achieves a barren glory; the sincerity and simplicity which are stronger than art, yet that know when to speak and when to be silent[67]; the sagacity which enables men to understand their circumstances, and to turn them to the best account[68]. Many of his fragments, again, show traces of that just and vigorous understanding of human life, and that shrewdness of observation, which constitute a great satirist. The didactic tone of satire appears, for instance, in the following lines-- Otioso in otio animus nescit quid velit; Hic itidem est: enim neque domi nunc nos neque militiae sumus, Imus huc, illuc hinc, cum illuc ventum est, ire illinc lubet; Incerte errat animus: praeter propter vitam vivitur[69],-- a fragment which might be compared with certain passages in the Epistles of Horace, which give expression to the _ennui_ experienced as a result of the inaction and luxurious living of the Augustan age. But a closer parallel will be found in a passage where Lucretius has assumed something of the caustic tone of Roman satire-- Exit saepe foras magnis ex aedibus ille Esse domi quem pertaesum 'st subitoque revertit, Quippe domi nihilo melius qui sentiat esse, etc.[70] While Ennius, like Lucretius, gives little indication of humour, yet the folly and superstition of his times provoke him into tones of contemptuous irony, especially where he has to expose the arts of false prophets and fortune-tellers. The men of the manliest temper and the strongest understanding in ancient times were most intolerant of this mischievous form of imposture and credulity. Thus Thucydides, in general so reserved in his expression of personal feeling, treats, with a manifest irony, all supernatural pretences to foresee or control the future. The tone in which Ennius writes of such professions reminds us of Milton's grim contempt for Eremites and friars White, black, and grey, with all their trumpery. Thus, in a fragment of Book xi. of the Annals, the fears excited by the prophets and diviners at the commencement of the war with Antiochus are encountered with the pertinent question-- Satin' vates verant aetate in agenda? Thus too the pretensions and the ignorance of astrologers are exposed in a line of one of the dramas-- Quod est ante pedes nemo spectat: caeli scrutantur plagas. And the following passage may be quoted as applicable to charlatans of every kind, in every age and country-- Sed superstitiosi vates, impudentesque arioli, Aut inertes aut insani, aut quibus egestas imperat, Qui sibi semitam non sapiunt, alteri monstrant viam, Quibus divitias pollicentur, ab eis drachmam ipsi petunt[71]. There are passages of the same spirit to be found among the fragments of Pacuvius and Accius. There is not much indication of speculative thought in any of these fragments. The blunt sentiment which Ennius puts into the mouth of Neoptolemus probably expressed his own mental attitude towards the schools of philosophy-- Philosophari est mihi necesse, at paucis: nam omnino haut placet. His observations on life are neither of an imaginative, of a deeply reflective, nor of a purely satiric character. Unlike the thoughts of the Greek dramatists, they make no attempt to solve the painful riddle of the world; they want the universality and systematic basis of philosophical truths; they are expressed neither with the pointed wit nor with the ironical humour of satire. They are the maxims of a strong common sense and the dictates of a grave rectitude of will. They are practical, not speculative. They have their origin in a sense of duty rather than of consequences. They are in conformity with the ideal realised in the best types of Roman character; and they bear witness to the sterling worth combined with the ardent enthusiasm, and the practical sense united to the strong imagination of the poet. Such appear to be the chief attributes of genius and imaginative sentiment, and the chief moral and intellectual features indicated in the fragments of Ennius. It is not indeed possible, from the tenor of single passages, to judge of the composition of a whole drama or of a continuous book of the Annals. No single scene or speech can afford sufficient grounds for inferring the amount of creative power with which his characters were conceived and sustained in all their complex relations. Yet enough has appeared in these fragments, which, from the accidental mode of their preservation, must be regarded as the ordinary samples and not chosen specimens of his style, to confirm the ancient belief in his pre-eminence and to determine the prevailing characteristics of his genius. There is ample evidence of the great popularity which he enjoyed among his countrymen, and of the high estimate which many of the best Roman writers formed of his power. It is recorded that great crowds ('magna frequentia') attended the public reading of the Annals. Virgil was said to have introduced many lines into the Aeneid, with the view of pleasing a public devoted to Ennius ('populus Ennianus'). The title of Ennianista was assumed by a public reader of the Annals in the time of Hadrian, when there was a strong revival of admiration for the older literature of Rome[72]. Cicero often speaks of the poet as 'noster Ennius,' and quotes him with all the signs of hearty admiration and affection. The numerous references in his works to the Annals and the Tragedies imply also a thorough familiarity with these poems on the part of the readers for whom his philosophical and rhetorical treatises were written. The criticism of Quintilian, 'Ennium sicut sacros vetustate lucos adoremus, in quibus grandia et antiqua robora jam non tantam habent speciem quantam religionem[73],' expresses a sentiment of traditional reverence as well as of personal appreciation. Aulus Gellius, a writer of the time of Hadrian, often quotes and comments upon him with hearty and genial sympathy. The greatest among the Roman poets also, directly and indirectly, acknowledge their admiration. The strong testimony of Lucretius is alone sufficient to establish the fame of Ennius as a man of remarkable force and genius. The spirit of the Annals still lives in the antique charm and national feeling which make the epic poem of Virgil the truest representation of Roman sentiment which has come down to modern times. By Ovid he is characterised as-- Ennius, ingenio maximus, arte rudis. Horace, although more reluctant and grudging in his admiration, yet allows the 'Calabrian Muse' to be the best preserver of the fame of the great Scipio. Even the disparaging lines-- Ennius et sapiens et fortis et alter Homerus, Ut critici dicunt, leviter curare videtur Quo promissa cadant et somnia Pythagorea[74], are a strong testimony in favour of the esteem in which the vigour and sagacity of Ennius were held by those who had all his works in their hands. As one of the founders of Roman literature, it was impossible that he could have rivalled the careful and finished style of the Augustan poets; but, by his rude and energetic labours, he laid the strong groundwork on which later poets built their fame. He has been exposed to more serious detraction in modern times, as the corrupter of the pure stream of early Roman poetry. It is alleged against him by Niebuhr, that through jealousy he suppressed the ballad and epic poetry of the early bards. The answer to this charge has already been given. There is no evidence to prove that any such poems were in existence in the time of Ennius. By other modern scholars he is disadvantageously compared with Naevius, who is held up to admiration as the last of the genuine Roman minstrels. Naevius appears indeed to have been a remarkable and original man, yet his very scanty fragments do not afford sufficient evidence to justify the reversal of the verdict of antiquity on the relative greatness and importance of the two poets. The old Roman party, in opposition to whom Ennius and his friends are supposed to have introduced the new taste and suppressed the old, never showed any zeal in favour of poetry of any kind. Cato, their only literary representative, wrote prose treatises on antiquities and agriculture, and in one of his speeches reproached Fulvius Nobilior for the consideration which he showed to Ennius. The evidence of these epic and dramatic fragments which have just been considered, is all in favour of the high verdict of antiquity on the importance and pre-eminence of the author of the Annals. Whatever in the later poets is most truly Roman in sentiment and morality appears to be conceived in the spirit of Ennius. [Footnote 1: Parco admodum sumptu contentus et unius ancillae ministerio.] [Footnote 2: xvii. 17.] [Footnote 3: The line-- Ad patrios montes et ad incunabula nostra, which is quoted by Cicero in a letter to Atticus, and which Vahlen attributed to Ennius, is now generally assigned to Cicero himself.] [Footnote 4: Livy xxxviii. 17.] [Footnote 5: 'When the Carthaginians were coming from all sides to the conflict, and all things, beneath high heaven, confounded by the hurry and tumult of war, shook with alarm: and men were in doubt to which of the two the empire of the whole world, by land and sea, should fall.'--Lucret. iii. 834-7.] [Footnote 6: Mommsen, book iii. ch. 5.] [Footnote 7: The author of Caesar's Spanish War quotes Ennius in his account of the critical moment in the Battle of Munda:--'Hic, ut ait Ennius, "pes pede premitur, armis teruntur arma."'--Bell. Hisp. xxxi.] [Footnote 8: Amphit. 52-3-- Quid contraxistis frontem, quia tragoediam Dixi futuram hanc?] [Footnote 9: Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit, etc.] [Footnote 10: De Senectute, 5.] [Footnote 11: De Oratore, ii. 68.] [Footnote 12: 'L. Aelium Stilonem dicere solitum ferunt Q. Ennium de semet ipso haec scripsisse, picturamque istam morum et ingenii ipsius Q. Ennii factam esse.'--Gell. xii. 4.] [Footnote 13: 'He finished: and summons to him one with whom often, and right gladly, he shared his table, his talk, and the whole weight of his business, when weary with debate, throughout the day, on high affairs of state, within the wide Forum and the august Senate,--one to whom he could frankly speak out serious matters, trifles, and jest; to whom he could pour forth and safely confide, if he wanted to confide in any one, all that he cared to utter, good or bad; with whom, in private and in public, he had much entertainment and enjoyment,--a man of that nature which no thought ever prompts to baseness through levity or malice: a learned, honest, pleasant man, eloquent, contented, and cheerful, of much tact, speaking well in season; courteous and of few words; with much old buried lore; whom length of years had made versed in old and recent ways; in the laws of many ancients, divine and human; one who knew when to speak and when to be silent. Him, during the battle, Servilius thus addresses.'] [Footnote 14: [Greek: Skipiôna gar adôn kai epi mega ton andra exarai boulomenos phêsi monon an Homêron epaxious epainous eipein Skipiônos.]--Aelian, as quoted by Suidas, vol. i. p. 1258. Ed. Gaisford. Cf. Vahlen.] [Footnote 15: 'Here is he laid, to whom no one, either countryman or enemy, has been able to pay a due meed for his services.'] [Footnote 16: 'From the utmost east, beyond the Maeotian marsh, there is no one who in actions can vie with me. If it is lawful for any one to ascend to the realms of the gods, to me alone the vast gate of heaven is opened!'] [Footnote 17: 'Yet nothing more glorious than this man doth it (the island of Sicily) seem to have contained, nor aught more holy, nor more wonderful and beloved.'] [Footnote 18: 'Behold, my countrymen, the bust of the old man, Ennius. He penned the record of your fathers' mighty deeds. Let no one pay to me the meed of tears, nor weep at my funeral. And why? because I still live, as I speed to and fro, through the mouths of men.'] [Footnote 19: 'Hail, poet Ennius, who pledgest to mortals thy fiery verse from thy inmost marrow.'] [Footnote 20: 'Others have treated the subject in the verses, which in days of old the Fauns and bards used to sing, before any one had climbed the cliffs of the Muses, or gave any care to style.'] [Footnote 21: 'I have always said and will say that the gods of heaven exist, but I think that they heed not the conduct of mankind; for, if they did, it would be well with the good and ill with the bad; and it is not so now.'] [Footnote 22: Cor jubet hoc Enni, postquam destertuit esse Maeonides, Quintus pavone ex Pythagoreo. Persius, vi. 10 (ed. Jahn).] [Footnote 23: Vahlen.] [Footnote 24: Horace, Sat. ii. 4.] [Footnote 25: 'The poetical philosophy, which the later Pythagoreans had extracted from the writings of the old Sicilian comedian, Epicharmus of Megara, or rather had, at least for the most part, circulated under cover of his name, regarded the Greek gods as natural substances, Zeus as the atmosphere, the soul as a particle of Sun-dust, and so forth.'--Mommsen's Hist. of Rome, Book iii. ch. 15. (Dickson's Translation.)] [Footnote 26: 'This is that Jupiter which I speak of, which the Greeks call the air; it is first wind and clouds; afterwards rain, and after rain, cold; next it becomes wind, then air again. All those things which I mention to you are Jupiter, because it is he who supports mortals and cities and all animals.'] [Footnote 27: Mommsen.] [Footnote 28: 'Inventore minor.'--Horace.] [Footnote 29: Another passage, ascribed to Ennius, descriptive of the greed of a parasite, occupies the ground common to Roman comedy and to Roman satire:-- Quippe sine cura laetus lautus cum advenis Insertis malis, expedito bracchio Alacer, celsus, lupino expectans impetu, Mox cum alterius obligurias bona, Quid censes domino esse animi? pro divum fidem! Ille tristis cibum dum servat, tu ridens voras.] [Footnote 30: The meaning of the passage amounts to no more than this, that the man who tries to 'sell' another, and fails, is himself 'sold.'] [Footnote 31: Brutus, 20.] [Footnote 32: De Fin. i. 2.] [Footnote 33: Cf. Eur. Med. 1-8:-- [Greek: Eith' ôphel' Argous mê diaptasthai skaphos Kolchôn es aian kyaneas Symplêgadas, mêd' en napaisi Pêliou pesein pote tmêtheisa peukê, mêd' eretmôsai cheras andrôn aristeôn, hoi to panchryson deros Pelia metêlthon; ou gar an despoin' emê Mêdeia pyrgous gês epleus' Iôlkias erôti thymon ekplageis' Iasonos.]] [Footnote 34: Several of these fragments will be examined later.] [Footnote 35: Tusc. Disp. ii. 16.] [Footnote 36: 'How tender, how true to character, how affecting!'--De Div. i. 31. 'What a great poet, though he is despised by those admirers of Euphorion. He understands that sudden and unlooked-for calamities are more grievous. A noble poem,--pathetic in its matter, language, and music.'--Tusc. Disp. iii. 19.] [Footnote 37: 'Here it is; here, the torch, wrapped in fire and blood. Many years it hath lain hid; help, citizens, and extinguish it. For now, on the great sea, a swift fleet is gathering. It hurries along a host of calamities. They come: a fierce host lines the shores with sail-winged ships.' Exitium = exitiorum; cf. Cic. Orator. 46, Itaque idem poeta, qui inusitatius contraxerat 'Patris mei meum factum pudet' pro 'meorum factorum' et 'Texitur: exitium examen rapit' pro 'exitiorum.'] [Footnote 38: Acad. ii. 28.] [Footnote 39: Gellius, xvii. 21.] [Footnote 40: He speaks of Eurydice as the wife of Aeneas. This statement he is supposed to have derived from the _Cypria_.] [Footnote 41: Cicero, Arch. 9.] [Footnote 42: 'Wisdom is banished from amongst us, violence rules the day: the good orator is despised, the rough soldier loved; striving, not with words of learning, but with words of hate, they get embroiled in feuds, and stir up enmity one with another. They challenge not their adversaries to contend by forms of law, but claim their rights by the sword, and aim at sovereign power, and make their way by sheer force.'] [Footnote 43: Cic. De Off. i. 12.] [Footnote 44: 'Neither do I ask gold for myself, nor offer ye to me a ransom. Let us wage the war, not like hucksters, but like soldiers--with the sword, not with gold, putting our lives to the issue. Whether our mistress Fortune wills that you or I should reign, or what her purpose be, let us prove by valour. And hearken too to this saying,--The brave men, whom the fortune of battle spares, their liberty I have resolved to spare. Take my offer, as I grant it, under favour of the great gods.'] [Footnote 45: 'Whither have your minds, which heretofore were wont to stand firm, madly swerved from the straight course?'] [Footnote 46: A comparison with the original passage (Iliad vi. 506) will show that Ennius, while reproducing much, though not all, of the force and life of Homer's image, has added also some touches of his own:-- [Greek: hôs d' hote tis statos hippos, akostêsas epi phatnê, desmon aporrhêxas theiê pedioio kroainôn, eiôthôs louesthai eurrheios potamoio, kydioôn; hypsou de karê echei, amphi de chaitai ômois aïssontai; ho d' aglaïêphi pepoithôs, rhimpha he gouna pherei meta t' êthea kai nomon hippôn.] Cf. Virgil, Aen. xi. 492:-- Qualis ubi abruptis fugit praesepia vinclis Tandem liber equus, campoque potitus aperto Aut ille in pastus armentaque tendit equarum, Aut adsuetus aquae perfundi flumine noto Emicat, arrectisque fremit cervicibus alte Luxurians, luduntque jubae per colla, per armos.] [Footnote 47: 'They watch, as when the consul is going to give the signal, all look eagerly to the barrier, to see how soon he may start the chariots from the painted entrance.'] [Footnote 48: Olli subridens hominum sator atque deorum Voltu, quo caelum tempestatesque serenat.--Aen. i. 254.] [Footnote 49: [Greek: Ennios Rhômaios poiêtês; hon Ailianos epainein axion phêsi.... dêlon de hôs etethêpei tou poiêtou tên megalonoian kai tôn metrôn to megaleion kai axiagaston.] Suidas, vol i. p. 1258, ed. Gaisford.] [Footnote 50: Cf. Iliad xxiii. 114-120; and also Virgil, Aen. vi. 179:-- Itur in antiquam silvam, stabula alta ferarum, Procumbunt piceae, sonat icta securibus ilex, Fraxineaeque trabes cuneis et fissile robur Scinditur, advolvunt ingentis montibus ornos.] [Footnote 51: 'One man, by biding his time, restored the commonwealth. He cared not for what men said of him, as compared with our safety: therefore now his fame waxeth brighter day by day.'] [Footnote 52: 'He watched the courage of his army, to see if any murmur should arise for some pause to the long battle, some rest from their weary toil.'] [Footnote 53: 'As sang our Ennius, the first who brought down from beautiful Helicon a chaplet of unfading leaf, the fame of which should be bruited loud through the nations of Italian men.'] [Footnote 54: 'When the old dame had risen, and with trembling limbs had brought the light, thus she (Ilia), roused in terror from her sleep, with tears tells her tale: "Daughter of Eurydice, whom our father loved, my strength and life now fail me through all my frame. For methought that a goodly man was bearing me off through the pleasant willow-groves, by the river-banks, and places strange to me. Thereafter, O my sister, I seemed to be wandering all alone, and with slow steps to track my way, to be seeking thee, and to be unable to find thee near; no footpath steadied my step. Afterwards methought I heard my father address me in these words--'Daughter, trouble must first be borne by thee; afterwards thy fortune shall rise up again from the river.' With these words, O sister, he suddenly departed, nor gave himself to my sight, though my heart yearned to him, though I kept eagerly stretching my hands to the blue vault of heaven, weeping, and calling on him with loving tones. With pain and weary heart at last sleep left me."'] [Footnote 55: Aen. ii. 270.] [Footnote 56: 'Regret and sorrow fill their hearts, while thus they say to one another, O Romulus, God-like Romulus, how great a guardian of our country did the gods create in thee! O father, author of our being, O blood sprung from the gods! it is thou that hast brought us forth within the realms of light.'] [Footnote 57: E.g. passages such as the following:-- Quique altum Praeneste viri, quique arva Gabinae Junonis gelidumque Anienem et roscida rivis Hernica saxa colunt, quos dives Anagnia pascit, Quos, Amasene pater.--Aen. vii. 682-5.] [Footnote 58: 'O father! O fatherland! O house of Priam, palace, closing on high-sounding hinge, I have seen thee, guarded by a barbaric host, with carved and deep-fretted roof, with ivory and gold royally adorned.'] [Footnote 59: 'But they rise superior in spirit, and spurn the first sharp wounds of war.'] [Footnote 60: 'When I begat them, I knew that they must die, and to that end I bred them. Besides, when I sent them to Troy to fight for Greece, I was well aware that I was sending them, not to a feast, but to a deadly war.'] [Footnote 61: 'Such is my nature. Enmity and friendship equally I bear stamped on my forehead.'] [Footnote 62: 'Ennio delector, ait quispiam, quod non discedit a communi ordine verborum.'--Orator, 11.] [Footnote 63: Cicero, Brutus, 15; Aulus Gellius, xii. 2.] [Footnote 64: 'He was called by those, his fellow-countrymen, who flourished then and enjoyed their day, the chosen flower of the people, and the marrow of persuasion.'] [Footnote 65: Compare his account of the Tribune in the Istrian war:-- 'Undique conveniunt velut imber, tela tribuno,' etc.] [Footnote 66: Cf. 'Unus homo nobis cunctando restituit rem,' etc.] [Footnote 67: Cf. 'Ita sapere opino esse optimum, ut pro viribus Tacere ac fabulare tute noveris;' also 'Ea libertas est quae pectus purum et firmum gestitat.'] [Footnote 68: 'Egregie cordatus homo catus Aeliu' Sextus.'] [Footnote 69: 'In idleness the mind knows not what it wants. This is now our case. We are neither now at home nor abroad. We go hither, back again to the place from which we came,--when we have reached it we desire to leave it again. Our mind is all astray--existence goes on outside of real life.'] [Footnote 70: iii. 1059-67.] [Footnote 71: 'But your superstitious prophets and impudent fortune-tellers, idle fellows, or madmen, or the victims of want, who cannot discern the path for themselves, yet point the way out to others, and ask a drachma from the very persons to whom they promise a fortune.'] [Footnote 72: 'And there it is announced to Julianus that a certain public reader, an accomplished man, with a very well-trained and musical voice, read the Annals of Ennius publicly in the theatre. Let us go, says he, to hear this "Ennianista," whoever he is,--for by that name he chose to be called.'--Aulus Gellius, xviii. 5. The following line of Martial (v. 10. 7) implies also his popularity under the Empire-- 'Ennius est lectus, salvo tibi, Roma, Marone.'] [Footnote 73: 'Let us venerate Ennius like the groves, sacred from their antiquity, in which the great and ancient oak-trees are invested not so much with beauty as with sacred associations.'--Inst. Or. x. i. 88.] [Footnote 74: 'Ennius, the wise and strong, and the second Homer, as his critics will have it, seems to care little for the issue of all his promises and Pythagorean dreams.'--Epist. II. i. 50-2.] CHAPTER V. EARLY ROMAN TRAGEDY--M. PACUVIUS, B.C. 219-129; L. ACCIUS, B.C. 170--ABOUT B.C. 90. The powerful impulse given to Roman tragedy by Ennius was sustained till about the beginning of the first century B.C., first by his nephew M. Pacuvius and after him by L. Accius. The popularity of the drama during this period may be estimated from the fact that, of the early writers of poetry, Lucilius alone contributed nothing to the Roman stage. The plays of the three tragedians who have just been mentioned were not only performed during the lifetime of their authors, but, as appears from many notices of them in Cicero, they held their place on the stage with much popular applause, and were read and admired as literary works till the last days of the Republic. This popularity implies either some adaptation of Roman tragedy to the time in which it was produced, or some special capacity for awakening new interests and ideas in a people hitherto unacquainted with literature. Yet, on the other hand, the want of permanence, and the want of any power of development in the Roman drama, would indicate that it was less adapted to the genius of the nation than either the epic or the satiric poetry of this era. If the dramatic art of Pacuvius and Accius had been as true an expression of the national mind as either the epic poem of Ennius or the satire of Lucilius, it might have been expected that it would have flourished in greater perfection in the eras of finer literary accomplishment. The efforts of Naevius and Ennius were crowned with the fulfilment of Virgil, and the spirit and manner of Lucilius still live in the satires of Horace and Juvenal; but Roman tragedy, notwithstanding the attempt to give it a new and higher artistic development in the Augustan age, dwindled away till it became a mere literary exercise of educated men, and remains only in the artificial and rhetorical compositions attributed to the philosopher Seneca. From the fact that early Roman tragedy left no literary heir, it is more difficult to discern its original features and character than those of the epic or satiric poetry of the period. A further difficulty arises out of the very nature of dramatic fragments. Isolated passages in a drama afford scanty grounds for judging of the conduct of the action, or the force and consistency with which the leading characters are conceived. There is, moreover, very slight direct evidence bearing on the dramatic genius of the early tragic poets. Roman critics seem to have paid little attention to, or had little perception of this kind of excellence. They quote with admiration the fervid sentiment and morality--'the rugged maxims hewn from life'--expressed on the Roman stage; but they have not preserved the memory of any great typical character, or of any dramatic plot creatively conceived or powerfully sustained. The Roman drama was confessedly a reproduction or adaptation of the drama of Athens. The titles of the great majority of Roman tragedies indicate that they were translated or copied from Greek originals, or were at least founded on the legends of Greek poetry and mythology. The _Medea_ of Ennius and the _Antiope_ of Pacuvius are known, on the authority of Cicero, to have been directly translated from Euripides. Other dramas were more or less close adaptations from his works, or from those of the other Attic tragedians. All of the Roman tragic poets indeed produced one or more plays founded on Roman history or legend: but, with the exception of the Brutus of Accius, none of these seem to have been permanently popular. This failure to establish a national drama seems to imply a want of dramatic invention in the conduct of a plot and the exhibition of character on the part of the poets. As their own history was of supreme interest to the Romans at all times, it is difficult on any other supposition to explain the failure of the 'fabula praetextata' in gaining the public ear. There is, however, distinct evidence that in their adaptations from the Greek the Roman poets in some cases departed considerably from their originals. Something of a Roman stamp was perhaps unconsciously impressed on the Greek personages who were represented. Many of the extant fragments seem to breathe the spirit of Rome more than of Athens. They are expressed not with the subtlety and reflective genius of Greece, but in the plain and straightforward tones of the Roman Republic. The long-continued popularity of Roman tragedy implies also that it was something more than an inartistic copy of the masterpieces of Athenian genius. Mere imitations of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides might possibly have obtained some favour with a few men of literary education, but could never have been listened to with applause, for more than a century and a half, by miscellaneous audiences. The following questions suggest themselves as of most interest in connexion with the general character of early Roman tragedy:--How far may it have reproduced not the materials and form only, but the spirit and ideas of the Greek drama? What was its bearing on the actual circumstances of Roman life, and what were the grounds of the favour with which it was received? What cause can be assigned for the cessation of this favour with the fall of the Republic? The materials or substance of Roman tragedy were almost entirely Greek. The stories and characters represented were, save in the few exceptional cases referred to above, directly derived from the Greek tragedians or from Homer and the cyclic poets. In point of form also and some of the metres employed, Roman tragedy endeavoured to imitate the models on which it was founded, with probably as little perception of the requirements of dramatic art as of refinement in expression and harmony in rhythm. But while generally conforming to their models, the early Roman poets departed in some important respects from their practice. Thus they banished the Chorus from the orchestra, assigning to it merely a subsidiary part in the dialogue. Although some simple lyrical metre, accompanied with music, continued to be employed in the more rapid and impassioned parts of the dialogue, there was no scope, on the Roman stage, for the great lyrical poetry of the Greek drama, and for the nobler functions of the chorus. On the other hand, there seems to have been more opportunity both for action and for oratorical declamation. The acting of a Roman play must have been more like that on a modern stage than the stately movement and the statuesque repose of the Greek theatre. Again, in imitating the iambic and trochaic metres of the Greek drama, the Roman poets were quite indifferent to the laws by which their finer harmony is produced. Any of the feet admissible in an iambic line might occupy any place in the line, with the exception of the last. There is thus little metrical harmony in the fragments of Roman tragedy; but, on the other hand, it may be remarked that the order of the words in these fragments appears more natural and direct than in the more elaborate metres of the later Roman poets. But it was as impossible for the Roman drama to reproduce the inner spirit of the noblest type of Greek tragedy as to rival its artistic excellence. Greek tragedy, in its mature glory, was not only a purely Greek creation, but was the artistic expression of a remarkable phase through which the human mind has once passed;--a phase in which the vivid fancies and emotions of a primitive age met and combined with the thought, the art, the social and political life of the greatest era of ancient civilisation. The Athenian dramatists, like the great dramatists of other times, imparted a new and living interest to ancient legends; but this was but one part, perhaps not the most important part, of their functions. They represented before the people the destiny and sufferings of national heroes and demigods, sanctified by long association in the feelings of many generations, still honoured by a vital worship, and appealed to as a present help in danger. Thus a highly idealised and profoundly religious character was imparted to the tragic representation of human passion and destiny on the Athenian stage. This view of life, represented and contemplated with solemnity of feeling in the age of Pericles, would have been altogether unmeaning to a Roman of the age of Ennius. Such a one would understand the natural heroism of a strong will, but not the new force and elevation imparted to the will by reliance on the hidden powers and laws overruling human affairs. He might be moved to sympathy with the sufferers or actors on the scene; but he would be altogether insensible to the higher consolation which overcomes the natural sorrow for the mere earthly catastrophe in a great dramatic action. The inward strength and dignity of a Roman senator might enable him to appreciate the magnanimity and kingly nature of Oedipus; but the deeper interest of the great dramas founded on the fortunes of the Theban king, especially the interest arising from his trust in final righteousness, his sense of communion with higher powers, from the thought of his elevation out of the lowest earthly state into perpetual sanctity and honour, was widely remote from the tangible objects of a Roman's desire, and the direct motives of his conduct. Or perhaps a Roman would have a fellow-feeling with the proud and soldierly bearing of Ajax; but he would be blind to the inward lesson of self-knowledge and self-mastery, which Sophocles represents as forced upon the spirit of the Greek hero through the stern visitation of Athene. Equally remote from the ordinary experience and emotions of a Roman would be the feeling of awe, gloom, and mystery, diffused through the great thoughts and imaginations of Aeschylus. Both in Aeschylus and in Sophocles the light and the gloom cast over the human story are not of this world. But in the fragments of the Roman tragedians, though there is often found the expression of magnanimous and independent sentiment, and of a very dignified and manly morality, there is little trace of any sense of the relation of the individual to a Divine power; and there are some indications not only of a scorn for common superstition, but also of disbelief in the foundations of personal religion. The thought of the insecurity of life, of the vicissitudes of human affairs, and of the impotence of man to control his fate, which forced the Greek poets and historians of the fifth century B.C. into deeper speculations on the question of Divine Providence, was utterly alien to the natural temperament of Rome, and to the confidence inspired by uniform success during the long period succeeding the Second Punic War. The contemplative and religious thought of Greek tragedy was thus as remote from the practical spirit of the Romans as the political license and the personal humours of the old Athenian comedy were from the earnestness of public life and the dignity of government in the great aristocratic Republic. And thus it happened that, as the comic poets of Rome reproduced the new comedy of Athens, which portrayed the passions of private not of political life, and the manners rather of a cosmopolitan than of a purely Greek civilisation, so the tragic poets found the art of Euripides and of his less illustrious successors more easy to imitate than that of Aeschylus and Sophocles. The interest of tragedy, as treated by Euripides, turns upon the catastrophes produced by human passion: the religious meaning has, in a great measure, passed out of it; the characters have dwindled from their heroic stature to the proportions of ordinary life; his thought is the result of the analysis of motives, and the study of familiar experience. He has more affinity with the ordinary thoughts and moods of men than either of the older poets. The older and the later Greek writers have a nearer relation to the spirit of other eras of the world's history than those who represent Athenian civilisation in its maturity. It requires a longer familiarity with the mind and heart of antiquity to realise and enjoy the full meaning of Sophocles, Thucydides, or Aristophanes, than of Homer, Euripides, or Theocritus. Homer is indeed one of the truest, if not the truest, representative of the genius of Greece,--the representative also of the ancient world in the same sense as Shakspeare is of the modern world,--but he is, at the same time, directly intelligible and interesting to all countries and times from his being the most natural and powerful exponent of the elementary feelings and forces of human nature. The later poets, on the other hand, such as Euripides and the writers of the new comedy, were not indeed more truly human, but were less distinctively Greek than their immediate predecessors. They had advanced beyond them in the analytic knowledge of human nature; but, with the decay of religious belief and political feeling, they had lost much of the genius and sentiment by which the old Athenian life was characterised. Both their gain and their loss bring them more into harmony with later modes of thought and feeling. Thus it happened that, while the influence of Aeschylus and Sophocles, of Thucydides and Aristophanes, is scarcely perceptible in Roman literature, Homer and the early lyrical poets who flourished before Greek civilisation exhibited its most special type, and Euripides who, though a contemporary of Sophocles and Aristophanes, yet belonged in spirit and tone to a younger generation, the writers of the new comedy, and the Alexandrine poets who flourished when the purely Greek ideas and character were being merged in a cosmopolitan civilisation, exercised a direct influence on Roman taste and opinion in every age of their literature. The early tragic poets of Rome could not rival or imitate the dramatic art, the pathetic power, the clear and fluent style, the active and subtle analysis of Euripides; but they could approach nearer to him than to any of his predecessors, by treating the myths and personages of the heroic time apart from the sacred associations and ideal majesty of earlier art, and as a vehicle for inculcating the lessons and the experience of familiar life. The primary attraction, by means of which the tragic drama established itself at Rome, must have been the power of scenic representations to convey a story, and to produce novel impressions on a people to whom reading was quite unfamiliar. In Homer, the cyclic poets, and the Attic dramatists, there existed for the Romans of the second century B.C. a new world of incident and human interest quite different from the grave story of their own annals. This new world, which was becoming gradually familiar to their eyes through the works of plastic and pictorial art, was made more living and intelligible to them in the representations of their tragic poets. It cannot be supposed that these poets attempted to reproduce the antique Hellenic character of the legends on which they founded their dramas. In this early stage of literary culture, the harmonious cadences of rhythm, the fine and delicate shades of expression, the main requirements of dramatic art,--such as the skilful construction of a plot, the consistent keeping of a character, the evolution of a tragic catastrophe through the meeting of passion and outward accident,--would have been lost upon the unexacting audiences who thronged the temporary theatres on occasional holidays. The fragments of the lost dramas indicate that the matter was presented in a straightforward style, little differing in sound and meaning from the tone of serious conversation. Although little can be known or conjectured as to the general conduct of the action in a Roman drama, yet there are indications that in some cases a series of adventures, instead of one complete action, were represented[1]. But while failing, or not attempting to reproduce the Greek spirit and art of their originals, the Roman poets seem to have animated the outlines of their foreign story and of their legendary characters with something of the spirit of their own time and country. They imparted to their dramas a didactic purpose and rhetorical character which directly appealed to Roman tastes. The fragments quoted from their works, the testimonies of later Roman writers, and the natural inference to be drawn from the moral and intellectual characteristics of the people, all point to the conclusion that the long-sustained popularity of tragedy rested mainly on the satisfaction which it afforded to the ethical sympathies, and to the oratorical tastes of the audience. The evidence for this popularity is chiefly to be found in Cicero; and it is mainly, though not solely, to the popularity which the tragic drama enjoyed in his own age that he testifies. The loss of the earlier writings renders it impossible to adduce contemporary evidence of the immediate success of this form of literature. But the activity with which tragedy was cultivated for about a century, and the favour with which Ennius, Pacuvius, and Accius, were regarded by the leading men in the State, suggest the inference that the popularity of the drama in the age of Cicero, after the writers themselves had passed away, and when more exciting spectacles occupied public attention, was only a continuation of the general favour which these poets enjoyed in their lifetime. Cicero in many places mentions the great applause with which the expression of feeling in different dramas was received, and speaks of the great crowds ('maximus consessus' or 'magna frequentia'), including women and children, attending the representation. Varro states that, in his time, 'the heads of families had gradually gathered within the walls of the city, having quitted their ploughs and pruning-hooks, and that they liked to use their hands in the theatres and circus better than on their crops and vineyards[2].' The large fortunes amassed and the high consideration enjoyed by the actors Aesopus and Roscius afford further evidence of the favour with which the representation of tragedy and comedy was received in the age of Cicero. According to his testimony, these lively demonstrations of popular approbation were chiefly called out by the moral significance or the political meaning attached to the words, and by the oratorical fervour and passion with which the actor enforced them. Thus Laelius is represented, in the treatise _De Amicitia_, as testifying to the applause with which the mutual devotion of Pylades and Orestes, as represented in a play of Pacuvius, was received by the audience[3]: 'What shouts of applause were heard lately through the whole body of the house, on the representation of a new play of my familiar friend, M. Pacuvius, when, the king being ignorant which of the two was Orestes, Pylades maintained that it was he, while Orestes persisted, as was indeed the case, that he was the man! They stood up and applauded at this imaginary situation.' Again, in his speech in defence of Sestius[4], the same author says, 'amid a great variety of opinions uttered, there never was any passage in which anything said by the poet might seem to bear on our time, which either escaped the notice of the people, or to which the actor did not give point.' In a letter to Atticus (ii. 19) he states that the actor Diphilus had applied to Pompey the phrase 'Miseria nostra tu es magnus,' and that he was compelled to repeat it a thousand times amid the shouts of the whole theatre. He mentions further, in the speech in defence of Sestius[5] that the actor Aesopus had applied to Cicero himself a passage from a play of Accius (the Eurysaces), in which the Greeks are reproached for allowing one who had done them great public service to be driven into exile; and that the same actor, in the Brutus, had referred to him by name in the words, 'Tullius qui libertatem civibus stabiliverat'; he adds that these words 'were _encored_ over and over again,' 'millies revocatum est.' These and similar passages testify primarily to the intense political excitement of the time at which they were written, but also to the meaning which was looked for by the audience in the words addressed to them on the stage, and which was enforced by the emphasis given to them by the actor. Besides these and other passages in Cicero, the fragments themselves of Roman tragedy testify to its moral and didactic tone, and its occasional appeal to national and political feeling. In so far as it served any political end we may infer from the personal relations of the poets, from the approving testimony of Cicero, and from the personages and the nature of the situations represented, that, unlike the older comedy of Naevius and Plautus, it was in sympathy with the spirit of the dominant aristocracy. The 'boni' or 'optimates' regarded themselves as the true guardians of law and liberty, and it would be to their partisans that the resistance to, and denunciations of tyrannical rule, expressed in such plays as the Atreus, the Tereus, and the Brutus of Accius, must have been most acceptable. Members of the aristocracy, eminent in public life and accomplished as orators, became themselves authors of tragedies. Of these two are mentioned by Cicero, C. Julius Caesar, a contemporary and friend of the orator Crassus, and C. Titius, a Roman Eques, also distinguished as an orator[6]. These instances, and the comments Cicero makes upon them, indicate the close affinity of Roman tragedy to the training and accomplishments which fitted men for public life at Rome. Passages already referred to, and others which will be brought forward later, imply also that the audience were easily moved by the dramatic art and the elocution of the actor. We hear of the pains which the best actors took to perfect themselves in their art, and of the success which they attained in it. Cicero specifies among the accomplishments of an orator, the 'voice of a tragedian, the gestures and bearing of a consummate actor.' The stage may be said to have been to the Romans partly a school of practical life, partly a school of oratory. Spirited declamation, the expression, by voice and gesture, of vehement passion, of moral and political feeling, and of practical wisdom, would gratify the same tastes that were fostered by the discussions and harangues of the Forum[7]. The testimony of later writers points to the conclusion that the early Roman tragedy, like Roman oratory, was characterised both by great moral weight and dignity, and also by fervid and impassioned feeling. The latter quality is suggested by the line of Horace, Nam spirat tragicum satis et feliciter audet; and also by the epithets 'altus' and 'animosus' applied by him and Ovid to the poet Accius. Quintilian describes the ancient tragedies as superior to those of his own time in the management of their plots ('oeconomia'), and adds that 'manliness and solemnity of style' ('virilitas et sanctitas')[8], were to be studied in them. He states also that Accius and Pacuvius were distinguished by 'the earnestness of their thought, the weight of their language, the commanding bearing of their personages[9].' The fragments of all the tragic poets bear further evidence to the union of these qualities in their thought and style. These considerations may afford some explanation of the fact, that the early Roman tragedy, although having less claim to originality, and less capacity of development than any other branch of Roman literature, yet exercised a more immediate and more general influence than either the epic, lyrical, or satiric poetry of the Republic. For more than a century new tragedies were written and represented at the various public games, and afforded the sole kind of serious intellectual stimulus and education to the mass of the people. During the lifetime of the old dramatists, there was no regular theatre, but merely structures of wood raised for each occasion. A magnificent stone theatre was at last built by Pompey from the spoils of the Mithridatic War; but this, instead of giving a new impulse to dramatic art, was fatal to its existence. The attraction of a gorgeous spectacle superseded that afforded by the works of the older dramatists; and dancers like Bathyllus soon obtained the place in popular favour which had been enjoyed by the 'grave Aesopus and the accomplished Roscius.' The composition of tragedy passed from the hands of popular poets, and became a kind of literary and rhetorical exercise of accomplished men. We hear that Quintus Cicero composed four tragedies in sixteen days, and in the Augustan age Virgil and Horace eulogise the dramatic talent of their friend and patron Asinius Pollio. The 'Ars Poetica' implies that the composition of tragedy was the most fashionable form of literary pursuit among the young aspirants to poetic honour at that time, and the Thyestes of Varius and the Medea of Ovid enjoyed a great literary reputation. These were, however, futile attempts to impart artificial life to a withered branch. Though praised by literary critics, they obtained no general favour. Of all forms of poetry the drama is most dependent on popular sympathy and intelligence. With the loss of contact with public feeling the Roman drama lost its vital power. One cause of the change in public taste was the passion for more frivolous and coarser excitement, such as was afforded by the mimes and by gladiatorial combats and shows of wild beasts to a soldiery brutalised by constant wars, and to the civic masses degraded by idleness and by intermixture from all quarters of the world. Other causes may have acted on the poets themselves, such as the exhaustion of the mine of ancient stories fit for dramatic purposes, and the truer sense, acquired through culture, of the bent of Roman genius. But another cause was the loss of mutual sympathy between the poet and the people, arising from the decay and final extinction of political life. In ancient, as occasionally also in modern times, the contests and interests of politics were the means of affording the highest intellectual stimulus of which they were capable to the large classes on whom literary influences act only indirectly. So long as the old republican sense of citizenship remained, there was a bond of common feelings, ideas, and sympathies between the body of the people and some of the foremost and most highly educated men in Rome. There was an immediate sympathy between the political orator and his audiences within the Senate or in the public assemblies; there was a sympathy, more remote, but still active, between the poet of the Republic, who had the strong feelings of a Roman citizen, and the great body of his countrymen. With the overthrow of free government, this bond of union between the educated and the uneducated classes was destroyed. The former became more refined and fastidious, but lost something in breadth and genuine strength by the want of any popular contact. The latter became more debased, coarser, and more servile. Poetic works were more and more addressed to a small circle of men of rank and education, sharing the same opinions, tastes, and pleasures. They thus became more finished as works of art, but had less direct bearing on the passions and great public interests of their time. The origin and the earliest stage of the Roman drama have been examined in a previous chapter. For about a century after the close of the Second Punic War new tragedies continued to be represented at Rome with little interruption, first by Ennius, afterwards by his nephew Pacuvius and by Accius. They devoted themselves more exclusively than any of their predecessors to the composition of tragedy. While the fame of Ennius chiefly rested on his epic poem[10], Pacuvius and Accius are classed together as representatives of the tragic poetry of the Republic. Though in point of age there was a difference of fifty years between them, yet Cicero mentions, on the authority of Accius himself, that they had brought out plays under the same Aediles, when the one was eighty years of age and the other thirty. M. Pacuvius, nephew, by the mother's side, of Ennius, was born at Brundusium, in the south of Italy, about 219 B.C., and died at Tarentum about 129 B.C., at the age of ninety. He obtained some distinction as a painter[11], and he is supposed to have written his tragedies late in life. Jerome records of him, 'picturam exercuit et fabulas vendidit.' Cicero represents Laelius as speaking of him as a friend, 'amici et hospitis mei.' A pleasing anecdote is told by Aulus Gellius[12] of his intercourse with his younger rival, L. Accius. 'When Pacuvius, at a great age, and suffering from disease of long standing, had retired from Rome to Tarentum, Accius, at that time a considerably younger man, on his journey to Asia, arrived at that town, and stayed with Pacuvius. And being kindly entertained, and constrained to stay for several days, he read to him, at his request, his tragedy of Atreus. Then, as the story goes, Pacuvius said, that what he had written appeared to him sonorous and elevated but somewhat harsh and crude. "It is just as you say," replied Accius; "and in truth I am not sorry for it, for I hope that I shall write better in future. For, as they say, the same law holds good in genius as in fruit. Fruits which are originally harsh and sour afterwards become mellow and pleasant; but those which have a soft and withered look, and are very juicy at first, become soon rotten without ever becoming ripe. It appears, accordingly, that there should be left something in genius also for the mellowing influence of years and time."' This anecdote, while giving a pleasing impression of the friendly relation subsisting between the older and younger poets, seems to add some corroboration to the opinion that the Romans valued more the oratorical style than the dramatic art of their tragedies. It affords support also to the testimony of Horace and Quintilian in regard to the distinction which the admirers of the old poetry drew between the excellence of Pacuvius and Accius:-- Ambigitur quoties uter utro sit prior, aufert Pacuvius docti famam senis, Accius alti. Aulus Gellius quotes the epitaph of Pacuvius, written by himself to be inscribed on his tombstone, with a tribute of admiration to 'its modesty, simplicity, and fine serious spirit'--'Epigramma Pacuvii verecundissimum et purissimum dignumque ejus elegantissima gravitate.' Adolescens, tametsi properas, te hoc saxum rogat, Ut se aspicias, deinde quod scriptum est, legas, Hic sunt poetae Pacuvi Marci sita Ossa. Hoc volebam nescius ne esses. Vale[13]. With its quiet and modest simplicity of tone this inscription is still significant of that dignified self-consciousness which characterised all the early Roman poets, though the feeling may have been displayed with more prominence by Naevius and Plautus, by Ennius, Accius, and Lucilius, than by Pacuvius. Among the testimonies to his literary qualities the best known is that of Horace, quoted above. Cicero, in speaking of the age of Laelius as that of the purest Latinity, does not allow this merit to Pacuvius and to the comic poet Caecilius. He says of them, 'male locutos esse[14].' Pacuvius seems to have attempted to introduce new forms of words, such as 'temeritudo,' 'geminitudo,' 'vanitudo,' 'concorditas,' 'unose'; and also to have carried to a greater length than any of the older poets the tendency to form such poetical compounds as 'tardigradus,' 'flexanimus,' 'flexidicus,' 'cornifrontis'--a tendency which the Latin language continued more and more to repudiate in the hands of its most perfect masters. One line is quoted in which the tendency probably reached the extremest limits it ever did in any Latin author,-- Nerei repandirostrum incurvicervicum pecus. We find also such inflexions as 'tetinerim,' for 'tenuerim,' 'pegi' for 'pepigi,' 'cluentur' for 'cluent.' These peculiarities are ridiculed in the fragments of Lucilius, and also in a passage of Persius. Another author[15] contrasts the _sententiae_ of Ennius with the _periodi_ of Pacuvius,--a distinction probably connected with the progress of oratory in the interval between the poets. Persius applies the term 'verrucosa' (an epithet not inapplicable to his own style) to the Antiope of Pacuvius, which, on the other hand, was much admired by Cicero[16]. Lucilius refers to this harshness of style in the line, Verum tristis contorto aliquo ex Pacuviano exordio. Pacuvius is known to have been the author of about twelve tragedies, founded on Greek subjects; and of one, _Paulus_, founded on Roman history. Among these, the _Antiope_ was perhaps the most famous and most admired. It was, like the Medea of Ennius, a translation from Euripides. The principal characters in it were the brothers Zethus and Amphion, the one devoted to hunting, the other to music. Their dispute as to the respective advantages of music and philosophy is referred to by Cicero and Horace, and by other authors. The Zethus of Pacuvius is described by Cicero[17] as one who made war on all philosophy; and the author of the treatise addressed to Herennius describes their controversy as beginning about music, and ending about philosophy and the use of virtue. Two dramas, the _Dulorestes_ and the _Chryses_, the latter being a continuation of the first, represented the adventures of Orestes in his wanderings with his friend Pylades, after the murder of his mother. The former play, in which Orestes was represented as on the point of being sacrificed by his sister Iphigenia, contained the passage already referred to, in which Pylades and Orestes contend as to which should suffer for the other. The Chryses was founded on their subsequent adventures, and the title of the play was apparently taken from the old Homeric priest of Apollo, Chryses, who bore a prominent part in it. Another of the plays of Pacuvius, the _Niptra_, was founded on, though not translated from, one of Sophocles[18]; and the title seems to have been suggested by the story of the recognition of Ulysses by his nurse, Eurycleia, told at Odyssey xix. 386, etc. The subjects of his other dramas may be inferred from their titles:--_Armorum Judicium_, _Atalanta_, _Hermione_, _Ilione_, _Io_, _Medus_ (son of Medea), _Pentheus_, _Periboea_, _Teucer_. The fragments of Pacuvius amount to about four hundred lines. Many of these are single lines, preserved by grammarians in illustration of old forms and usages of words, and thus are of little value in the way of illustrating his poetical or dramatic power. Several of them, however, are interesting, from the light which they throw on his mode of thought, his moral spirit, and his artistic faculty. A remarkable passage is quoted from the Chryses, showing the growth of that interest in physical philosophy, which was first expressed in the Epicharmus of Ennius, and which continued to have a powerful attraction for many of the Roman poets:-- Hoc vide, circum supraque quod complexu continet Terram Solisque exortu capessit candorem, occasu nigret, Id quod nostri caelum memorant, Graii perhibent aethera: Quidquid est hoc, omnia animat, format, alit, auget, creat, Sepelit recipitque in sese omnia, omniumque idem est pater, Indidemque eadem quae oriuntur, de integro aeque eodem incidunt[19]. The following fragment illustrates the dawning interest in ethical speculation, which became much more active in the age of Cicero, under the influence of Greek studies:-- Fortunam insanam esse et caecam et brutam perhibent philosophi Saxoque instare in globoso praedicant volubili: Insanam autem esse aiunt, quia atrox, incerta, instabilisque sit: Caecam ob eam rem esse iterant, quia nil cernat quo sese adplicet: Brutam quia dignum atque indignum nequeat internoscere. Sunt autem alii philosophi, qui contra fortunam negant Esse ullam, sed temeritate res regi omnis autumant. Id magis veri simile esse usus reapse experiundo edocet: Velut Orestes modo fuit rex, factu'st mendicus modo[20]. These lines again from the Chryses show that Pacuvius, like Ennius, exposed and ridiculed the superstition of his time-- Nam isti qui linguam avium intelligunt Plusque ex alieno jecore sapiunt quam ex suo, Magis audiendum quam auscultandum censeo[21]; and this is to the same effect-- Nam si qui, quae eventura sunt, provideant, aequiparent Jovi. This tendency to physical and ethical speculation may be the reason for which Horace applies to Pacuvius the epithet 'doctus.' The fragments of Pacuvius show not only the cast of understanding, but also the grave and dignified tone of morality, which was found to be one of the most Roman characteristics of Ennius. They indicate also a similar humanity of feeling. The moral nobleness of the situation, in which Pylades and Orestes contend which should sacrifice himself for the other, has already been noticed: 'stantes plaudebant in re ficta.' Again, in the Tusculan Disputations (ii. 21), Cicero commends Pacuvius for deviating from Sophocles, who had represented Ulysses, in the Niptra, as utterly overcome by the power of his wound; while, in Pacuvius, those who are supporting him, 'personae gravitatem intuentes,' address this reproof to him, 'leviter gementi':-- Tu quoque Ulysses, quanquam graviter Cernimus ictum, nimis paene animo es Molli, qui consuetu's in armis Aevom agere[22]! The strong tones of Roman fortitude are heard in this grave rebuke; and the lines in which Ulysses, at the point of death, reproves the lamentations of those around him, have the unstudied directness that may be supposed to have characterised the serious speech of the time:-- Conqueri fortunam adversam, non lamentari decet: Id viri est officium, fletus muliebri ingenio additus[23]. The following maxim is quoted by Aulus Gellius with the remark 'that a Macedonian philosopher, a friend of his, an excellent man, thought it deserving of being written in front of every temple':-- Ego odi homines ignava opera et philosopha sententia. There are other fragments the significance of which is political rather than ethical, as for instance the following:-- Omnes qui tam quam nos severo serviunt Imperio callent dominum imperia metuere. A passage from his writings was sung at games in honour of Caesar, in order to rouse a feeling of indignation against the conspirators. The prominent words of the passage were,-- Men' servasse ut essent qui me perderent?[24] Other passages again appear to be fragments of spirited dialogue, and well adapted to show the art and the elocution of the actor. Cicero[25] quotes from the Teucer of Pacuvius the reproach of Telamon, couched in much the same terms as those which Teucer himself anticipates in the Ajax of Sophocles:-- Segregare abs te ausu's aut sine illo Salamina ingredi, Neque paternum aspectum es veritus, quom aetate exacta indigem Liberum lacerasti orbasti extinxti, neque fratris necis Neque ejus gnati parvi, qui tibi in tutelam est traditus--[26]? In commenting on these lines, Cicero speaks of the passion displayed by the actor ('so that even out of his mask the eyes of the actor appeared to me to burn'), and of the sudden change to pathos in his voice as he proceeded. He adds the further comment, 'Do we suppose that Pacuvius, in writing this passage, was in a calm and passionless mood?'--one of many proofs that the 'gravity' of the old tragedians was that of strong and ardent, not of phlegmatic natures, and that their strength was tempered by a pathos and humanity of feeling which were gradually gaining ascendency over the old Roman austerity. The language in such passages has not only the straightforward directness which is the general characteristic of the early literature, but a force and impetuosity added to its gravity, recalling the style of some fragments of the older orators[27]. The fragments of Accius afford the first hint of that enjoyment of natural beauty which enters largely into the poetry of a later age; but one or two fragments of Pacuvius, like several passages in Ennius, show the power of observing and describing the sublime and terrible aspects of Nature. The description of the storm which overtook the Greek army after sailing from Troy is perhaps the best specimen in this style:-- Profectione laeti piscium lasciviam Intuentur, nec tuendi capere satietas potest. Interea prope jam occidente sole inhorrescit mare, Tenebrae conduplicantur, noctisque et nimbum occaecat nigror, Flamma inter nubes coruscat, caelum tonitru contremit, Grando mista imbri largifico subita praecipitans cadit, Undique omnes venti erumpunt, saevi existunt turbines, Fervit aestu pelagus[28]. There are also, in the same style, these rough and graphic lines, exemplifying the impetuous force which the older Roman poets impart to their descriptions by the figure of speech called 'asyndeton,'-- Armamentum stridor, flictus navium, Strepitus fremitus clamor tonitruum et rudentum sibilus[29]. Virgil must have had this passage in his mind when he wrote the line-- Insequitur clamorque virum, stridorque rudentum. The effect of alliteration and assonance may be illustrated by a passage from the 'Niptra,' in which Eurycleia addresses the disguised Ulysses:-- Cedo tamen pedem tuum lymphis flavis flavum ut pulverem Manibus isdem quibus Ulixi saepe permulsi abluam, Lassitudinemque minuam manuum mollitudine[30]. Pacuvius composed one drama on a Roman subject, the title of which was 'Paulus.' Although the name does not indicate whether the principal character of the drama was the Aemilius Paulus who fell at Cannae, whom Horace commemorates as one of the national heroes in the words-- Animaeque magnae Prodigum Paulum, superante Poeno, or his more fortunate son who conquered the Macedonians at Pydna, yet it would seem much more probable that the poet should celebrate a great triumph of his own time, achieved by one in whom, from his connexion with Scipio, the nephew of Ennius would feel a special interest, than that he should recall a great calamity of a past generation, neither near enough to excite immediate attention, nor sufficiently remote to justify an imaginative treatment. The Fabulae Praetextatae, of which this was one, were, as Niebuhr[31] has pointed out, historical plays rather than tragedies. Such a drama would not naturally or necessarily require a tragic catastrophe, but would represent the traditions of the earlier annals, or the great events of current history, in accordance with the dictates of national feeling. No important fragment of this drama has been preserved, but the fact of its having been written by Pacuvius is interesting, as affording a parallel to the celebration of the victory of Marcellus in the Clastidium of Naevius, and of the success of M. Fulvius Nobilior in the Ambracia of Ennius. Neither the fragments nor the ancient notices of Pacuvius produce on a modern reader so distinct an impression of his peculiar genius and character as may be formed of Naevius, Ennius, and Lucilius. His remains are chiefly important as throwing light on the general features of the Roman tragic drama; and few critics would attempt to determine from internal evidence alone whether any particular passage came from the lost works of Pacuvius or of Accius. The main points that are known in his life are his provincial origin, and his relationship to Ennius; the fact of his supporting himself, first by painting, afterwards by the payment he received from the Aediles for his plays; his friendship with Laelius, the centre of the literary circle in Rome during the latter part of the second century B.C.; his intimacy with his younger rival Accius; the facts also that, like Sophocles, he preserved his poetical power unabated till a great age, and that, like Shakspeare, he retired to spend his last years in his native district. The language of his epitaph is suggestive of a kindly and modest temper, and of the calm and serious spirit of age; while that of many of his dramatic fragments bears evidence of his moral strength and worth, and to the manly fervour as well as the gentle humanity of his temperament. L. Accius (or Attius) was born in the year 170 B.C., of parentage similar to that of Horace--'parentibus libertinis.' He was a native of the Roman colony of Pisaurum in Umbria, founded in 184 B.C.; and an estate in that district was known in after times by the name 'fundus Accianus.' Like Pacuvius, he lived to a great age, though the exact date of his death is uncertain. Cicero, who was born B.C. 106, speaks of the oratorical and literary accomplishment of D. Junius Brutus--Consul, along with P. Scipio Nasica, B.C. 138, and one of the most famous soldiers and chiefs of the senatorian party in that age--on the authority of what he had himself often heard from the poet: 'ut ex familiari ejus L. Accio poeta sum audire solitus[32].' The meeting of the old tragic poet and of the great orator is remarkable, as a link connecting the two epochs in literature, which stand so widely apart in the spirit and style by which they are respectively characterised. Cicero again, in the speech in defence of Archias, mentions the intimacy subsisting between D. Brutus and the poet[33]. The expressions 'familiari ejus' and 'amicissimi sui,' like that of 'hospitis et amici mei,' applied by Laelius, in Cicero's dialogue, to Pacuvius, indicate that the relation between the poets (men of humble or provincial origin) and eminent statesmen and soldiers, was in that age one of familiar intimacy rather than of patronage and dependence. Although Cicero's notice of his own acquaintance with Accius, which is not likely to have existed before the former assumed the toga virilis, is a proof of the great age which the poet attained, it is not certain how long he continued the practice of his art. Seneca, in quoting from the Atreus of this poet the well-known tyrant's maxim, 'oderint dum metuant'--a maxim, according to Suetonius, constantly in the mouth of Caligula,--adds the remark that 'any one could see that it was written in the days of Sulla.' But Aulus Gellius, on the other hand, states that the Atreus was the play which had been read by the poet in his youth to Pacuvius at Tarentum. The termination of the literary career of Accius must have been soon after the beginning of the first century B.C., so that nearly half a century elapses between the last of the works of the older poets and the appearance of the great poem of Lucretius. The journey of Accius to Asia shows the beginning of that taste for foreign travel which became prevalent among the most educated men in a generation later, and grew more and more easy with the advance of Roman conquest, and more attractive from the increased cultivation of Greek literature. Accius is the first of the Roman poets who seems to have possessed a country residence; and some taste for country life and the beauties of Nature first betrays itself in one or two of his fragments. He possessed apparently all the self-esteem and high spirit of the earlier poets. Pliny mentions that though a very little man, he placed a colossal statue of himself in a temple of the Muses[34]. Another story is told by Valerius Maximus, that on the entrance of C. Julius Caesar (the author of a few tragedies, and a member of one of the great patrician houses), into the place of meeting of the 'Poets' Guild' on the Aventine, he refused to rise up as a mark of deference, thus asserting his own superiority in literature in opposition to the unquestionable claims of rank on the part of his younger rival. He was much the most productive among the early tragic poets. The titles of his dramas are variously reckoned from about 37 to about 50 in number. Like Ennius, he seems to have made great use of the Trojan cycle of events; and, in his representation of character and action, to have appealed largely to the martial sympathies of the Romans. Two of his dramas, the Brutus, treating of the downfall of the Tarquinian dynasty, and the Aeneadae, or Decius, founded on the story of the second Decius, who devoted himself at the battle of Sentinum, belonged to the class of Fabulae Praetextatae. He followed the example of Ennius in composing a national epic, called Annales, in three books. He was the author also of what seem to have been works on grammar and literary criticism and history, written in trochaic and other metres, and known by the names Didascalica and Pragmatica, and Parerga. The subjects of these last works, as well as those of some of the satires of Lucilius, and of the poems of Porcius Licinus and Volcatius Sedigitus, written in trochaic and septenarian verse, show the attention which was given about this time by Roman authors to the principles of composition. The literary and grammatical studies of the time of Accius must have prepared the way for the rapid development of style which characterised the first half of the first century B.C. In some of the fragments of Accius distinctions in the meaning of words--e.g. of 'pertinacia' and 'pervicacia'--are prominently brought out. We note also in his remains, as in those of Pacuvius, a great access of formative energy in the language, especially in abstract words in _-tas_ and _-tudo_, many of which afterwards dropped out of use. The antagonism manifested by Lucilius to Accius seems in a great measure to have arisen from his claims to a kind of literary dictatorship in questions of criticism and style. The literary qualities most conspicuous in the fragments of Accius, and attributed to him by ancient writers, are of the same kind as those which the dramatic fragments of Ennius and Pacuvius exhibit. Cicero testifies to his oratorical force, to his serious spirit, and to the didactic purpose of his writings. His most important remains illustrate these attributes of his style, along with the shrewd sense and vigorous understanding of the older writers, and afford some traces of a new vein of poetical emotion, which is scarcely observable in earlier fragments. Horace applies the epithet 'altus,' Ovid that of 'animosus' to Accius. Cicero characterises him as 'gravis et ingeniosus poeta,' and attests the didactic purpose of a particular passage in the words, 'the earnest and inspired poet wrote thus with the view of stimulating, not those princes who no longer existed, but us and our children to energy and honourable ambition[35].' The style of a passage from the Atreus is described by the same author in the dialogue '_De Oratore_,' as 'nervous, impetuous, pressing on with a certain impassioned gravity of feeling[36].' Oratorical fervour and dignity seem thus to have been the most distinctive characteristic of his style. Virgil, whose genius made as free use of the diction and sentiment of native as of Greek poets, has cast the ruder language of the old poet into a new mould in some of the greatest speeches of the Aeneid, and seems to have drawn from the same source something of the high spirit and lofty pathos with which he has animated the personages of his story. The famous address, for instance-- Disce puer virtutem ex me verumque laborem, Fortunam ex aliis, though originally found in the Ajax of Sophocles, was yet familiar to Virgil in the line of Accius-- Virtuti sis par, dispar fortunis patris. The address of Latinus to Turnus-- O praestans animi juvenis, quantum ipse feroci Virtute exsuperas, tanto me impensius aequum est Consulere atque omnis metuentem expendere casus, is quoted by Macrobius as an echo of these lines of the old tragic poet-- Quanto magis te istius modi esse intelligo, Tanto, Antigona, magis me par est tibi consulere ac parcere. The same author quotes two other passages, in which the sentiment and something of the language of Accius are reproduced in the speeches of the Aeneid. The lofty and fervid oratory which is one of the most Roman characteristics of that great national poem, and is quite unlike the debates, the outbursts of passion, and the natural interchange of speech in Homer, recalls the manner of the early tragic poets rather than the style of the oratorical fragments in the Annals of Ennius. The following lines may give some idea of the passionate energy which may be recognised in many other fragments of Accius:-- Tereus indomito more atque animo barbaro Conspexit in eam amore vecors flammeo, Depositus: facinus pessimum ex dementia Confingit[37]. He gives expression also to great strength of will and to that most powerful kind of pathos which arises out of the commingling of compassion for suffering with the admiration for heroism, as in these fragments of the Astyanax and the Telephus,-- Abducite intro; nam mihi miseritudine Commovit animum excelsa aspecti dignitas[38]; and-- Nam huius demum miseret, cuius nobilitas miserias Nobilitat[39]. He shows a further power of directly seizing the real meaning of human life, and setting aside false appearances and beliefs. The following may be quoted as exhibiting something of his moral strength, humanity, and direct force of understanding:-- Scin' ut quem cuique tribuit fortuna ordinem, Nunquam ulla humilitas ingenium infirmat bonum[40]. Erat istuc virile, ferre advorsam fortunam facul[41]. Nam si a me regnum fortuna atque opes Eripere quivit, at virtutem non quit[42]. Nullum est ingenium tantum, neque cor tam ferum, Quod non labascat lingua, mitiscat malo[43]. The following, again, like similar passages already quoted from Ennius and Pacuvius, is expressive of contempt for that form of superstition which had most practical hold over the minds of the Roman people:-- Nil credo auguribus, qui auris verbis divitant Alienas, suas ut auro locupletent domos[44]. Again, the view of common sense in regard to dreams is expressed by the interpreter to whom Tarquinius applies when alarmed by a strange vision-- Rex, quae in vita usurpant homines, cogitant, curant, vident, Quaeque agunt vigilantes agitantque, ea si cui in somno accidunt Minus mirum est[45]. Besides the characteristics already exemplified, one or two passages may be appealed to, as implying the more special gifts of a poet--force of imagination, and some sense of natural beauty. There is considerable descriptive power in the following lines, for instance, in which a shepherd, who had never before seen a ship, announces the first appearance of the Argo-- Tanta moles labitur Fremebunda ex alto, ingenti sonitu et spiritu: Prae se undas volvit, vortices vi suscitat: Ruit prolapsa, pelagus respergit, reflat[46]. There is an imaginative apprehension of the active forces of nature in this fragment-- Sub axe posita ad stellas septem, unde horrifer Aquilonis stridor gelidas molitur nives[47]. There is a fresh breath of the early morning in the lines from the Oenomaus-- Forte ante Auroram, radiorum ardentum indicem, Cum e somno in segetem agrestis cornutos cient, Ut rorulentas terras ferro rufidas Proscindant, glebasque arvo ex molli exsuscitent[48]. This is perhaps the first instance in Latin poetry of a descriptive passage which gives any hint of the pleasure derived from contemplating the common aspects of Nature. Several other short fragments betray the existence of this new vein of poetic sensibility, as, for instance, the following:-- Saxum id facit angustitatem, et sub eo saxo exuberans Scatebra fluviae radit ripam[49]. The early expression of this kind of emotion seems to have been accompanied with some degree of affectation, or unnatural straining after effect, as in this fragment:-- Hac ubi curvo litore latratu Unda sub undis labunda sonit. The following lines, quoted by Cicero (Tusc. Disp. i. 28) without naming the author, are probably from Accius:-- Caelum nitescere, arbores frondescere, Vites laetificae pampinis pubescere, Rami bacarum ubertate incurviscere, Segetes largiri fruges, florere omnia, Fontes scatere, herbis prata convestirier. We note also many instances of plays on words, alliteration, and asyndeton, reminding us of similar modes of conveying emphasis in Plautus, as in the following:-- Pari dyspari, si impar esses tibi, ego nunc non essem miser. Pro se quisque cum corona clarum cohonestat caput. Egredere, exi, ecfer te, elimina urbe. It remains to sum up the most important results as to the early tragic drama of Rome, which have been obtained from a consideration of ancient testimony and of the fossil remains of this lost literature, as we find them collected and arranged from the works of ancient critics and grammarians. The Roman tragedies seem to have borne much the same relation to the works of the Attic tragedians as Roman comedy to the new comedy of Athens. The expression of Quintilian, 'in comoedia maxime claudicamus[50],' following immediately on the praise which he bestows on Pacuvius and Accius, implies that in his opinion the earlier writers had been more successful in tragedy than in comedy. But a comparison between the fragments of the tragedians and the extant works of Plautus and Terence, proves that, in style at least, Roman comedy was much the most successful; and this superiority is no doubt one main cause of its partial preservation. The style of Roman tragedy appears to have been direct and vigorous, serious, often animated with oratorical passion, but singularly devoid of harmony, subtlety, poetical refinement and inspiration. There is no testimony in favour of any great dramatic conceptions or impersonations. The poets appear to have aimed at expressing some particular passion oratorically, as Virgil has done so powerfully in his representation of Mezentius and Turnus, but not to have created any of those great types of human character such as the world owes to Homer, Sophocles, and Shakspeare. The popularity and the power of Roman tragedy, during the century preceding the downfall of the Republic, are to be attributed chiefly to its didactic and oratorical force, to the Roman bearing of the persons represented, to the ethical and occasionally the political cast of the sentiments expressed by them, and to the plain and vigorous style in which they are enunciated. The works of the tragic poets aided the development of the Roman language. They communicated new ideas and experience, and fostered among the mass of the Roman people the only taste for serious literature of which they were capable. They may have exercised a beneficial influence also on the thoughts and lives of men. They kept the national ideal of duty, the 'manners of the olden time,' the 'fas et antiqua castitudo' (to use an expression of Accius), before the minds of the people: they inculcated by precept and by representations great lessons of fortitude and energy: they taught the maxims of common sense, and touched the minds of their audiences with a humanity of feeling naturally alien to them. No teaching on the stage could permanently preserve the old Roman virtue, simplicity, and loyalty to the Republic, against the corrupting and disorganising effects of constant wars and conquests, and of the gross forms of luxury, that suited the temperament of Rome: but, among the various influences acting on the mind of the people, none probably was of more unmixed good than that of the tragic drama of Ennius, Pacuvius, and Accius. [Footnote 1: E.g. the _Dulorestes_ of Pacuvius.] [Footnote 2: De Re Rustica, Lib. ii. Praef. Quoted also by Columella, Praef. 15.] [Footnote 3: De Amicitia, 7.] [Footnote 4: Cic. Pro P. Sestio, 65.] [Footnote 5: Chap. 57.] [Footnote 6: Cicero, Brutus, 48, 45; De Orat. iii. 8. 30: 'Quid noster hic Caesar nonne novam quandam rationem attulit orationis et dicendi genus induxit prope singulare? Quis unquam res praeter hunc tragicas paene comice, tristes remisse, severas hilare, forenses scaenica prope venustate tractavit atque ita, ut neque iocus magnitudine rerum excluderetur nec gravitas facetiis minueretur.'] [Footnote 7: Cf. Cic. De Orat. iii. 7: 'Atque id primum in poetis cerni licet quibus est proxima cognatio cum oratoribus quam sint inter sese Ennius, Pacuvius, Acciusque dissimiles.'] [Footnote 8: 'Sanctitas certe, et, ut sic dicam, virilitas, ab iis petenda est, quando nos in omnia deliciarum vitia dicendi quoque ratione defluximus.'--Quintil. Inst. Or. i. 8. 9.] [Footnote 9: Inst. Or. x. i. 97.] [Footnote 10: Cf. Cic. Opt. Gen. Orat.: 'Itaque licet dicere et Ennium summum epicum poetam si cui ita videtur, et Pacuvium tragicum, et Caecilium fortasse comicum.'] [Footnote 11: Pliny, Hist. Nat. xxxv. 7.] [Footnote 12: xiii. 2.] [Footnote 13: 'Young man, though thou art in haste, this stone entreats thee to regard it, and then read what is written:--Here are laid the bones of the poet Marcus Pacuvius. This I desired to be not unknown to thee. Farewell.'] [Footnote 14: Brutus, 74.] [Footnote 15: The writer of the treatise on Rhetoric addressed to C. Herennius.] [Footnote 16: 'Quis enim tam inimicus paene nomini Romano est, qui Ennii Medeam aut Antiopam Pacuvii spernat aut rejiciat, quod se eisdem Euripidis fabulis delectari dicat?'--Cic. De Fin. i. 2.] [Footnote 17: De Oratore, ii. 37.] [Footnote 18: Cic. Tusc. Disp. ii. 21.] [Footnote 19: 'Behold this, which around and above encompasseth the earth, and puts on brightness at the rising of the sun, becomes dark at his setting; that which our people call Heaven, and the Greeks Aether. Whatever this is, it is to all things the source of life, form, nourishment, growth, existence; it is the grave and receptacle of all things, and the parent, too, of all things: all things which arise from it equally lapse into it again.' Compare with this passage Lucretius, ii. 991-- 'Denique caelesti sumus omnes semine oriundi,' etc. Both may be traced to a fragment of the Chrysippus of Euripides, quoted by Ribbeck, Röm. Trag. p. 257; and also by Munro, Lucret. p. 455, third edition.] [Footnote 20: 'Philosophers say that Fortune is mad, blind, and senseless, and represent her as set on a round rolling stone. They say that she is mad, because she is harsh, fickle, untrustworthy; blind, for this reason, that she can see nothing to which to attach herself; senseless, because she cannot distinguish between the worthy and unworthy. Other philosophers again deny the existence of Fortune, but hold that all things are ruled by chance. That this is more probable, common experience proves, as Orestes was but the other day a king, and is now a beggar.'] [Footnote 21: 'For those men who understand the language of birds, and have more wisdom from examining the liver of other beings than from their own (i.e. understanding), I think should be heard rather than listened to.'] [Footnote 22: 'Thou, too, Ulysses, although we see thee sore wounded, art yet almost too much cast down; thou, who hast been used to pass thy life in arms!'] [Footnote 23: 'To complain of adverse fortune is well, but not to lament over it. The one is the act of a man; it is a woman's part to weep.'] [Footnote 24: Sueton. Caes. 84.] [Footnote 25: De Orat. ii. 46.] [Footnote 26: 'Didst thou venture to let him part from thee, or to enter Salamis without him; and didst thou not fear to see thy father's face, when in his old age, bereft of his children, thou hast torn him with anguish, robbed, crushed him; nor didst thou feel for thy brother's death, and his child, who was trusted to thy protection--?'] [Footnote 27: Compare especially the fragments of the speeches of C. Gracchus.] [Footnote 28: 'Glad at their starting, they watch the play of the fish, and are never weary of watching them. Meanwhile, nearly at sunset, the sea grows rough, darkness gathers, the blackness of night and of the storm-clouds hides the world, the lightning flashes between the clouds, the heaven is shaken with the thunder, hail mixed with torrents of rain dashes down in sudden showers; from all quarters all the winds burst forth, the wild whirlwinds arise, the sea boils with the surging waters.'--Quoted partly from Cic. De Div. i. 14; partly from De Orat. iii. 39.] [Footnote 29: 'The groaning of the ships' tackling, the dashing together of the ships, the uproar, the crash, the rattle of the thunder, and the whistling of the ropes.'] [Footnote 30: 'Give me your foot, that with the brown waters I may wash away the brown dust with those hands with which I have often rubbed gently the feet of Ulysses, and with my hands' softness soothe your weariness.'] [Footnote 31: 'It represented the deeds of Roman kings and generals: hence it is evident that at least it wanted the unity of time of the Greek tragedy; that it was a history like Shakspeare's.'--Niebuhr's Roman History, vol. i. note 1150.] [Footnote 32: Brutus, 28.] [Footnote 33: 'Decimus quidem Brutus, summus ille vir et imperator, Accii, amicissimi sui, carminibus templorum ac monumentorum aditus exornavit suorum.'--Chap. 11.] [Footnote 34: Hist. Nat. xxxiv. 10: 'Notatum ab auctoribus, et L. Accium poetam in Camenarum aede maxima forma statuam sibi posuisse, cum brevis admodum fuisset.'] [Footnote 35: Pro Plancio, 24.] [Footnote 36: De Orat. iii. 58.] [Footnote 37: 'Tereus, in his wild mood and savage spirit, gazed upon her, maddened with burning passion, quite desperate; in his madness, he resolves a cursed deed.'] [Footnote 38: 'Withdraw him within: for the lofty dignity of his aspect has moved my mind to compassion.'] [Footnote 39: 'That man indeed we pity whose nobleness gives distinction to his misery.'] [Footnote 40: 'Dost thou not know, that whatever rank fortune has assigned to a man, no meanness of station ever weakens a fine nature?'] [Footnote 41: 'This was the part of a man, to bear adversity easily.'] [Footnote 42: 'Though fortune could strip me of kingdom and wealth, it cannot strip me of my virtue.'] [Footnote 43: 'No nature is so strong, no breast so savage, which is not shaken by words, does not melt at misfortune.'] [Footnote 44: 'I trust not those augurs, who enrich the ears of others with their words, that they may enrich their own houses with gold.' There is of course a pun on the _auris_ and _auro_.] [Footnote 45: 'O king, what men usually do in life, what they think about, care about, see,--their pursuits and occupations, when awake,--if these occur to any one in sleep, it is not wonderful.'] [Footnote 46: 'So huge a mass is approaching--sounding from the deep with a mighty rushing noise; it rolls the waves before it, forces through the eddies, plunges forward, throws up and dashes back the sea.'--Quoted in Cic. De Nat. Deor. ii. 35.] [Footnote 47: 'Lying beneath the pole by the seven stars, whence the blustering roar of the north-wind drives before it the chill snows.'] [Footnote 48: 'By chance before the dawn, harbinger of burning rays, when the husbandmen bring forth the oxen from their rest into the fields, that they may break the red, dew-sprinkled soil with the plough, and turn up the clods from the soft soil.'] [Footnote 49: 'That rock makes the passage narrow, and from beneath that rock a spring gushing out sweeps past the river's bank.'] [Footnote 50: Inst. Or. x. i. 99.] CHAPTER VI. ROMAN COMEDY. PLAUTUS. ABOUT 254 TO 184 B.C. The era in which Roman epic and tragic poetry arose was also the flourishing era of Roman comedy. A later generation looked back on the age of Ennius and Plautus as an age of great poets, who had passed away:-- Ea tempestate flos poetarum fuit Qui nunc abierunt hinc in communem locum[1]. And among these poets the writers of comedy were both most numerous and apparently the most popular in their own time[2]. Besides the names of Naevius, Plautus, Caecilius, and Terence, we know the names of other comic poets of less fame[3], and from allusions in the extant plays of Plautus[4] and in the prologues of Terence we infer that there were other competitors for public favour whose names were unknown to a later generation. In the Ciceronian age the works of these forgotten playwrights were for the most part attributed to Plautus, probably with the view of gaining some temporary popularity for them. In the time of Gellius no fewer than 130 plays passed under his name; among these, twenty-one were regarded as undoubtedly his, nineteen more as probably genuine, and the rest as spurious. They were however all of the class of _palliatae_; and as the _fabulae togatae_ seem, after the time of Terence, to have been composed in much greater number than those founded on Greek originals, most of them must have belonged to the first half of the second century B.C. Plays of a later date would have clearly shown by their diction that they were not the work of Plautus. Although this form of literature has little in common with the higher Roman mood, and exercised comparatively slight influence on the style and sentiment of later Roman poetry[5], yet no review of the creative literature of the Republican period would be complete without some attempt to estimate the value of the comedy of Plautus and Terence. The difficulty of doing so adequately arises from an opposite cause to that which makes our judgment on the art and genius of the Roman tragic poets so incomplete. In the latter case we know what was the character of their Greek models; but we can only conjecture from a number of unconnected fragments, how far the copy deviated in tone and spirit from the original. On the other hand, while we have between twenty and thirty specimens of Latin comedy, we have no finished work of Greek art in the same style, with which to compare them. It makes a great difference in our opinion, not only of the genius of the Roman poets, but of the productive force of the Roman mind, whether we regard Plautus and Terence as facile translators, or as writers of creative originality who filled up the outlines which they took from the new comedy of Athens with matter drawn from their own observation and invention. It makes a great difference in the literary interest of these works, whether we regard them as blurred copies of pictures from later Greek life, or, like so much else in Roman literature, as compositions which, while Greek in form, are yet in no slight degree Roman or Italian in substance, character, life, and sentiment. How far can we answer these questions, either by general considerations, or by a special attention to the actual products of Latin comedy which we possess? We have seen that there was a certain aptitude in the graver Roman spirit for tragedy:-- Nam spirat tragicum satis et feliciter audet. The rhetorical character of Roman education and the rhetorical tendencies of the Roman mind secured favour for this kind of composition till the age of Quintilian. His dictum 'in comoedia maxime claudicamus,' on the other hand, implies that the educated taste of Romans under the Empire did not find much that was congenial in the works of Plautus, Caecilius, or Terence. The tone of Horace is more contemptuous towards Plautus than towards Ennius and the tragic poets. While tragedy continued to be cultivated by eminent writers in the Augustan age and early Empire, few original comedies seem to have been written after the beginning of the first century B.C.[6] The higher efforts of the comic muse were almost, if not entirely, superseded by the Mimus. These considerations show that comedy was not congenial to the educated or the uneducated taste of Romans in the last years of the Republic, and in the early Empire. But, on the other hand, the popularity enjoyed by the old comedy between the time of Naevius and of Terence, and even down to the earlier half of the Ciceronian age, when some of the great parts in Plautus continued to be performed by the 'accomplished Roscius,' and the admiration expressed for its authors by grammarians and critics, from Aelius Stilo down to Varro and Cicero, show its adaptation to an earlier and not less vigorous, if less refined stage of intellectual development; while the actual survival of many Roman comedies can only be accounted for by a more real adaptation to human nature, both in style and substance, than was attained by Roman tragedy in its straining after a higher ideal of sentiment and expression. The task undertaken by Naevius and Plautus was indeed a much easier one than that accomplished by the early writers of tragedy. They were not called upon to create a new taste, or to gratify a taste recently acquired in Sicily and the towns of Magna Graecia. They had only to give ampler and more defined form, fuller and more coherent substance, to a kind of entertainment which was indigenous in Italy. The improvised 'Saturae'--'dramatic medleys or farces with musical accompaniment'--had been represented on Roman holidays for more than a century before the first performance of a regular play by Livius Andronicus. And these 'Saturae' had been themselves developed partly out of the older Fescennine dialogues--the rustic raillery of the vintage and the harvest-home,--partly out of mimetic dances imported from Etruria. Another kind of dramatic entertainment, the 'Oscum ludicrum,' which was developed into the literary form of the 'fabulae Atellanae,' with its standing characters of Maccus, Pappus, Bucco, and Dossennus, had been transferred to the city from the provinces of southern Italy, and ultimately became so popular as to be performed, not by professional actors, but by the free-born youth of Rome. The extant comedies of Plautus show considerable traces of both of these kinds of entertainment, both in the large place assigned to the 'Cantica,' which were accompanied by music and gesticulation[7], and in the farcical exaggeration of some of his characters, which provoked the criticism of Horace,-- Quantus sit Dossennus edacibus in parasitis. The mass of Roman citizens, both rural and urban, was thus prepared by their festive traditions and habits to welcome the introduction of comedy, just as they were prepared by their political traditions and aptitudes to welcome the appearance of a popular orator. Naevius and Plautus might thus be poets of the people more truly than any later Roman poet could be. The career of Naevius, and the public and personal elements which he introduced into his plays, afford evidence of his desire to use his position as a popular poet for political ends. His imprisonment and subsequent banishment equally attest the determination of the governing class to allow no criticism on public men or affairs, nor anything derogatory to the majesty of the State and the dignified forms of Roman life, to be heard on the stage. Plautus, though prevented either by his own temperament or the vigilance of state-censorship from directly acting on the political sympathies of the commons, maintained the thoroughly popular character of Roman comedy, and poured a strongly national spirit into the forms which he adopted from Greece. Between the death of Plautus and that of Terence there was no cessation in the productiveness of Roman comedy; but the little that is known of Caecilius, and the evidence afforded by the plays of Terence, show that Roman comedy had now begun to appeal to a different class of sympathies. The ascendency of Ennius in Roman literature immensely widened the gulf which always separates an educated from an uneducated class. One of the great sources of interest in Plautus is that he flourished before this separation became marked, while the upper classes were yet comparatively rude and simple in their requirements, and the mass of the people were yet hearty and vigorous in their enjoyments. The popularity of his plays revived again after the death of Terence, and maintained itself till nearly the end of the Republic, a proof that his genius was not only in harmony with his own age, but satisfied a permanent vein of sentiment in his countrymen, so long as they retained anything of their native vigour and republican spirit. The fact that Roman comedy was not congenial to the educated taste of the early Empire is no proof of its want of originality. It was in harmony with an earlier stage in the development of the Roman people. Had that been all, it might have been completely lost, or preserved only in fragments like those of the Satire of Lucilius. But as being the heir of an older popular kind of composition it enjoyed the advantage, possessed by none of the more artificial forms of poetry introduced at this period, of a fresh, copious, popular, and idiomatic diction. The comic poets of Rome alone inherited, like the epic poets of Greece, a vehicle of expression formed by the improvised utterance of several generations. The greater fluency of style and the greater ease of rhythmical movement, thus enjoyed by the early comedy, is the most obvious explanation of its permanent hold on the world. But the mere merits of language would scarcely have secured permanence to these compositions apart from the cosmopolitan human interest derived from the Greek originals on which they were founded, and from the strong vitality which the earlier Roman poet drew from the great time into which he was born, and the refined art for which the younger poet was partly indebted to the circle of high-born, aspiring, and accomplished youths into which he was admitted. Our chief authorities for the life of Plautus are a short statement of Jerome, one or two slight notices in Cicero, and a somewhat longer passage in Aulus Gellius (iii. 3. 14). As he died at an advanced age, in the year 184 B.C.[8] (during the censorship of Cato), he must have been born about the middle of the third century B.C. He was thus a younger contemporary of Naevius, and somewhat older than Ennius. His birthplace was Sarsina in Umbria. That this district must have been thoroughly Latinised in the time of Plautus, is attested by the idiomatic force and purity of his style[9]. He probably came early to Rome, and was at first engaged 'in operis artificum scenicorum,'--in some kind of employment connected with the stage. He saved money in this service, and lost it all in foreign trade,--what he himself calls 'marituma negotia'[10]. Returning to Rome in absolute poverty, he was reduced to work as a hired servant in a mill; and while thus employed he first began to write comedies. The names of two of these early works, _Saturio_ and _Addictus_, have been preserved by Gellius. From this time till his death he seems to have been a most rapid and productive writer. We have no means of determining at what date he began to write. A passage quoted from Cicero has been thought to imply that he was writing for the stage during the life-time of P. and Cn. Scipio, i.e. before 212 B.C. But the earliest allusion to contemporary events that we find in any of his extant plays, is that in the Miles Gloriosus, to the imprisonment of Naevius, probably in 206-5 B.C.[11] We have no certainty that any of the extant plays were written before that date, although the mention of Hiero in the Menaechmi, and the use of some more than usually archaic inflexions in that play, have been supposed to indicate an earlier date for it. Of the other plays, the Cistellaria and Stichus were written within a year or two of the Second Punic War[12]. The larger number of the extant comedies belong to the last ten years of the poet's life. His plays do not seem to have been published as literary works during his life-time, but to have been left in possession of the acting companies, by whom passages may have been interpolated and others omitted, before they were finally reduced into a literary shape. Most of the prologues to his plays belong to a later time, probably that of the generation after his death[13]. Of the twenty-one plays which Varro accepted, on the ground of their intrinsic merits, as certainly genuine, we possess twenty, and fragments of the remaining one, the _Vidularia_. The names of some other genuine plays, such as the _Saturio_, _Addictus_, and _Commorientes_, are also known to us. How far are we able to fill up this meagre outline by personal indications of the poet left on his works? In the case of any dramatist this is always difficult; and Plautus is not in form only, but in spirit, essentially dramatic. Nothing marks the difference between the popular and the aristocratic tendencies of Roman thought and literature more than the entire absence of any didactic tendency in his plays. He does not think of making his hearers better by his representations, nor does he believe that it is possible to do so[14]. He identifies himself as heartily for the time being with his rogues of both sexes as with his rarer specimens of honest men and virtuous women. He seldom indulges in reflexions on life. When he does so it is by the mouth of a slave, who winds up the unfamiliar process in some such way as Pseudolus, 'sed iam satis est philosophatum[15],' or in the lyrical self-reproaches of some prodigal, whose good resolutions vanish on the reappearance of his mistress. Among the innumerable terms of reproach which one slave addresses to another, none is expressive of more withering contempt than the term 'philosophe[16].' But even if we could trace any predominant sympathies in Plautus, or any special vein of reflexion which might seem to throw light on his own experience, some doubt would always remain as to whether he was not in these passages reproducing his original. The loss of many of his prologues deprives us of the kind of knowledge of his circumstances and position which Terence affords us in his prologues. Even the 'asides' to the spectators, which often occur in Plautus, may in many cases be due to the comedians of a later time. Yet perhaps it is not impossible to enlarge our notion of his personal circumstances and characteristics by tracing some hints of them in his extant works. We find one reference to his birthplace, in the form of a bad pun altogether devoid of any trace of sentiment or affection[17]. He mentions other districts or towns in Italy in the tone of half-humorous, half-contemptuous indifference, which a Londoner of last, or a Parisian of the present century, might adopt to the provinces[18]. More than one allusion indicates that the citizens of Praeneste were especially regarded as butts by the wits of Rome[19]. The contempt of the town for the country also appears unmistakeably in the dialogue between Grumio and Tranio in the 'Mostellaria[20],' and in the boorish manners of the country lover in the 'Truculentus.' In the eyes of a town-bred wit the chief use of the country is to supply elm-rods for the punishment of pert or refractory slaves. A large number of his illustrations are taken from the handicrafts of the city, but very few are indicative of familiarity with rustic occupations. There is no breath of the poetry of rural nature in Plautus. If he betrays any poetical sensibility to natural influences at all, it is to be found in passages in which the aspects of the sea, in calm or storm, are recalled. Mommsen speaks of 'a most remarkable analogy in many external points between Plautus and Shakespeare[21]. 'Yet there is contrast rather than analogy in the impression left upon their respective works by the associations of their early homes. On the other hand we find, in many of his plays, traces of intimate familiarity with the adventures of a mercantile life. It is most probable that some of the passages in which these appear would have been found in his originals had they been preserved to us. Yet the emotions of thankfulness for a safe return to harbour, or of curiosity and pleasure in landing at a strange town[22], are expressed so frequently and with such liveliness as to seem like the reminiscence of personal experience. We get, somehow, the impression of one who had travelled widely, had 'seen the cities of many men and learned their minds,' had marked with humorous observation many varieties of character, had taken note, but without any special aesthetic sensibility, of the works of art which were scattered throughout the Hellenic cities, had shared in the pleasures which these cities held out freely to their visitors, and had encountered the dangers of the sea not without some sense of their sublimity and picturesqueness[23]. The God most frequently appealed to in prayer or thanksgiving is Neptune[24]. The colloquial use of Greek phrases in many of his plays seems to imply a familiar habit of employing them, in active intercourse with Greeks on his maritime adventures. The day-dream of Gripus, after finding his treasure, might almost be taken as a humorous comment on the various motives of curiosity and mercantile enterprise by which he himself was prompted to become engaged in maritime speculation:-- Navibus magnis mercaturam faciam: aput reges rex perhibebor. Post animi causa mihi navem faciam atque imitabor Stratonicum, Oppida circumvectitabor, ubi nobilitas mea erit clara, Oppidum magnum conmoenibo: ei ego urbi Gripo indam nomen[25]. He shows much greater familiarity with the life of the lower and middle classes than with that of those above them in station. He is not always happy in his embodiment of the character of a gentleman. Nothing, for instance, can be meaner than the conduct of the second Menaechmus, who is intended to interest us, in his relations to Erotion. And this failure is equally conspicuous in another of his favourite characters, Periplecomenus, the 'lepidus senex' of the Gloriosus. His indecorous geniality is scarcely compatible with the respectability, not to say the dignity, of age. We recognise in his characters and illustrations a vigorous and many-sided contact with life, but no influence derived from association with members of the governing class. In this respect he stood in marked contrast to Ennius and Terence, and probably to Caecilius. The two latter, being freedmen, were naturally brought into closer association with, and dependence on, their social superiors. Plautus writes in the spirit of an 'ingenuus,' in good-humoured sympathy with the mass of the citizens, and with no feeling of bitterness towards the aristocracy, or indeed to any human being whatsoever. He is at home with all kinds of men, except the highest in rank. He takes a good-natured ironical delight in his slaves, courtesans, parasites, and sycophants. He is not shocked by anything they can do or say. He feels the enjoyment of a man of strong animal spirits in laughing at and with them. Even the 'leno,' the least estimable character in the repertory of ancient comedy, he treats rather as a butt than as an object of detestation. He does not by a single phrase show any sign of having been soured or depressed by the misfortunes and vicissitudes of his life. We feel, in his dialogues, the presence of irrepressible animal spirits, and a sense of boundless resource and lively intelligence in his characters, especially in his slaves. From no scrape does it seem hopeless for them to find some means of extrication. Like them, he himself has the buoyancy of one, 'fortunae immersabilis undis.' From the zest with which he writes of them, we might infer that he had a keen personal enjoyment in eating and drinking, and in the coarser forms of conviviality. His favourite dishes,-- Pernam callum glandium sumen, etc.[26] find no place in the more fastidious gastronomy of our own times, but they were capable of giving great satisfaction to the larger and robuster appetites of the ancient Italians,--of a people who had been, till the sudden influx of luxury in his own time, described as 'barbarous porridge-eaters[27].' Horace has criticised the extravagant gusto with which he makes his parasites dilate on their peculiar pleasures[28]; and the important part which the preparation for the 'prandium' or the 'cena' plays in several of his dramas is perhaps significant of the attention which he himself bestowed on them in the days of his prosperity. The early revels of Philolaches and Callidamates in the Mostellaria, the manner in which Pseudolus celebrates his triumph over Ballio[29], and Sagarinus and Stichus the return of their masters from abroad[30], the tastes which the poet attributes to the old women in his pieces, as to Staphyla in the Aulularia,--show that the Romans had not learned, in his time, the more cultivated enjoyment of wine, which they brought to perfection in the days of Horace. The experience to which Plautus bears witness, like that attributed to his contemporaries in the lines Ennius ipse pater numquam nisi potus ad arma Prosiluit dicenda, and Narratur et prisci Catonis Saepe mero caluisse virtus, is indicative rather of the convivial 'abandon' of men of vigorous constitutions, than of the more deliberate and fastidious epicureanism of the poets of a later age. Another criticism of Horace upon Plautus-- Gestit enim nummum in loculos demittere-- may very probably be true, and is by no means to his discredit. The same charge has been brought against some of the most facile and productive creators in modern times, such as Scott, Dickens, and Balzac, and, to a certain extent, even Shakspeare. To the poets of Nature, or of the higher thought and emotions of men, the pure enjoyment of their art may afford sufficient happiness. In so far as they are true to their higher genius, they are, or ought to be, more independent than any other class of men of the pleasures which money can give. But artists whose power consists in vividly realising and representing the various activities, passions, and enjoyments of life, may feel, in their own experience, some of the craving and of the satisfaction which they are called on to describe. Nor is it unnatural that they should take any legitimate means of securing for themselves some share in the objects of desire, which are the moving forces of their imaginary world. In the large place which the details of good living fill in his plays, Plautus exaggerates a tendency which is discernible in the more decorous fictions of Scott and Dickens. In the important part which he assigns to money in many of his dramas, in his business-like mention of specific sums, in the frequency of his illustrations from the practice of keeping accounts, he shows a resemblance to Balzac. The experience of his life must have impressed upon him the value of money. The fact that he saved enough in his early employment in connexion with the stage to embark on mercantile speculations is a proof of early thrift and prudence and of a wish to raise himself in the world. In all this he was merely exhibiting one of the most common characteristics of the middle class among his countrymen. Horace adds the further criticism, that so long as he could make money he was indifferent to the artistic merits of his pieces,-- Securus cadat an recto stet fabula talo;-- and this criticism is to a great extent true. His object was to give the largest amount of immediate amusement[31]. He was not a careful artist like Terence, studying either finish of style, perfect consistency in the development of his characters, or the working out of his plots to a harmonious conclusion. It was owing to the irrepressible vitality and strong human nature which he could not help imparting to his careless execution, that his plays have survived many more elaborate compositions. Yet he shows a rude kind of consciousness of his art in such passages as that in which he makes Pseudolus compare himself to the poet who creates out of nothing-- Set quasi poeta, tabulas quom cepit sibi, Quaerit quod nusquamst gentium, reperit tamen[32]; and he speaks of the pleasure which he took in his play 'Epidicus[33].' Cicero also testifies to the joy which he derived from two of the works of his old age, the Pseudolus and the Truculentus[34]. But his delight was that of a vigorous creator, not of a painstaking artist. Many allusions in his plays attest his acquaintance with works of art, with the stories of Greek mythology or the subjects of Greek tragedies, and with the names, at least, of Greek philosophers. His extraordinary productiveness in adapting works from the new comedy shows that he had a complete command of the Greek language. He not only uses Greek phrases, but has endeavoured to enrich the native vocabulary with a considerable number of Greek words in a Latin form[35]. Yet the knowledge he betrays is that which a man of versatile intelligence, lively curiosity, and retentive memory, would pick up in his varied intercourse with his contemporaries, without any special study of books, except such as were needed for his immediate purpose. The more recondite learning of Ennius was probably as strange to him as that of Ben Jonson was to Shakspeare. The great movement of his age acted on the mind of Plautus in a manner different from that in which it affected Ennius. To the younger poet the triumphant close of the Second Punic War brought the sense of a mighty future awaiting the Roman Republic. He appealed to the higher national aspirations stirring the hearts of the governing class. Plautus felt the strong rebound of spirits from a long-continued state of tension, from a time of anxiety and self-sacrifice, in a less noble manner. He appealed to the craving which the mass of the citizens felt for a more unrestrained enjoyment of the pleasures of life. In the spirit which moved him we seem to recognise the same kind of impulse which prompted the repeal of the Oppian law, and which led to the great increase of public amusements of every kind. The newly-acquired peace and ease awoke in him a sense of the immense capacities of the individual for enjoyment. In a passage of one of his later plays he seems to claim this indulgence as the natural concomitant of victory:-- Postremo in magno populo, in multis hominibus, Re placida atque otiosa, victis hostibus, Amare oportet omnes, qui quod dent habent[36]. With this new sense of freedom and of fullness of life, the old restraints of religion and of the morality bound up with it were relaxed. The commons began to exercise less and less influence in the state. Their political indifference finds an echo in the slighting allusions which Plautus makes to the duties of public life[37]. The increased contact with the mind and life of the Greeks powerfully stimulated intellectual curiosity, but at the same time was a great solvent of faith, manners, and morals. The frequent use of the words _congraecari_, _pergraecari_, etc., in Plautus, shows that while the highest Roman minds were learning new lessons of wisdom and humanity from the great Greek writers of the past, the ordinary Roman was learning lessons of idleness and dissoluteness from the living Greeks of the time. The armies which returned from the Macedonian wars, and still more from that with Antiochus, brought with them new fashions and new appliances of luxury. Plautus shows a large indulgence, not unmixed with a vein of saturnine humour, for these new ways on which both young and old were eagerly entering. We see in him the unchecked exuberance of animal life, but no sign of the recklessness or the satiety of exhausted passions. Though there is more decorum, more refined sentiment, in the life of pleasure as presented by Terence, there is more often in Plautus an expression of a struggle between the new temptations and the old Roman ideas of thrift, active duty, and self-restraint. The conscience, though easily lulled to sleep, is still capable of feeling the sting of the thought contained in the Lucretian line-- Desidiose agere aetatem lustrisque perire. Turning now to the particular plays we find that they all belong to the class of _palliatae_. They are adaptations or combinations from the works of Menander, Diphilus, Philemon, and other writers of the new comedy. The action represented is generally supposed to take place in Athens, sometimes in other Greek towns, in Epidamnus, Ephesus, Cyrene, etc. The plays of Plautus, unlike those of Terence and most of those of Caecilius, have generally Latin titles, but nearly all his personages have Greek names. One or two of his parasites (Peniculus, Saturio, Curculio) are exceptions to this rule: but the absence of all _gentile_ designations among his richer personages would alone prove that he had no intention of presenting to his audience the outward conditions of Roman or Italian life. The social circumstances implied in all his plays are those of well-to-do citizens engaged in foreign commerce, or retired from business after having made their fortunes. The only differences in station among his personages are those of rich and poor, free and slave. There is no recognition of those great distinctions of birth, privilege, and political status, which were so pervading a characteristic of Roman life. Old men are indeed spoken of as 'senati columen'; and it is made a ground of reproach to a young man that he is not already a candidate for public office, or making a name for himself by defending cases in the law-courts. But such passages are probably to be classed among the frequent Roman allusions to be found in Plautus, which had no equivalent in his original. The new comedy of Menander was based on the philosophy of Epicurus, which taught the lesson of abstention from all public duties[38]. The life of the young men is almost entirely a life of pleasure, varied perhaps by some participation in their fathers' foreign business, or occasional service in the army. But the dislike of a military life among the 'easy livers' of Athens in the beginning of the third century B.C. is shown as much by the indifference of these young men to their honour as soldiers[39], as by the ridicule which is heaped upon the 'Captain Bobadils' who served as mercenaries in the military monarchies of the successors of Alexander. Even a slave regards enlisting as a soldier as the last refuge of a ruined man. The other characters are of Greek origin, though some of them became naturalised in Rome. The ordinary Roman client on the one hand--such as the Volteius Mena of Horace,--and the scurra of Roman satire on the other (Volanerius or Maenius), had a certain likeness to the Greek parasite; though the position of the first was more respectable[40], and the last was a more formidable element in society than a Gelasimus or an Artotrogus. The 'fallax servus' of comedy, though a wonderful conception of a humorous imagination, is a character hardly compatible with any social conditions; but it is undoubtedly an exaggeration of Greek mendacity and intelligence, the very antithesis of Italian rusticity. The commanding part they play in the affairs of their masters seems like a grotesque anticipation of the part played under the empire by Greek freedmen,-- Viscera magnarum domuum dominique futuri. The 'meretrix blanda' of Menander was probably more refined, but not essentially different from the 'libertina' of Rome. Among the rare glimpses into social life which Livy affords behind the stately but somewhat monotonous pageant of consuls and imperators, armies in the field, senators in council, and political assemblies of the people, none is more interesting than that given in the inquiries into the horrors of the Bacchanalia at Rome[41]. The relations between P. Aebutius and the freedwoman Hispala Fecenia bring to mind those existing between the Philematiums, the Phileniums, or Planesiums of comedy and their lovers. The 'leno insidiosus' and the 'improba lena' are probably much the same in all times and countries; but there is a vigorous brutality and inhuman hardness about Ballio and Cleaereta which seem more true to Roman than to Greek life. The kind of life which comedy represents must have had great attractions for a race of vigorous organisation like the Romans, after continued success and prosperity had broken down the old restraints on conduct and desire, and the accumulated wealth of the world had become the prize of their energy. Yet their inherited instincts for industry and frugality must have made it difficult for them to realise gracefully the hollow life of light-hearted enjoyment which came easily to a Greek in the third century B.C. The average Roman learned to exaggerate the profligacy without acquiring the refinement of his teachers. It might perhaps have been expected that a writer of such prodigal invention and so popular and national a fibre as Plautus would have chosen rather to set before his countrymen a humorous image of themselves, than to transport them in imagination to Athens and to exhibit to them those well-used conventional types of Greek life and manners. But, in the first place, the mere fact that it was more easy for him to adapt than to create would have been a sufficient motive to so careless and unconscious an artist. Again, the state-censorship exercised by the magistrates who exhibited the games would naturally deter a poet, who did not wish to encounter the fate of Naevius, from any direct dealing with the delicate subject of Roman social and family life. The later writers of the _fabulae togatae_ seem for the most part to have reproduced the life and personages of the provincial towns in Italy. The position not only of the magistrate but even of the citizen at Rome was invested with a kind of dignity and even sanctity, which it would have been dangerous to violate in a public spectacle. Further, the very novelty and unfamiliarity of the ways of Greek life would be more stimulating to the rude imagination of that age than a reproduction of the everyday life of Rome. It requires a more cultivated fancy to recognise incidents, situations and characters suited for art in actual experience, than to appreciate the conventional types of older dramatists. It is a noticeable fact that Shakspeare places the scene of only one of his comedies in England, and that he too introduces the English names and characteristics of Bottom, Snug, Peter Quince, etc., as Plautus does those of Saturio or Curculio into an imaginary representation of Athenian life. But whatever were his motives for doing so, Plautus professes to introduce his hearers to a representation of Greek manners and morals. His frequent use of the word _barbarus_ in reference to Italian or Roman ways, his use of Latinised Greek words and actual Greek phrases, the Greek names of his personages, the dress in which they appeared, the invariable reference to Greek money, perhaps the actual scene presented to the eye, the frequent mention of ships unexpectedly arriving in harbour, the names of the foreign towns visited, etc., would all tend to remind the audience that they were listening to an action and witnessing a spectacle of Greek life. But while the outward conditions of his dramas are professedly taken from Greek originals, much of the manner and spirit of his personages is certainly Roman. The language in which they express themselves in the first place is thoroughly their own. This is shown by the large number of his puns and plays on words. These by their spontaneity, sometimes by their grotesqueness, sometimes by a Latin play on a Greek word--such as Archidemides[42] or Epidamnus,--show their native origin. No writer, again, abounds so much in alliterations, assonances, asyndeta[43], which are characteristic of all early Roman poetry down even to Lucretius, and which have no parallel in the more refined and natural diction of the Greek dramatists. Further, we constantly meet with Roman formulae[44], Roman proverbs[45], expressions of courtesy[46], and the like. The very fluency, copiousness, and verve of his language are impossible to a translator, at least in the early stages of a literature. Nothing can be more spontaneous and natural than the dialogue in Plautus. There is, on the other hand, considerable appearance of effort in the reflective passages of the 'cantica'; and this is exactly what we should expect in a Roman writer of originality. Reflexion on life was altogether strange to a Roman in the age of Plautus; to a Greek it was easy and hackneyed. In the prolixity and slow beating out of the thought in some of the 'cantica' we note the beginning of a process unfamiliar to the Roman mind, for which the forms of the Latin language were not yet adapted. The facility of expressing reflexion appears much more developed in Terence. If Plautus were reproducing a Greek original in such passages as Mostell. 85-145, Trinummus 186-273, the thought and the illustration would have lost much in freshness and _naïveté_ but they would have been expressed with much more point and conciseness. But it is not only in his language and manner that Plautus shows his independence of his originals. The poems taken from Greek life are in a large measure filled up with matter taken from the life around him. The Greek personages of his play, without apparently any sense of artistic incongruity, speak as Romans would do of the places familiar to Romans--town in Italy[47], streets, markets, gates, in Rome[48]; of Roman magistrates and other officials, Quaestors, Aediles, Praetors, Tresviri, Publicani; they allude to the public business of the senate, comitia, and law-courts,--to colonies[49], praefecturae, and the provincia of a magistrate,--to public games in honour of the dead,--to the distinctive dress worn by matrons,--to the forms of bargaining and purchasing, of summoning an antagonist into court, of pleading a case at law,--to the times of vacation from business[50],--to the emancipation of slaves,--peculiar to the Romans. The special characteristics of Roman religion appear in the number of abstract deities referred to, such as Salus, Opportunitas, Libentia, etc. A new divinity is invented in the interests of lovers, under the name of Suavisuaviatio[51]. Other better-known objects of Roman worship, such as Jupiter Capitolinus, Laverna, the Lar Familiaris, are also introduced. We find also references to recent events in Roman history--such as the subjugation of the Boii[52], the treatment inflicted on the Campanians after the Second Punic War, the importation of Syrian slaves after the war with Antiochus[53], the introduction of foreign luxuries at the same time[54], the extreme frequency with which triumphs were granted in the first twenty years of the second century B.C.[55] Allusion is made to particular Roman laws, such as the lex alearia[56], probably passed about this time to resist the progress of Greek demoralisation. The state of feeling aroused, on both sides, by the repeal of the Oppian law, and the state of society which led to the original enactment of that law, are reflected in many passages of the plays of Plautus. A remark of one of the better class of matrons-- Non matronarum officium est, sed meretricium, Viris alienis, mi vir, subblandirier[57]-- may serve as a comment on the arguments with which Cato opposed the repeal of the law: 'Qui hic mos est in publicum procurrendi, et obsidendi vias, et viros alienos appellandi?... An blandiores in publico quam in privato, et alienis quam vestris estis[58]?' The imperiousness of a 'dotata uxor,' and the spirit of rebellion thereby aroused in the mind of her husband, are themes treated with grim humour in many of the dramas. The stale jokes against the happiness of married life were as applicable to Greek as to Roman life; and Greek husbands may have stood in as much dread of their wives' extravagance in dress, and in as great awe of their surveillance, as were experienced by the elderly husbands of Latin comedy. But the fact that similar criticisms appear in the satirical and oratorical fragments of the second century B.C. indicates that such jokes, whether or not originally due to the Greek writer, came equally home to a Roman audience. Again, the great fertility of Plautus and his many-sided contact with life are apparent in the number and variety of his metaphors and illustrations from, and other references to, many varieties of human occupation. These have, for the most part, both a national and a popular origin. The number of those taken from military operations, and from legal and business transactions, is a clear indication that they were of fresh Roman coinage. There is no character which a slave, who has to conduct some intrigue to a successful issue, is so fond of assuming as that of the general of an army. In one passage one of his confederates addresses him as 'Imperator.' He takes the auspices, he brings his engines to bear on the citadel of the enemy, he brings up his supports, he lays his ambush and avoids that laid for him, he leads his army round by some unknown pass, cuts off the enemy's communications, keeps open his own, invests and takes the hostile position, and divides the booty among his allies. The following passage for instance is freshly coloured with all the recent experience of the Hannibalian war:-- Viden hostis tibi adesse, tuoque tergo obsidium? Consule, Arripe opem auxiliumque ad hanc rem, propere hoc non placide decet. Anteveni aliqua aut aliquo saltu circumduce exercitum, Coge in obsidium perduellis, nostris praesidium para. Interclude conmeatum inimicis, tibi moeni viam, Qua cibatus conmeatusque ad te et legionis tuas Tuto possit pervenire. Hanc rem age: res subitariast[59]. The illustrations from the practice of keeping accounts, from banking and business operations, and the references to law forms, such as the mode of pleading a case by sponsio[60], would come home to the experience and habits which were fostered more in Rome than in any other ancient community[61]. Though the Romans never were a mercantile community, like the Carthaginians or the Greek States in their later days, yet from the earliest times they understood the uses of the accumulation and skilful application of capital. Another large class of metaphors, generally expressive of some form of roguery, and taken from the trade of various artisans--such as the smith, carpenter, butcher, weaver, etc.[62]--speaks to the popular as well as the national characteristics of his dramas. If these metaphorical phrases had been mere translations, they would, as thus applied, have had no meaning to a Roman audience. They must have been more or less of slang phrases, formed by and for the people, and suggested by an intimate familiarity with many varieties of trickery and swindling on the one hand, and with the skill and trade of various classes of artisans on the other. The exuberant use of terms of endearment and of abuse in Plautus may be also mentioned as an original and Roman characteristic of his genius. His lovers' phrases[63], though used by him with a saturnine humour, remind us of the passionate use of similar phrases in Catullus. The slave or cook of Greek comedy may probably have indulged freely in the vituperation of his fellows; but there is an idiomatic heartiness in the interchange of curses and verbal sword-thrusts among the slaves, panders, and cooks of Plautus, which seems congenial to the race who enjoyed the spectacles of the amphitheatre. The inexhaustible fund of merriment supplied by references to or practical exemplifications of the various modes of punishing and torturing slaves, tells of a people not especially cruel, but practically callous either to the infliction or the suffering of pain. The Greek nature was, when roused to passion, capable of fiercer and more cowardly cruelty than the Roman, but was too sensitively organised to enjoy the spectacle or the imagination of inflictions which form the subject of the stalest jokes in Plautus. The spirit of the new comedy as it existed in Greece, was not, on the whole, calculated to elevate, but it certainly was capable of humanising the Roman character. We are less able to speak of his originality in the selection of incidents and dramatic situations, in the general management of his plots, and his conception of characters. Though more varied than Terence in the subjects which he chooses for dramatic treatment, yet there is great sameness, both of incident, development, and character, in many of them. His favourite subject is a scheme by which a slave, in the interests of his young master, and his mistress, cheats a father, a mercenary captain, or a 'leno,' who are treated, though in different degrees, as enemies of the human race and legitimate objects of spoliation. Some of the best of his plays--the Pseudolus, Bacchides, the Mostellaria, and the Miles Gloriosus--turn entirely upon incidents of this kind--'frustrationes in comoediis' as they are called. There is nothing on which the chief agent in such plots prides himself so much as on his success 'in shearing,' 'planing away,' or 'wiping the nose' of, his antagonist in the game: there is no indignity about which the sense of honour is so sensitive as that of having had 'words palmed off upon one,' and having thus been made an object of ridicule. The invariable enlisting of sympathy in favour of the cheat and against the dupe is a trait more illustrative of the countrymen of Ulysses than of Fabricius; but the 'Tusci turba impia vici' at Rome had, no doubt, their own native aptitude for cheating and lying. The 'Pseudolus' is perhaps the best and the most typical specimen of a play the interest of which turns on this kind of intrigue. In it the plot is skilfully worked out, the characters are conceived with the greatest liveliness, and admirably sustained and contrasted, and the incidents and motives on which the personages act are never strained beyond the limits of probability. A more fastidious age might have objected to the celebration by Pseudolus of his triumph, as a grotesque excrescence: but it serves to bring out the sensual geniality underlying the audacity and roguery of his character, in contrast to the sensual brutality underlying the audacity and villainy of Ballio. When we consider the vigorous life and even the art with which the whole piece is worked out, we understand why Plautus, with good reason, took, in his old age, especial pleasure in this play. There is not much to offend a robust morality in the piece; for though the result accomplished cannot be called the triumph of virtue over vice, it is at least the triumph of a more amiable over a more detestable form of depravity. In the 'Bacchides' the slave Chrysalus plays a part similar to that of Pseudolus, with perhaps more subtlety but less vigour and liveliness. The mode in which both the 'pater attentus' and the 'senex lepidus' of the piece (Nicobulus and Philoxenus) succumb to the blandishments of the two sisters, and in the end become the rivals of their sons, is still less edifying than the winding up of the Pseudolus: but the _dénouement_ is brought about not unskilfully or extravagantly. It is difficult to say whether Plautus, like the author of Gil Blas, felt a moral indifference to the characters he brought on the stage, so long as he could make them amusing; or whether, like Balzac, but with more humour and less cynicism, he had a peculiar delight in following human corruption into its last retreats. The moral with which the piece winds up-- Hi senes nisi fuissent nihili iam inde ab adulescentia, Non hodie hoc tantum flagitium facerent canis capitibus, implies that he recognised the difference between right and wrong, or at least between good and bad taste in such matters, but that he did not, perhaps, attach much importance to it. The 'Asinaria,' which also turns on a scheme by which a slave defrauds his mistress in behalf of his young master, winds up with a scene in which a father is enjoying himself as the rival of his complaisant son, till he is summoned away by the apparition of his wife, and the wrathful and scornful reiteration of 'Surge, amator, i domum.' The moral expressed there by the 'Caterva' implies less sympathy with outraged virtue than with the disappointed delinquent-- Hic senex siquid clam uxorem suo animo fecit volup' Neque novom neque mirum fecit nec secus quam alii solent. There are two or three other plays in which a father appears as the rival of his son. None of the characters in Plautus, not even Ballio, or Labrax, or Cleaereta,--the worst of his 'lenones' and 'lenae,'--excite more unmitigated disgust than Stalino in the 'Casina.' The 'Miles Gloriosus' and the 'Mostellaria' are much less objectionable in point of morality, or at least good taste, than either the 'Bacchides' or the 'Asinaria.' They are among the most popular of the plays of Plautus. There is a great variety of humorous situations in the 'Miles': and, although the principal character transcends all natural limits in his self-glorification, his stupid insensibility, and his pusillanimity, the intrigue is carried out with the greatest vivacity by Palaestrio and his army of accomplices; and the humour with which the fidelity and veracity of the slave Sceledrus are played upon almost merges into pathos in the despairing tenacity with which he cannot bring himself to disbelieve the evidence of his eyes-- Noli minitari: scio crucem futuram mihi sepulchrum: Ibi mei sunt maiores siti, pater, avos, proavos, abavos. Non possunt tuis minaciis hisce oculi mi ecfodiri[63]. Tranio in the 'Mostellaria' is, in readiness of resource and resolute mendacity, a not unworthy member of the fraternity to which Pseudolus, Chrysalus, and Palaestrio belong. He is, besides, something of a fop and a fine gentleman, and all his relations with his young and old master, with Simo and the Banker, are conducted with perfect urbanity. Yet the 'Mostellaria' is certainly one of those plays to which the criticism of Horace-- Securus cadat an recto stet fabula talo,-- is peculiarly applicable. No less suitable 'Deus ex machina' than the crapulous Callidamates can well be imagined for the purpose of reconciling a justly incensed father and master of a household to the profligate extravagance of his son, and the audacious mystification of his slave. Several other plays turn upon similar 'frustrationes.' Two of the best of these are the 'Curculio' and the 'Epidicus.' Though there are lively and humorous scenes in nearly all his plays, and the language is generally sparkling and vigorous, yet the sameness of situation and character, and the unrelieved tone of light-hearted merriment and mendacity with which this class of play is pervaded soon pall upon the taste. A few, the 'Cistellaria' and the 'Poenulus,' for instance, turn upon the incident of a free-born child being stolen in infancy, and recognised by her parents before she has fatally committed herself to the occupation for which she has been destined. But these are not among the best executed of the Plautine plays. In the 'Stichus' we enjoy the unwonted satisfaction of making acquaintance with two wives who really care for their husbands: and the parasite Gelasimus in that play is as amusing as the characters of the same kind in the Captivi, Curculio, Menaechmi, Persa, etc. But the absence of incident, coherent plot, and adequate _dénouement_, must prevent this play from being ranked among the more important compositions of Plautus. A few however still remain to be noticed as among the most serious or the most imaginative efforts of his genius. The 'Aulularia,' 'Trinummus,' 'Menaechmi,' 'Rudens,' 'Captivi,' and 'Amphitryo,' are much more varied in their interest than most of those already mentioned, and each of them has its own characteristic excellence. The interest of the 'Aulularia' turns entirely on the character of Euclio. Whether or not this embodiment of the miser owes much to the original creation of Plautus, it is certainly realised by him with the greatest truth and vivacity. The whole conception is thoroughly human and original; and though nothing can be more complete than the hypochondriacal possession which his one idea has over his imagination, the character is not presented in an odious or despicable light. In this respect it differs from the frequent presentment of the miserly character in Roman satire, and in most modern works of fiction. Perhaps, except Silas Marner and Père Goriot, there is no other case of a miser being conceived with any human-hearted sympathy. His exaggerated sense of the value of the smallest sum of money is like a hallucination, arising out of the unexpected discovery of a great treasure after a life of poverty has made pinching and sparing a second nature to him. But this hallucination has left him shrewdness, honesty, pluck, a certain dignity, shown in his relation to Megadorus, and abundance of a grim humour; and it seems to have cleared away, in the _dénouement_ of the piece, under the influence of fatherly affection[65]. There are none of the baser or more brutal characters of the Plautine comedies introduced into this play. Eunomia is a rare specimen of a virtuous woman; Megadorus of a worthy and kindly old man, with a didactic tendency which makes him a little wearisome; the 'young lover' shows an honourable loyalty in the reparation of his fault. Though none of these subsidiary characters are conceived with anything like the force and vivacity of Euclio, yet after reading the humours of ancient life, as exhibited in the 'Asinaria,' 'Casina,' and 'Truculentus,' we feel a sense of relief in finding ourselves in such respectable company. The genius with which the chief character of the play is conceived and executed is sufficiently attested by the fact that it served as a model to the greatest of purely comic dramatists of modern times. The 'Trinummus,' if less amusing than most of the other plays of Plautus, is one of the most unexceptionable in moral tendency; and one at least of the personages in it, Philto, in his union of shrewd sense and old-fashioned severity with a sarcastic humour and real humanity of nature is quite a new type, distinguishable from the hard fathers, the disreputably genial old men, and the mere worthy citizens, who are among the stock characters of the Plautine comedy. There is no play in which the struggle between the stricter morals of an older time and the new temptations is more clearly exhibited: and though vice is finally condoned, or at least visited only with the mild penalty of an unsolicited marriage, the sympathies of the audience are entirely enlisted on the side of virtue. Lesbonicus is a prodigal of the type of Charles Surface, whose folly and extravagance are redeemed by good feeling and a latent sense of honour: and if it is not easy to acquit Lysiteles of a too conscious virtue, one must remember how difficult it always is for a comic dramatist to make the character of a thoroughly respectable young man lively and entertaining. But the whole piece, from the prologue, which indicates the way which all prodigals go, to the end,--the good sense, worth of character, and friendly confidence exhibited in the relations of Megaronides and Callicles,--the honourable love of Lysiteles for the dowerless sister of his friend,--the pious humanity and humility of such sentiments as these in the mouth of Philto-- Di divites sunt, deos decent opulentiae Et factiones: verum nos homunculi Scintillula animae, quam quom extemplo emisimus, Aequo mendicus atque ille opulentissimus Censetur censu ad Acheruntem mortuos[66],-- the denunciation by Megaronides of the 'School for Scandal,' which seems to have flourished in Athens as similar institutions do in our modern cities,--enable us to believe that the citizen life of the Greek communities, after the loss of their independence, may not have been so utterly hollow and disreputable as some of the representations of ancient comedy would lead us to suppose. There is much greater originality of plot, incident, and character, though, at the same time, a much less unexceptionable moral tendency in the 'Menaechmi,' the model after which Shakspeare's 'Comedy of Errors' was composed. The plot turns upon the likeness of twins, who have been separated from each other from childhood: and granting this original supposition,--one perfectly conformable to experience,--the many lively and humorous situations arising out of their undistinguishable resemblance to one another, are natural and lifelike. We feel, in the incidents which Plautus brings before us, none of that sense of unreality which the complication of the two Dromios adds to the 'Comedy of Errors.' The play is enlivened also by the element of personal adventure, arising out of the experiences of the second Menaechmus in his search for his brother over all the coasts of the Mediterranean. The two brothers (whether or not this was intended by the poet) are like in character, as well as in outward appearance; and they are both, in their hardness and knowledge of the world, in the unscrupulousness with which they gratify their love of pleasure, and the superiority which they maintain over their dependents, entirely distinct from the weak and vacillating 'amantes ephebi' of most of the other plays. The character of the 'parasite' is not very different from that in some of the other plays, except that in his vindictiveness for the loss of his _déjeuner_, and his love of mischief-making, he comes nearer to the type of the 'scurra' than of the faithful client of the house, who is best represented by the Ergasilus of the 'Captivi.' But in the fashionable physician who is called in by the wife and father-in-law of the first Menaechmus, to examine into and prescribe for his condition, we are introduced to a new type of character which certainly seems to be drawn from the life. After reading the scene in which this personage is introduced, one might be inclined to fancy that, notwithstanding the advance of medical science, certain characteristics of manner and procedure had become long ago stereotyped in the profession. These three plays show Plautus at his best in regard to the delineation of character, to moral tendency, to the conduct of a story by means of humorous incidents and situations. The three which still remain to be considered assert his claim to some share of poetic feeling and genius, and to at least some sympathy with the more elevated motives and sentiments which dignify human life. The 'Rudens' is inferior to several of the other plays in purely dramatic interest; but it has all the charm and freshness of a sea-idyll. The outward picture imprinted on the imagination is that of a bright morning after a storm, of which the effects are still apparent in the unroofing of the villa of Daemones, in the wild commotion of the sea[67], in the desolation of the two shipwrecked women wandering about among the lonely rocks where they have been cast ashore, in the touching complaint of the poor fishermen deprived by the storm of their chance of earning their daily bread. The action, which consists in the rescue of innocence from villainy, and in the recognition of a lost daughter by her father, entirely enlists both the moral and the humane sympathies. There is imaginative as well as humorous originality in the soliloquies of Gripus, and in his altercation with Trachalio; and a sense of sardonic satisfaction is experienced in contemplating the plight of Labrax (a weaker and meaner ruffian than Ballio) and his confederate chattering with cold and bewailing the loss of their illgotten gains. But the peculiar charm of the play, as compared with any of those which have been already noticed, is the sentiment of natural piety--not unlike that expressed in the 'rustica Phidyle,' of Horace[68]--by which the drama is pervaded. This key-note is struck in the prologue uttered by Arcturus, whose function it is to shine in the sky during the night, and during the day to wander over the earth, and report to Jove on the good and evil deeds of men:-- Quist imperator divom atque hominum Iuppiter, Is nos per gentis hic alium alia disparat, Hominum qui facta, mores, pietatem et fidem Noscamus, ut quemque adiuvet opulentia[69]. The affinity of piety to mercy is exhibited in the part played by the priestess of Venus-- Manus mihi date, exurgite a pedibus ambae, Misericordior nulla mest feminarum[70]; and the natural trust of innocence and good faith in divine protection is exemplified by the confidence with which the shipwrecked women take refuge at the altar of Venus:-- Tibi auscultamus et, Venus alma, ambae te opsecramus Aram amplexantes hanc tuam lacrumantes, genibus nixae, In custodelam nos tuam ut recipias et tutere, etc.[71] Even the moral sentiment expressed is of a finer quality than the maxims of rough good sense and probity which we find, for instance, in the Trinummus. When Gripus tells his master that he is poor owing to his scrupulous piety-- Isto tu's pauper, quom nimis sancte piu's-- the answer is in a higher strain than that familiar to ancient comedy:-- O Gripe Gripe, in aetate hominum plurimae Fiunt transennae, [illi] ubi decipiuntur dolis. Atque edepol in eas plerumque esca inponitur, Quam siquis avidus poscit escam avariter, Decipitur in transenna avaritia sua. Ille qui consulte, docte atque astute cavet, Diutine uti ei bene licet partum bene. Mi istaec videtur praeda praedatum irier, Maiore ut cum dote abeat hinc quam advenerit. Egone ut quod ad me adlatum esse alienum sciam Celem? minume istuc faciet noster Daemones. Semper cavere hoc sapientes aequissumum'st, Ne conscii sint ipsi maleficii suis. Ego nisi quom lusim nil morer ullum lucrum[72]. The 'Captivi' was pronounced by the greatest critic of last century to be the best constructed drama in existence. Though probably few will now be found to assign to it so high a place, yet, if not the best, it certainly is among the very best plays of Plautus, in respect both of plot and the dramatic irony of its situations. But it possesses a still higher claim to our admiration in the presentment of at least one character of true nobleness. And the originality of the conception is all the greater from the fact that this heroism is embodied in the person of one who has been brought up from childhood as a slave. There are not many of the plays of Plautus calculated to raise our ideas of human nature; but the loyal affection of Tyndarus for his young master, his self-sacrifice, the buoyancy, courage, and ready resource with which he first meets his dangers, and the manly fortitude with which he accepts his doom-- Dum ne ob malefacta, peream: parvi id aestimo. Si ego hic peribo, ast ille, ut dixit, non redit, At erit mi hoc factum mortuo memorabile, Me meum erum captum ex servitute atque hostibus Reducem fecisse liberum in patriam ad patrem, Meumque potius me caput periculo Hic praeoptavisse quam is periret ponere[73]-- enable us to feel that some of the glory of the older and nobler Greek tragedy still lingered in the Athens of Menander, and has been reproduced by Plautus with imaginative sympathy. Yet perhaps even to this play the criticism of Horace, Quam non adstricto percurrat pulpita socco, in part applies. The old slave-tricks of mendacity and unseasonable joking, which are a legitimate source of amusement in the 'Pseudolus' and similar plays, jar on our feelings as inconsistent with the simple dignity of the character of Tyndarus and the heroic part which he has to play. There are none of the plays of Plautus which it is so difficult to criticise from a modern point of view as the 'Amphitruo.' On the one hand the humour of the scenes between Mercury and Sosia is not surpassed in any of the other comedies. There is no passage in any other play in which such power of imagination is exhibited, as that in which Bromia tells the tale of the birth of Alcmena's twins-- Ita erae meae hodie contigit: nam ubi partuis deos sibi invocat, Strepitus, crepitus, sonitus, tonitrus: subito ut propere, ut valide tonuit. Ubi quisque institerat, concidit crepitu: ibi nescio quis maxuma Voce exclamat: 'Alcumena, adest auxilium, ne time: Et tibi et tuis propitius caeli cultor advenit. Exurgite' inquit 'qui terrore meo occidistis prae metu.' Ut iacui, exurgo: ardere censui aedis: ita tum confulgebant[74]. Nor is there, perhaps, anywhere in ancient literature a nobler realisation of the virtue of womanhood than in the indignant vindication of herself by Alcmena,-- Non ego illam mihi dotem esse duco, quae dos dicitur, Set pudicitiam et pudorem et sedatum cupidinem, Deum metum et parentum amorem et cognatum concordiam, Tibi morigera atque ut munifica sim bonis, prosim probis[75]. On the other hand, it is difficult to understand how the part played by Jupiter, and the comments of Mercury upon that part, should not have shocked the religious and moral sense even of the Athenians of the age of Epicurus and of the Romans in the age when they were first made familiar with the Sacred Chronicle of Euhemerus. Perhaps the Romans made a distinction between the Jupiter of Greek mythology and their own Jupiter Optimus Maximus, and may have thought that what was derogatory to the first did not apply to the second. Or, perhaps, some clue to the origin of the Greek play may be found in a phrase of the Rudens, Non ventus fuit, verum Alcumena Euripidi[76]. Was the Greek writer partly parodying, in accordance with the tradition of the old comedy, partly reproducing a tragedy of Euripides? and was the representation first accepted as a recognised burlesque of a familiar piece? In any case its production both at Athens and Rome must be regarded partly as a symptom, partly as a cause, of the rapid dissolution of religious beliefs among both Greeks and Romans. As in the case of other productive writers there is no absolute agreement as to which are the best of the Plautine plays. Without assigning precedence to any one over the other, a preference may be indicated for these five, as combining the most varied elements of interest with the best execution--_Aulularia_, _Captivi_, _Menaechmi_, _Pseudolus_, _Rudens_; and for these, as second to the former in interest owing to some inferiority in comic power, artistic execution, or natural _vraisemblance_, or owing to some element in them which offends the taste or moral sentiment--_Trinummus_, _Mostellaria_, _Miles Gloriosus_, _Bacchides_, _Amphitruo_. These ten plays alone, without taking the others into account, show both in their incidents, scenes, and characters, how much wider Plautus' range of observation was than that of Terence. Even within the narrow limits of the characters most familiar to ancient comedy--the 'amans ephebus,' the 'meretrix blanda,' the 'fallax servus,' the 'bragging captain,' the 'parasite,' the 'leno,' the 'old men'--good, kindly, severe, genial, sensual and disreputable,--we find great individual differences. More than Terence, Plautus maintains a dramatic and ironical superiority over his characters. This is especially shown in his treatment of his young lovers and the objects of their despairing affection. The former exhibit various shades of weakness, from the mere ineffectual struggle between the grain of conscience left them and the attractions of pleasure, to the sentimental impulse to end their woes by suicide. The latter show varying degrees of attraction, from a grace and vivacity that reminds German critics of the Mariana and the Philina in 'Wilhelm Meister,' to the hardness and astuteness of the heroines of the 'Truculentus' and the 'Miles Gloriosus.' Plautus cannot be said to care much about any of them except as objects of amusement and of the study of human nature. Nor, on the other hand, has he any hatred of his worst characters. He has the true dramatist's sympathy with the vigorous conception of Ballio--the same kind of sympathy which made that part a favourite one of the actor Roscius. His characters are interesting and amusing in themselves; they are never used as the mere mouthpieces of the writer's reflexion, wit, or sentiment. It is, of course, impossible to determine definitely how far he was an original creator, how far a merely vigorous imitator. But he is so perfectly at home with his characters, he makes them speak and act so naturally, he is so careless about those minutiae of artistic treatment of which a mere translator would be scrupulously regardful, that it seems most probable that the life with which he animates his conventional type is derived from his own exuberant vitality and his many-sided contact with humanity. In what relation do the plays of Plautus stand to the more serious interests of life? Is he to be ranked among philosophic humourists who had felt deeply the speculative perplexities of this world, whose imagination vividly realised the incongruity between the outward mask that men wear and the reality behind it, and the wide divergence of the actual aims of society from the purified ideal towards which it tends? Is there in him any vein of ironical comment or satirical rebuke? any latent sympathy with any of the objects which move the serious passions of moral and social reformers? Or is he merely a great humourist, revelling in the mirth, the absurdities, the ridiculous phases of character, which show themselves on the surface of life? It must be admitted that it is difficult to find in him any traces of the speculative questioning, of the repressed or baffled enthusiasm, of the rebellion against the common round of the world which tempers or inspires some of the greatest humourists of ancient and modern times. His indifference to the problems of speculative philosophy is expressed in such phrases as the Salva res est: philosophatur quoque iam, non mendax modo'st of Tyndarus in the Captivi[77], and in the Sed iam satis est philosophatum of Pseudolus[78]. Yet to Tyndarus he attributes a sense of religious trust befitting both his character and situation-- Est profecto deus, qui quae nos gerimus auditque et videt, etc.[79], while Pseudolus easily finds an opposite doctrine to suit his ready, self-reliant, and unscrupulous nature-- Centum doctum hominum consilia sola haec devincit dea, Fortuna, etc.[80] Probably the truth is that living in an age of active enjoyment and energy, he troubled himself very little about the 'problem of existence'; but that he had thought enough and doubted enough to enable him to animate his more elevated characters with sentiments of natural piety, and to conceive of the ordinary round of pleasure and intrigue as quite able to dispense with them. There is rather an indifference to religious influences or beliefs, than such expressions of scepticism or antagonism to existing superstitions as we find in the tragic poets. The political indifference of his plays has been already noticed. Yet the sentiments attributed to some of his best characters, such as Philto in the Trinummus, Megadorus in the Aulularia[81], imply that he recognised in the growing ascendency of wealth an element of estrangement between the different classes of the community. His frequent reference to the extravagance and imperiousness of the 'dotatae uxores' seems to imply further his conviction that the curse of money was a dissolving force, not only of the social and political but also of the family life of Rome. The first aspect of many of his plays certainly produces the impression of their demoralising tendency. But it is perhaps necessary to be on our guard against judging this tendency too severely from a merely modern point of view. These plays were addressed to the people in their holiday mood, and a certain amount of license was claimed for such a mood (as we may see by the Fescennine songs in marriage ceremonies and in triumphal processions), which perhaps was not intended to have more relation to the ordinary life of work and serious business than the lies and tricks of slaves in comedy to their ordinary relations with their masters. Public festivity in ancient times, which was originally an outlet of religious emotion, became ultimately a rebound from the severer duties and routine of daily life. There are frequent reminders in Plautus that this life of pleasure and intrigue was not altogether worthy or satisfactory. There are no false hues of sentiment thrown around it, as there are in Terence, and still more in the poets of a later age. Nor must we expect in an ancient poet any sense of moral degradation attaching to a life of pleasure. So far as that life is condemned it is on the ground of sloth, weakness, and incompatibility with more serious aims. The maxims which Palinurus addresses to Phaedromus in the Curculio would probably not have shocked an ancient moralist:-- Nemo hinc prohibet nec vetat Quin quod palamst venale, si argentumst, emas. Nemo ire quemquam puplica prohibet via, Dum ne per fundum saeptum faciat semitam: Dum ted apstineas nupta vidua virgine Iuventute et pueris liberis, ama quod lubet[82]. Something of the same kind is implied in the warning addressed by his father to the young Horace. Any breach of the sanctities of family life is invariably reprobated. On the rare occasions where such breaches occur,--as in the Aulularia--they are repaired by marriage. Any one aspiring to play the part of a Lothario--as in the Miles Gloriosus--is made an object both of punishment and ridicule. In this respect the comedy of Plautus contrasts favourably with our own comic drama of the Restoration. There are no scenes in these plays intended or calculated to stimulate the passions; and although there are coarse expressions and allusions in almost all of them, yet the coarseness of Plautus is not to be compared with that of Lucilius, Catullus, Martial, or Juvenal. It is rather in the absence of any virtuous ideal, than in positive incitements to vice, that the Plautine comedy might be called immoral. Although family honour is treated as secure from violation, there is no pure feeling about family life. Sons are afraid of their fathers, run into debt without their knowledge, deceive them in every possible way, occasionally express a wish that their death might enable them to treat their mistresses more generously. Husbands fear their wives and speak on all occasions bitterly against them. Plautus was evidently more familiar with the ways of the 'libertinae' than of Roman matrons of the better sort; and thus while we see little of the latter, what we hear of them is not to their advantage. The only obligation which young men seem to acknowledge is that of honour and friendly service to one another. So too slaves, while they hold it as their first duty to lie and swindle in behalf of their young masters, feel the duty of absolute devotion and sacrifice of themselves to their interests. Plautus shows scarcely any of the Roman feeling of dignity or seriousness, or any regard for patriotism or public duty. There is everywhere abundance of good humour and good sense, but, except in the Captivi and Rudens, we find scarcely any pathos or elevated feeling. The ideal of character which satisfies most of his personages might almost be expressed in the words of Stalagmus in the Captivi-- Fui ego bellus, lepidus,--bonus vir nunquam neque frugi bonae Neque ero unquam[83]. But the life of careless freedom and strong animal spirits which Plautus shaped with prodigal power into humorous scenes and representations for the holiday amusements of the mass of his fellow-citizens, does not admit of being tried by any moral or social standard of usefulness. It would be equally unprofitable to search for any consistent vein of irony in him, or any deep intuition into the paradoxes of life. He is to be judged and valued on the grounds put forward in the epitaph, which was in ancient times attributed to himself,-- Postquam est mortem aptus Plautus, comoedia luget, Scaena est deserta, dein risus, ludu' iocusque Et numeri innumeri simul omnes conlacrumarunt. And this leads us to the last question concerning him--What is his value as a poetic artist? The very fact that his imagination plays so habitually on the surface of life, that he has, as compared with the greatest humourists of modern times, so little poetry, elevation, or depth, prevents his being ranked in the very highest class of humorous creators. In the absence of serious meaning or feeling from his writings he reminds us of Le Sage or Smollett rather than of Cervantes or Molière. Nor does he compensate for these defects by careful artistic treatment. The criticisms of Horace on this subject are perfectly true. If the line-- Plautus ad exemplar Siculi properare Epicharmi refers to the rapidity with which he hurries on to the _dénouement_ of his plot, it must be admitted that in some cases this quality degenerates into haste and impatience[84]. But, on the other hand, the careless ease and prodigal productiveness of his genius entitle him to take certainly a high rank in the second class of humourists. If he shows little of the idealising or contemplative faculty of poetic genius, he has at least the facile power and spontaneous exuberance which distinguish the great creators of human character. The power of high and true dramatic invention which he occasionally puts forth, and the stray gleams of beauty which light up the coarser and commoner texture of his fancies, suggest the inference that it was owing more to the demands of his audiences than to the original limitation of his own powers, that he did not raise both himself and his countrymen to the enjoyment of nobler productions. A people accustomed to the buffoonery of the indigenous mimic dances required strong and broad effects. Their popular poet, in conforming to the conditions of Greek art, could not altogether forget the Dossennus native to Italy. But the largest endowment of Plautus, the truest note of his creativeness, is his power of expression by means of action, rhythm, and language. The phrase 'properare' may more probably be explained by the extreme vivacity and rapidity of gesture, dialogue, declamation, and recitative, by which his scenes were characterised, than be taken as an equivalent to 'ad eventum festinare.' Their liveliness and mobility of temperament made the Italians admirable mimics: and the favour which the plays of Plautus continued to enjoy with the companies of players, may be in part accounted for by the scope they afforded to the talent of the actor. How far he was expected to bring out the meaning of the poet may be gathered from the lively description given by Periplecomenus of the outward manifestations which accompanied the inward machinations of Palaestrio,-- Illuc sis vide Quem ad modum astitit severo fronte curans, cogitans. Pectus digitis pultat: cor credo evocaturust foras. Ecce avortit: nisam laevo in femine habet laevam manum. Dextera digitis rationem conputat: fervit femur Dexterum, ita vehementer icit: quod agat, aegre suppetit. Concrepuit digitis: laborat, crebro conmutat status. Eccere autem capite nutat; non placet quod repperit. Quidquid est, incoctum non expromet, bene coctum dabit. Ecce autem aedificat: columnam mento suffigit suo. Apage, non placet profecto mihi illaec aedificatio: Nam os columnatum poetae esse indaudivi barbaro, Quoi bini custodes semper totis horis occubant. Euge, euscheme hercle astitit et dulice et comoedice[85]. Many other scenes must have lent themselves to this representation of feeling by lively gesture, accompanied sometimes by some kind of mimic dance: of this kind, for instance, is the vigorous recitative of Ballio on his first appearance on the stage, the scene in which Ergasilus tells Hegio of the return of his son, the appearance of Pseudolus when well drunken after celebrating his triumph over Ballio,-- Quid hoc? sicine hoc fit? pedes, statin an non? An id voltis ut me hinc jacentem aliqui tollat? etc.[86] His temptation was to exaggerate in this, as in other elements of the dramatist's art; and this is what is probably meant by the word _percurrat_ in the criticism of Horace, which has been already quoted. But this tendency to exaggerate is merely the defect of his superabundant share of the vigorous Italian qualities. It is characteristic of the liveliness of Plautus' temperament, that the lyrical and recitative parts of his plays occupy a place altogether out of proportion to that occupied by the unimpassioned monologue or dialogue expressed in senarian iambics. The 'Cantica,' or purely lyrical monologues, are much more frequent and much longer in his comedies than in those of Terence. They were sung to a musical accompaniment, and were composed chiefly in bacchiac, anapaestic, or cretic metres, rapidly interchanging with trochaic lines. The bacchiac metre is employed in passages expressive of some sedate or laboured thought, as, for instance, the opening part of the 'Canticum' of Lysiteles in the Trinummus,-- Multas res simitu in meo corde vorso, Multum in cogitando dolorem indipiscor. Egomet me coquo et macero et defatigo. The anapaestic metre was less suited to Latin, and is rarely met with either in the comic poets, or in the fragments of the tragedians. On the other hand, cretic and trochaic metres, from their affinity to the old Saturnian, came most easily to the early dramatists, and are largely employed by Plautus to express lively emotion. As an instance of the first we may take the following song of a lover, addressed to the bolts which barred his mistress's door,-- Pessuli, heus pessuli, vos saluto lubens, Vos amo vos volo vos peto atque obsecro, Gerite amanti mihi morem amoenissumi: Fite caussa mea ludii barbari, Sussulite, obsecro, et mittite istanc foras, Quae mihi misero amanti exbibit sanguinem. Hoc vide ut dormiunt pessuli pessumi Nec mea gratia conmovent se ocius[87]. These early efforts of the Italian lyrical muse do not approach the smoothness and ease of the Glyconics and Phalaecians of Catullus, nor the dignity of the Alcaics and Asclepiadeans of Horace: but they do, in a rude kind of way, show facility and native power in finding a rhythmical vehicle for the emotion or sentiment of the moment. In the longer passages in which they occur, these metres are generally combined with some form of trochaic verse, which again is often exchanged for septenarian or octonarian iambics. Of the rapid transitions with which Plautus passes from one metre to another in the expression of strong excitement of feeling, we have a striking example in the long recitative of Ballio[88], in which trochaics, septenarian, octonarian, and dimeter, are continually varied by the introduction now of one, now of several, octonarian or septenarian iambics. He thus claims much greater freedom than Terence in the combination of his metres. He exercises also greater license, in substituting two short for one long syllable (in his cretics and trochaics), and in deviating from the laws of position and hiatus accepted by later poets. It is impossible for a modern reader to reproduce the rhythmical flow of passages which must have depended a good deal for their effect on the musical accompaniment, and on the pronunciation of the actor. Yet even though it requires some effort to recognise the legitimate beat of the rhythm 'digito et aure,' it is equally impossible not to recognise the vigour and vehemence of movement of such passages as these-- Haec, quom ego a foro revortar, facite ut offendam parata, Vorsa sparsa tersa strata lauta structaque omnia ut sint. Nam mi hodiest natalis dies: cum decet omnis vos concelebrare. Magnifice volo me viros summos accipere, ut rem mi esse reantur[89]. Terence has a more artistic mastery than Plautus of the ordinary metre of comic dialogue: but the latter has the more original poetic gift of adapting and varying his 'numeri innumeri' to the animated moods and lively fancies of his characters. But the gift for which Plautus is pre-eminent above all the earlier, and in which he is not surpassed by any of the later poets, is the exuberant vigour and spontaneous flow of his diction. No Roman poet shows more rapidity of conception, or greater variety of illustration: and words and phrases are never wanting to body forth and convey with immediate force and freshness the intuitive discernment of his common sense, the quick play of his wit, the riotous exaggerations of his fancy, his vivid observation of facts and of the outward peculiarities of men, his inexhaustible resources of genial vituperation and execration, or bantering endearment. The mannerisms of his style, already mentioned as indicative of the originality with which he deviates from his Greek models, are not laboured efforts, but the spontaneous products of a rich and comparatively neglected soil. His burlesque invention of proper names, even in its wildest exaggeration, as in the high-sounding title assumed by Sagaristio in the Persa-- Vaniloquidorus, Virginisvendonides, Nugipalamloquides, Argentumexterebronides, Tedigniloquides, Nummosexpalponides, Quodsemelarripides, Nunquampostreddonides-- is a Rabelaisian ebullition, stimulated by the novel contact with the Greek language, of the formative energy which he displays more legitimately in the creation of new Latin words and phrases. In the freedom with which he uses, without vulgarising, popular modes of speech, in the idiomatic verve of his Latin, employed in an age when inflexions still retained their original virtue, and had not been limited by the labours of grammarians to a fixed standard, he has no equal among Latin writers. It is one of the great charms of the Letters to Atticus, and of the shorter poems of Catullus, that they give us back the flavour of this homely native idiom. Where there is difficulty in interpreting Plautus, this arises either from the uncertainty of the reading, or from the wealth of his vocabulary. He saw clearly and realised strongly what he meant to say, and his words and phrases appeared in rapid, close, and orderly movement to his summons. He describes his personages,--Pseudolus for instance, Rufus quidam, ventriosus, crassis suris, subniger, Magno capite, acutis oculis, ore rubicundo, admodum Magnis pedibus[90]; Ballio, Cum hirquina barba; Plesidippus, in the Rudens, Adulescentem strenua facie, rubicundum, fortem; Harpax, in the same play, Recalvom ac silonem senem, statutum, ventriosum Tortis superciliis, contracta fronte, etc.-- in such a way as to show how real they were to his imagination in their outward semblance as well as in the inward springs of their actions. Or he brings before us some peculiarity in the dress or manner of his personages by some graphic touch, as that of the disguised sycophant of the Trinummus,-- Pol hic quidem fungino generest: capite se totum tegit. Illurica facies videtur hominis: eo ornatu advenit; and later-- Mira sunt Ni illic homost aut dormitator aut sector zonarius. Loca contemplat, circumspectat sese, atque aedis noscitat[91]. He tells an imaginary story or adventure, such as that which Chrysalus invents of the pursuit of his vessel by a piratical craft-- Ubi portu eximus, homines remigio sequi, Neque aves neque venti citius, etc.[92], or the account which Curculio gives of his encounter with the soldier[93], tersely, rapidly, and vividly, as if he were recalling some scene within his own recent experience. He imitates the style of tragedy--as in the imaginary speech of the Ghost in the Mostellaria--in such a manner as to show that he might have rivalled Ennius in the art of tragic rhythm and expression, if his genius had allowed him to pass beyond the province which was peculiarly his own. His plays abound in pithy sayings which have anticipated popular proverbs, or the happy hits of popular poets in modern times, such as the 'nudo detrahere vestimenta,' in the Asinaria, and the 'virtute formae id evenit te ut deceat quidquid habeas[94],' in the Mostellaria. He writes letters with the forms of courtesy, and with the ease and simplicity characteristic of the best epistles of a later age. His resources of language are never wanting for any call which he may make upon them. In a few descriptive passages he shows a command of the language of forcible poetic imagination. But he does not often betray a sense of beauty in action, character, or Nature: and thus if his style altogether wants the peculiar charm of the later Latin poets, and the tenderness and urbanity of Terence, the explanation of this defect is perhaps to be sought rather in the limited play which he allowed to his finer sensibilities, than in any inability to avail himself of the full capabilities of his native language. Whether the deficiency in the sense of beauty should deny to him the name of a great poet, is to be answered only when agreement has been attained as to the definition of a poet. He was certainly a true and prodigally creative genius. He is also thoroughly representative of his race--not of the gravity and dignity superinduced on the natural Italian temperament by the strict discipline of Roman life, and by the sense of superiority which arises among the governing men of an imperial state--but of the strong and healthy vitality which enabled the Italian to play his part in history, and of the quick observation and ready resource, the lively emotional and social temperament, the keen enjoyment of life, which are the accompaniment of that original endowment. [Footnote 1: Prologue to Casina, 18, 19.] [Footnote 2: Prologue to Amphitryo, 52.] [Footnote 3: Licinius and Atilius are placed before Terence in the Canon of Volcatius Sedigitus.] [Footnote 4: E.g. Pseudolus, 1081:-- 'Nugas theatri: verba quae in comoediis Solent lenoni dici, quae pueri sciunt.' Cf. also Captivi, 778.] [Footnote 5: The influence of Plautus may be traced in the style of Catullus, and perhaps in the sentiment of the passage in Lucretius, iv. 1121, etc.; and that of Terence also in Catullus, and in the Satires, Epistles, and some of the Odes of Horace.] [Footnote 6: Fundanius, the friend of Horace, appears to have made an attempt to produce an artistic revival of the old comedy in the Augustan age, as Pollio, Varius, Ovid and others did of the old tragic drama, but with no permanent success.] [Footnote 7: E.g. the dance of Pseudolus. Pseud. 1246, etc.] [Footnote 8: Cic. Brut. 15. 60; De Senec. 14. 50.] [Footnote 9: Cf. Cicero's testimony to the purity of the style of Naevius and Plautus with his criticism on the style of Caecilius and Pacuvius. Terence was the only foreigner who attained perfect idiomatic purity of speech, but he must have been brought to Rome when quite a child.] [Footnote 10: 'Puplicisne adfinis fuit an maritumis negotiis?'--Trinum. 331.] [Footnote 11: See the paper by Professor H. F. West, reprinted from the American Journal of Philology, referred to supra page 54.] [Footnote 12: Cf. the line at the end of the Prologue to the Cistellaria (Act. i. Sc. 3)-- 'Ut vobis victi Poeni poenas sufferant.' The 'Didascalia' to the Stichus is one of the few preserved. From it we learn that the play was acted P. Sulpicio, C. Aurelio, Cos., i.e. 200 B.C.] [Footnote 13: This is shown in some cases by reference to seats in the theatre, which were not introduced till 155 B.C. In the Prologue to the Casina it is said that only the older men present could remember the first production of that play in the life-time of the poet. The Prologues to the Aulularia, Trinummus, and Rudens, are probably genuine, and also the speech of _Auxilium_ in the Cistellaria.] [Footnote 14: Cf. Rudens, 1249:-- Spectavi ego pridem comicos ad istum modum Sapienter dicta dicere atque is plaudier, Quom illos sapientis mores monstrabant poplo. Set quom inde suam quisque ibant divorsi domum Nullus erat illo pacto ut illi iusserant.] [Footnote 15: Pseud. 687.] [Footnote 16: E.g. Rudens, 986.] [Footnote 17: Quid? Sarsinatis ecquast, si Umbram non habes.--Mostel. 757.] [Footnote 18: Post Ephesi sum natus, noenum in Apulis, noenum Aminulae.--Mil. Glor. 653. Quid tu per barbaricas urbes iuras? _Erg._ Quia enim item asperae Sunt ut tuum victum autumabas esse.--Captiv. 884-5.] [Footnote 19: Capt. 879; Trinum. 609; Truc. iii. 2. 23; Bacch. 24.] [Footnote 20: Quid tibi, malum, hic ante aedis clamitatiost? An ruri censes te esse? apscede ab aedibus.--Most. 6. 7.] [Footnote 21: Vol. ii, p. 440; Eng. Trans.] [Footnote 22: Cf. Trinum. 820, etc.; Menaechmi, 228, etc.; Stichus, 402, etc.] [Footnote 23: Ita iam quasi canes, haud secus circumstabant navem turbine venti, Imbres, fluctus, atque procellae infensae (fremere) frangere malum, Ruere antennas, scindere vela, ni pax propitia foret praesto.-- Trinum. 835-7.] [Footnote 24: E.g. Rudens, 906; Trinum. 820.] [Footnote 25: 'I shall trade in big ships: at the courts of princes I shall be styled a prince. Afterwards for my amusement I shall build a ship and imitate Stratonicus; I shall visit towns in my voyages: when I shall have become famous, I'll build a big town, and call it Gripus.'--Rudens, 931-5.] [Footnote 26: Pseud. 166.] [Footnote 27: Non enim haec pultifagus opufex opera fecit barbarus.-- Mostel. 815.] [Footnote 28: Quantus sit Dossennus edacibus in parasitis.] [Footnote 29: Pseud. 1229, etc.] [Footnote 30: Stichus, 682, etc.] [Footnote 31: Cf. Pseud. 720:-- Horum causa haec agitur spectatorum fabula, Hi sciunt qui hic adfuerunt; vobis post narravero.] [Footnote 32: Pseud. 401-2.] [Footnote 33: Bacchid. 214.] [Footnote 34: De Senec. 14.] [Footnote 35: E.g. graphicus, doulice, euscheme, morus, logos, techinae, prothyme, basilicus, etc., etc.] [Footnote 36: Truculentus, 55-57. Weise condemns the passage as spurious. But whether written by Plautus or not it is in the spirit of the Plautine comedy. In a passage of the Poenulus (Act iii. 1. 21) another reference is made to the sense of security enjoyed since their victory:-- Praesertim in re populi placida, atque interfectis hostibus, Non decet tumultuari.] [Footnote 37: Cp. the remark of the parasite in the Persa, 75, 76:-- Set sumne ego stultus, qui rem curo publicam, Ubi sint magistratus, quos curare oporteat? and that of the parasite in the Captivi, 'that only those who were unable to procure invitations to luncheon should be expected to attend public meetings and elections'; and such jokes as 'Plebiscitum non est scitius.'] [Footnote 38: The Comedy of Terence, which represents that of Menander, is completely non-political.] [Footnote 39: Cf. Epidicus, 30, etc., and Captivi, 262.] [Footnote 40: The advocati in the Poenulus, who are evidently clients, show a certain spirit of independence. Cf. Act iii. 6. 13:-- Et tu vale. Iniuriam illic insignite postulat: Nostro sibi servire nos censet cibo. Verum ita sunt omnes isti nostri divites: Si quid bene facias, levior pluma est gratia; Si quid peccatum est, plumbeas iras gerunt.] [Footnote 41: Livy, xxxix. 9, etc.] [Footnote 42: Quom mi ipsum nomen eius Archidemides Clamaret dempturum esse si quid crederem.--Bacchid. 285. Propterea huic urbi nomen Epidamno inditumst Quia nemo ferme sine damno huc devortitur.--Menaech. 264. Cf. also the play on Chrysalus and Crucisalus; and the following may serve as a specimen of his perpetual puns:-- Non enim es in senticeto, eo non sentis.--Captivi, 857.] [Footnote 43: Alliterations and assonances:--Vi veneris vinctus. Cottabi crebri crepent. Laetus, lubens, laudes ago. Collus collari caret. Atque mores hominum moros et morosos efficit, etc., etc. Asyndeta:-- Laudem, lucrum, ludum, iocum, festivitatem, ferias. Vorsa, sparsa, tersa, strata, lauta, structaque omnia ut sint, etc., etc. These are not occasional, but constantly recurring characteristics of his style. The thought and matter they express must, in a great measure, be due to his own invention.] [Footnote 44: Roman formulae:--Quae res bene vortat. Conceptis verbis. Quod bonum, felix, faustum, fortunatumque sit. Ut gesserit rempublicam ductu, imperio, auspicio suo, etc., etc.] [Footnote 45: Proverbs:--Sarta tecta. Sine sacris haereditas. Inter saxum et sacra. Vae victis. Ad incitas redactust, etc., etc.] [Footnote 46: Expressions of courtesy:--Tam gratiast. Benigne. Num quid vis? etc.] [Footnote 47: E.g. Pistoria, Placentia, Praeneste, Sutrium, Sarsina, etc.] [Footnote 48: E.g. Vicus Tuscus, Velabrum, Macellum, Porta Trigemina, Porta Metia; and compare the long passage in the Curculio (462), which directly refers to Rome.] [Footnote 49: Quid ego cesso Pseudolum Facere ut det nomen ad Molas coloniam.--Pseud. 1082.] [Footnote 50: Mancupio dare, stipulatio, antestatio, sponsio, ubi res prolatae sunt.] [Footnote 51: Bacchid. 120.] [Footnote 52: Captivi, 888.] [Footnote 53: Trinummus, 545-6.] [Footnote 54: Non omnes possunt olere unguenta exotica.--Mostell. 42.] [Footnote 55: Cf. Bacch. 1072;-- Set, spectatores, vos nunc ne miremini Quod non triumpho: pervolgatumst, nil moror. Verum tamen accipientur mulso milites.] [Footnote 56: Mil. Glor. 164, 6. Cf. Hor. Od. iii. 24. 58: Seu malis vetita legibus alea.] [Footnote 57: Casina, iii. 3. 22.] [Footnote 58: Livy, xxiv. 2.] [Footnote 59: 'Do you see that the enemy is close upon you, and that your back will soon be invested? Quick! seize some help and succour: it must be done speedily, not quietly. Get before them somehow; lead round your forces by some pass or other. Invest the enemy; bring relief to our own troops; cut off the enemy's supplies; make a road for yourself, by which provisions or supplies may reach yourself or your legions safely: give your whole heart to the business--it is a sudden emergency.'--Mil. Glor. 219-225. This is the 'patriotic passage' which Mr. West discusses in the paper previously referred to. He holds that 'The passage, keeping steadily within the limits so rigidly imposed by Roman Stage-censorship, is written from the stand-point of sympathy with the _plebs_ in favour of Scipio's assuming command against Hannibal, and reflects very brightly and completely those features of the Second Punic War which were prominent and recent in 205 B.C.' The end of many of the prologues also shows that they were addressed to a people constantly engaged in war.] [Footnote 60: Menaech. 590.] [Footnote 61: Cf. such expressions and lines as:--Salva sumes indidem (Mil. Glor. 234); locare argentum; fenerato. Mihi quod credideris, sumes ubi posiueris.--Trinum. 145. Nequaquam argenti ratio comparet tamen.--Ib. 418. Bene igitur ratio accepti atque expensi inter nos convenit.--Mostel. 292.] [Footnote 62: For a list of these cp. the edition of the Mostellaria by the late Professor Ramsay.] [Footnote 63: E.g. Mellitus, ocelle, mea anima, medullitus amare.] [Footnote 64: 'Don't threaten me; I know that the cross will be my tomb: there lie my ancestors, father, grandfather, great-grandfather, great-great-grandfather: but your threats can't dig these eyes out of my head.'--Mil. Glor. 372-5.] [Footnote 65: The conclusion of the Aulularia is lost, but the play seems to have ended with the old man's consigning his treasure into the hands of his son-in-law and daughter.] [Footnote 66: 'The Gods only are rich: great wealth and high connexions are for the Gods; but we, poor creatures, are but a tiny spark of life, and so soon as that is gone, the beggar and the richest man, when dead, are rated alike by the shores of Acheron.'--Trin. 490-4.] [Footnote 67: Non vidisse undas me maiores censeo.--Rudens, 167. Atque ut nunc valide fluctuat mare, nulla nobis spes est. --Ib. 303.] [Footnote 68: Cf. Atque hoc scelesti [illi] in animum inducunt suum Iovem se placare posse donis, hostiis: Et operam et sumptum perdunt; id eo fit quia Nihil ei accemptumst a periuris supplici, etc.--22-5.] [Footnote 69: 9-12.] [Footnote 70: 280, 1.] [Footnote 71: 694, etc.] [Footnote 72: 'O Gripus, Gripus! in the life of man are laid many snares, by which they are trapped; and for the most part a bait is laid on them, and whoso in his greed greedily craves for it, by reason of his greed he is caught in the trap. But whoso warily, wisely, craftily takes heed, to him it is given long to enjoy what has been well earned. That prize of yours, I fancy, will be so made prize of, as to bring a larger dower in going from us than when it came to us. To fancy that I should be capable of keeping secret possession of what I know to be another's property! Far will that be from our friend Daemones. It is the absolute duty of a wise man to be on his guard against ever being privy to any wrong done by his own people. I never would care for any gain, except when I am in the game.'--Rudens, 1235-48.] [Footnote 73: 'Provided it be not for wrong done, let me perish, I care not. If I shall perish here, while he returns not, as he promised, yet even after death this will be a memorable act, that I restored my master from captivity and his enemies to his father and his home, and chose rather to emperil my own life here than that he should perish.'--Captivi, 682-8.] [Footnote 74: 'So it befell my mistress this day: for when she calls the powers of travail to her aid, lo! there ensues a rumbling, rattling noise, loud uproar and a peal of thunder--all of a sudden how fast, how mightily it thundered! At the crash each one fell on the spot where he stood. Then some one, I know not who, exclaims in a loud voice, "Alcmena, be not afraid; help is at hand: the dweller in the skies draweth nigh with kindly intent to thee and thine. Arise ye who from the dread inspired by me have fallen down in alarm." As I lay, I rose up: methought the house was all on fire, so brightly did it shine.'--Amphitruo, 1060-67.] [Footnote 75: 'I call not that which is named my dower, my true dower, but chastity and modesty, and passion subdued, fear of the Gods, affection to my parents, amity with my kinsmen, a will to yield to thee, to be bountiful to the good, of service to the worthy.'--Amphitruo, 839-42.] [Footnote 76: 86.] [Footnote 77: Captivi, 280.] [Footnote 78: Pseud. 666.] [Footnote 79: Captivi, 310.] [Footnote 80: Pseud. 677.] [Footnote 81: Cf. Aul. iii. 5. 4-8:-- Nam, meo quidem animo, si idem faciant ceteri, Opulentiores pauperiorum filias Ut indotatas ducant uxores domum, Et multo fiat civitas concordior, Et invidia nos minore utamur, quam utimur.] [Footnote 82: Curculio, 33-8.] [Footnote 83: 'I was a fine gentleman, a nice fellow--a good or respectable man I never was nor will be.'--Capt. 956-7.] [Footnote 84: Cp. the winding up of the Mostellaria, Casina, Cistellaria.] [Footnote 85: 'Look there, if you please, how he has taken up his post, with serious brow pondering, meditating; now he taps his breast with his fingers. I fancy he is going to summon his heart outside: look, he turns away; now his left hand is leaning on his left thigh; with his right hand he is making a calculation on his fingers; his right thigh burns, such a violent blow he has struck it; his scheme does not come easily to him:--he cracks his fingers: he is at a loss; he often changes his position: look, there he nods his head: he does not like this new idea. Whatever it is, he will not bring it out till it is ready: he'll serve it up well done. Look again, he is busy building: he props up his chin with a pillar. Away with it! I don't like that kind of building: for I have heard that a foreign poet has his face thus pillared, beside whom two sentinels are every hour on watch. Bravo! by Hercules, now he is in a fine attitude, like a slave, or a man in a play.--Mil. Glor. 201-14.] [Footnote 86: Pseud. 1246.] [Footnote 87: 'Hear me, ye bolts, ye bolts, gladly I greet you, I love you, I am fond of you; I beg you, I beseech you, most amiably now comply with the desire of me a lover. For my sake become like foreign dancers; spring up, I beseech you, and send her forth, who now is drinking up the life-blood of me her lover. Mark how these vilest bolts are still asleep, and do not stir one whit on my account.'--Curculio, 147-154.] [Footnote 88: Pseud. 132-238.] [Footnote 89: 'See that when I return from the Forum, I find everything ready, the floor swept, sprinkled, polished, the couches covered; the plate all clean and arranged: for this is my birthday: this you must all join in keeping: I want to entertain some great people sumptuously, that they may think I am well to do.'--Pseud. 159-62.] [Footnote 90: 'A red-haired fellow, pot-bellied, with thick legs, darkish, with a big head, keen eyes, a red face, and enormous feet.'] [Footnote 91: 'By Pollux he is of the mushroom sort: he hides himself with his head: he looks like an Illyrian: he is got up like one;'-- 'I should be surprised if he be not either some dreaming fellow (?al. house-breaker) or a cutpurse: he takes a good look of the ground, gazes about him, takes note of the house.'--Trinum. 850-862.] [Footnote 92: Bacchid. 289.] [Footnote 93: Curculio, 337, etc.] [Footnote 94: Cp. the proverbial 'taking the breeches off a Highlander,' and the lines in one of Burns' earliest songs-- 'And then there's something in her gait Gars ony dress look weel.'] CHAPTER VII. TERENCE AND THE COMIC POETS SUBSEQUENT TO PLAUTUS. The names of five or six comic dramatists are known, who fill the space of eighteen years between the death of Plautus and the representation of the earliest play of Terence, the 'Andria.' From one of these, Aquilius, some verses are quoted, which Varro did not hesitate to attribute to Plautus, and which Gellius characterises as 'Plautinissimi.' They are the words of a parasite, complaining of the invention of sun-dials as inconveniently retarding the dinner hour. Among these writers the most famous was Caecilius Statius, an Insubrian Gaul, first a slave, and afterwards a freedman of a member of the Caecilian house. He is said to have lived on terms of great intimacy with Ennius. His poetic career very nearly coincides with that of the epic and tragic poet, and he only survived him by one year. Some Roman critics ranked him above even Plautus as a comic poet. The line of Horace-- Vincere Caecilius gravitate, Terentius arte-- probably indicates the ground of their preference. He is said also to have been careful in the construction of his plots[1]. Cicero, who often quotes from him, speaks of him as having written a bad style[2]. He is also mentioned among those poets who 'powerfully moved the feelings.' He composed about forty plays. Most of them had Greek titles, and a considerable number of these are identical with the titles of comedies by Menander. Two of the longest of his fragments express with more bitterness and less humour the feelings which husbands in Plautus entertain towards their wives. In one of these passages he has adapted his Greek original to the coarser Roman taste with even less fastidiousness than Plautus generally shows[3]. Another passage, from the Synephebi, is more in the spirit of Terence than of Plautus. It is one in which a young lover complains that the 'good nature' (commoditas) of his father made it impossible to cheat him with an easy conscience. Occasionally we find specimens of those short maxims which probably led the Augustan critics to attribute to him the character of _gravitas_, such as the Serit arbores quae alteri saeclo prosint, quoted by Cicero in the Tusculan Questions, and this line-- Saepe est etiam sub palliolo sordido sapientia. He seems to have had nothing of the creative originality of Plautus, nor ever to have enjoyed the same general popularity. He prepared the way for Terence by a more careful conformity to his Greek models than his predecessor had shown, and, apparently, by introducing a more serious and sentimental vein into his representations of life. With Terence Roman literature enters on a new stage of its development. When he appeared, a younger generation had grown up, who not only inherited the enthusiasm for Greek art and letters of the older generation,--of men of the stamp of the elder Scipio, Aemilius Paulus, T. Quintius Flamininus,--but who had been carefully educated from their boyhood in Greek accomplishments. The leading representative of this younger generation, Scipio Aemilianus, was about the same age as Terence, and admitted him to his intimacy; thus showing in his early youth the same enlightened and tolerant spirit and the same cultivated aspiration which made him choose Panaetius and Polybius as the associates of his manhood, and induced him to live in relations of frank unreserve with Lucilius during the latter years of his life. Among the members of the Scipionic circle, Laelius and Furius Philo were also closely associated with Terence; and he is said to have enjoyed the favour of older men of distinction and culture, Sulpicius Gallus, Q. Fabius Labeo, and M. Popillius, men of consular rank and of literary and poetic accomplishment[4]. In the interval between Plautus and Terence, the great gap which was never again to be bridged over had been made between the mass of the people and a small educated class. While the former became less capable of intellectual pleasure, and were beginning to prefer the exhibitions of boxers, rope-dancers, and gladiators[5], to the comedies which had delighted their fathers, the latter became more exacting than the men of a former generation, in their demands for correctness and elegance. They had acquired through education the fastidiousness of men of culture, a quality not easily gained and retained without some sacrifice of native force and popular sympathies. Recognising the immense superiority of the Greek originals in literature to the rude Roman copies, they believed that the best way to create a national Latin literature was to deviate as little as possible, in spirit, form, and substance, from the works of Greek genius. But though cosmopolitan, or rather purely Greek, in their literary tastes, they were thoroughly patriotic in devotion to their country's interests. They cherished their native language as the great instrument of social and political life; and they recognised the influence which a cultivated literature might have in rendering that instrument finer and more flexible than natural use had made it. By concentrating attention on form and style, without aiming at originality of invention, Latin literature might become a truer medium of Greek culture, and might, at the same time, impart a finer edge and temper to the rude ore of Latin speech. The task which awaited Terence was the complete Hellenising of Roman comedy, and the creation of a style which might combine something of Attic flexibility and delicacy with the idiomatic purity of the Latin spoken in the best Roman houses. By birth a Phoenician, by intellectual education a Greek, by the associations of his daily life a foreigner living in Rome, he was more in sympathy with the cosmopolitan mode of thought and feeling which Greek culture was diffusing over the civilised world, than with the traditions of Roman austerity or the homely humours of Italian life. As a dependent and associate of men belonging to the most select society of Rome, he had neither that contact with the many sides of life, nor that familiarity with the animated modes of popular speech, which helped to fashion the style of Plautus: but by assimilating the literary grace of the Athenian comedy and the familiar manner of a high-bred, friendly, and intelligent society, he gave to Latin, what the Greek language in ancient and the French in modern times have had pre-eminently, a style which gives dignity and urbanity to conversation, and freedom and simplicity to literary expression. If the oratorical tastes and training of the Romans make the absence of these last qualities perceptible in much both of their prose and verse, we feel the charm of their presence in the Letters of Cicero, the lighter poems of Catullus, the Epistles of Horace, the Epigrams of Martial: and it was owing to the social and intellectual position of Terence that this secret of combining consummate literary grace with conversational ease and spontaneity was discovered. Our knowledge of the life of Terence is derived chiefly from a fragment of the lost work of Suetonius, _De viris illustribus_, preserved in the commentary of Donatus. Confirmation of some of the statements contained in the life is obtained from later writers and speakers, and also from the prologues to the different plays, which throw light on the literary and personal relations of the poet. These prologues were among the original sources of Suetonius: but he quotes or refers to the works of various grammarians and antiquarians--Porcius Licinus, Volcatius Sedigitus, Santra, Nepos, Fenestella, Q. Cosconius--as his authorities. The first two lived within a generation or two after the death of Terence, and the first of them shows a distinct animus against him and his patrons. But notwithstanding the abundance of authorities, there is uncertainty as to both the date of his birth and the place and manner of his death. The doubt as to the former arises from the discrepancy of the MSS. His last play, the Adelphoe, was exhibited in 160 B.C. Shortly after its production he went to Greece, being then, according to the best MSS., in his twenty-fifth ('nondum quintum atque vicesimum egressus[6] annum'), according to inferior MSS., in his thirty-fifth year. This uncertainty is increased by a discrepancy between the authorities quoted by Suetonius. Cornelius Nepos is quoted for the statement that he was about the same age as Scipio (born 185 B.C.) and Laelius, while Fenestella, an antiquarian of the later Augustan period, represented him as older. As the authority of the MSS. coincides with that of the older record, the year 185 B.C. may be taken as the most probable date of his birth. In the case of an author drawing originally from life, it might seem improbable that he should have written six comedies, so true in their apprehension and delineation of various phases of human nature, between the ages of nineteen and twenty-five. But the case of an imitative artist reproducing impressions derived from literature is different; and the circumstances of Terence's Phoenician origin and early life may well have developed in him a precocity of talent. His acknowledged intimacy with Scipio and Laelius, and the general belief that they assisted him in the composition of his plays, agree better with the statement that he was about their own age than that he was ten years older. The lines at the end of the prologue to the Heauton Timorumenos-- Exemplum statuite in me ut _adulescentuli_ Vobis placere studeant potius quam sibi, indicate that he was a very young man when they were written. Thus Terence may, more even than Catullus or Lucan, be ranked among 'the inheritors of unfulfilled renown.' He is said to have been born at Carthage, brought to Rome as a slave, and carefully educated in the house of M. Terentius Lucanus, by whom he was soon emancipated. A difficulty was felt in ancient times as to how he originally became a slave, as there was no war between Rome and Carthage between the Second and Third Punic Wars, and no commercial relations with Rome and Italy till after the destruction of Carthage. But there was no doubt as to his Phoenician origin. It has been suggested that his Carthaginian origin perhaps explains the interest which the family of the Scipios first took in him. He was of slender figure and dark complexion. He is said to have owed the favour of his great friends as much to his personal gifts and graces as to his literary distinction. In one of his prologues he declares it to be his ambition, while not offending the many, to please the 'boni.' His earliest play was the 'Andria,' exhibited in 166 B.C., when he could only have been about the age of nineteen. A pretty, but probably apocryphal, story is told of his having read the play, before its exhibition, to Caecilius--who however is said to have died in 168 B.C., the year after the death of Ennius--and of the generous admiration manifested by Caecilius. The story probably owes its origin to the same impulse which gave birth to that of the visit of Accius on his journey to Asia to the veteran Pacuvius. The next play exhibited by Terence was the 'Hecyra,' first produced in 165, but withdrawn in consequence of the bad reception which it met with, and afterwards reproduced in 160. The 'Heauton Timorumenos' appeared in 163, the 'Eunuchus' and 'Phormio' in 161, and the 'Adelphoe' in 160, at the funeral games of L. Aemilius Paulus. After bringing out these plays Terence sailed for Greece, whether, as it is said, to escape from the suspicion of publishing the works of others as his own, or, as is more probable, from the desire to obtain a more intimate knowledge of that Greek life which had hitherto been known to him only in literature, and which it was his professed aim to reproduce in his comedies. From the voyage to Greece Terence never returned. According to one account he was lost at sea, according to another he died at Stymphalus in Arcadia, and according to a third at Leucadia, from grief at the loss by shipwreck of his baggage, containing a number of new plays which he had translated from Menander. The old grammarian quoted by Suetonius states that he was ruined in fortune through his intimacy with his noble friends. Another account spoke of him as having left behind him property consisting of gardens, to the extent of twenty acres, close to the Appian Way. It is further stated that his daughter was so well provided for that she married a Roman knight. As his art is purely dramatic and also imitative, for any further knowledge of his character and circumstances we have to rely on his prologues in which he speaks in his own person. They give the impression of a man of frank and ingenuous nature, with a high idea of his art, very sensitive to criticism, and proud, though not ostentatiously so, of the favour he enjoyed with the best men of his time. The tone of all his prologues is apologetic. In this respect, as well as in his relation to his patrons, he reminds us of the tone of some of the Satires of Horace. But there is a robuster force both of defence and of offence in the son of the Venusian freedman than in the young Phoenician freedman. In nearly all his prologues he defends himself against the malevolence and detraction of an old poet, 'malevolus vetus poeta,' whose name is said to have been Luscius Lavinius, or Lanuvinus. The chief charge which his detractor brings against him is that of _contaminatio_, the combining in one play of scenes out of different Greek plays. Terence justifies his practice by that of the older poets, Naevius, Plautus, Ennius, whose careless freedom he follows in preference to the dull pedantry of his detractor[7]. He recriminates on his adversary as one who, by his literal adherence to his original, had turned good Greek plays into bad Latin ones. He justifies himself from the charge of plagiarising from Plautus and Naevius[8]. In another passage he contrasts his own quiet treatment of his subjects with the sensational extravagance of other play-wrights[9]. He meets the charge of receiving assistance in the composition of his plays by claiming, as a great honour, the favour which he enjoyed with those who deservedly were the favourites of the Roman people[10]. He was not a popular poet, in the sense in which Plautus was popular; he made no claim to original invention, or even original treatment of his materials: he was however not a mere translator but rather an adapter from the Greek; and his aim was to give a true picture of Greek life and manners in the purest Latin style. He stands in much the same relation to Menander and other writers of the new comedy[11], as that in which a fine engraver stands to a great painter. He speaks with the enthusiasm not of a creative genius, but of an imitative artist, inspired by a strong admiration of his models. And this view of his aim is confirmed by the result which he attained. He has none of the purely Roman characteristics of Plautus, in sentiment, allusion, or style[12]; none of his extravagance, and none of his creative exuberance of fancy. The law which Terence always imposes on himself is the 'ne quid nimis.' He aims at correctness and consistency, and rejects nearly every expression or allusion which might remind his hearers that they were in Rome and not in Athens. His plots are tamer and less varied in their interest than those of Plautus, but they are worked out much more carefully and artistically. He takes great pains in the opening scenes to make the situation in which the play begins clear, and he allows the action to proceed to the _dénouement_ through the medium of the natural play of character and motive. As a painter of life it is not by striking effects, but by his truth in detail, and his power of delineating the finer distinctions in varying specimens of the same type, that he gains the admiration of the reader. There are no strongly-drawn or vividly conceived personages in his plays, but they all act and speak in the most natural manner. Though he has left no trace in any of his plays of one drawing directly from the life, there is no more truthful, natural, and delicate delineator of human nature, in its ordinary and more level moods, within the whole range of classical literature. Characters, circumstances, motives, etc., are all in keeping with a cosmopolitan type of citizen or family life, courteous and humane, taking the world easily, and outwardly decorous in its pleasures, but without serious interests, or high aspirations. Terence is, accordingly, in substance and form, a 'dimidiatus Menander,'--a Roman only in his language. The aim of his art was to be as purely Athenian as it was possible for one writing in Latin to be. While his great gift to Roman literature is that he first made it artistic, that he imparted to rude Latium the sense of elegance, consistency, and moderation, his gift to the world is that, through him, it possesses a living image of Greek society in the third century B.C. presented in the purest Latin idiom. The life of Athens after the loss of her religious belief, her great political activity, and speculative and artistic energy,--or, rather, one of the phases of that life, as it was shaped by Menander for dramatic purposes--supplies the material of all his plays. It is the embodiment of the lighter side of the philosophy of Epicurus, without the elevation of the speculative and scientific curiosity which gave serious interest even to that form of the philosophic life. There is a charm of friendliness, urbanity, social enjoyment, superficial kindness of heart, in the picture presented: and it was a necessary stage in the culture of the best Romans that they should learn to appreciate this charm, and assimilate its influence in their intercourse with one another. The Greek comedy of Menander was a lesson to the Romans in manners, in tolerance, in kindly indulgence to equals and inferiors, and in the cultivation of pleasant relations with one another. The often quoted line,-- Homo sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto, might be taken as its motto. The idea of 'human nature,' in its weakness and in its sympathy with weakness, may be said to be the new element introduced into Roman life by the comedy of Terence. The qualities of 'humanitas, clementia, facilitas,'--general amiability and good nature,--are the virtues which it exemplifies. The indulgence of the old to the follies or pleasures of the young is often contrasted with the stricter view of the obligations of life, entertained by an earlier generation, and always in favour of the former. The plea of the passionate modern poet-- 'To step aside is human.'-- is often urged, but without any feeling that this divergence needs an apology. The hollowness of the social conditions on which this superficial agreeability and humanity rested is revealed by passages in these plays which prove that the habitual comfort of a moderately wealthy class was maintained by the practice of infanticide: and a virtuous wife is represented as begging the forgiveness of her husband for having given her child away instead of ordering it to be put to death[13]. In its outward amenity, as well as its inward hollowness, the social and family life depicted in the comedies of Terence was the very antithesis of the old Roman austere and formal discipline. How far this new view of life contributed to the subsequent deterioration of Roman character, it is difficult to say. The writings of Cicero and Horace show that the receptive Italian intellect was able to extract the elements of courtesy, tolerance, and social amiability out of such a delineation without any loss of native manliness and strength of affection. And thus perhaps, apart from their literary charm, the permanent gain to the world from the comedies of Terence and the philosophy which they embody, has been greater than the immediate loss to the weaker members of the Roman youth who may have been misled by the view of life presented in them. Love, generally in the form of pathetic sentiment rather than of irregular passion, is the motive of all the pieces. There is generally a double love-story; one, an attachment, which, if not virtuous in the beginning, has become so afterwards, and which ends in marriage and the discovery that the lady is the daughter of a citizen, who has been exposed or carried away in her infancy; the other, an ordinary intrigue, like those which form the subject of most of the comedies of Plautus. In his treatment of love, Terence may be said to be the precursor of Catullus, Propertius, and Tibullus. He has the serious sense of its pains and pleasures which they display, though he wants the passionate intensity of the two first of these. The greatest attraction of his love passages arises from his tenderness of feeling. In this he is like Tibullus. Although the origin of the sentiment, in most of his plays, is nothing deeper than desire, inspired by outward charms and enhanced by compassion, yet we recognise in him, or in the model which he followed, much more than in Plautus, a belief in and appreciation of constancy and fidelity. In his treatment of his 'amantes ephebi' he shows sympathy with, rather than the humorous superiority to, their weaknesses which we find in Plautus. But though there is more grossness in the older poet, yet there is occasionally more real indelicacy in Terence; as in the subject of the 'Eunuchus' and in the acceptance by Phaedria, at the end of that play, of the suggestion of Gnatho, which, in its union of mercenary with sentimental motives, is almost more repugnant to natural feeling than the conclusion of the 'Asinaria' and 'Bacchides.' The characters in Terence, although more consistent and more true to ordinary life, are more faintly drawn than those of Plautus. None of them stand out in our memory with the distinctness and individuality of Euclio, Pseudolus, Ballio, or Tyndarus. The want of definite personality which they had to the poet himself is implied in the frequent recurrence of the same names in his different pieces. They are products of analysis and reflexion, not of bold invention and creative sympathy. They are embodiments of the good sense which keeps a conventional society together, or of the tamer impulses by which the surface of that society is temporarily ruffled. The predominant tone in their intercourse with one another is one of urbanity. We find none of the rollicking vituperation and execration in which Plautus revels. Delicate irony and pointed epigram take the place of broad humour. The encounter of wits between slaves and fathers is conducted with the weapons of polished repartee and mutual deference to one another. Davus, Parmeno, Syrus, Geta, speak in the terse and epigrammatic language of gentlemen and men of the world. While the 'Andria' has more pathetic situations, and the 'Adelphoe' is on the whole more true to human nature, the 'Eunuchus' presents the greatest number of interesting personages. The Thais of that play is the most favourable delineation of the Athenian 'Hetaera' in ancient literature. She has grace and dignity, a consciousness of her charms combined with a proud humility, and not only kindliness of nature, but real goodness of heart. The natural dignity of her nature, tempered by the sense of her position, appears in her rebuke to Chaerea,-- Non te dignum, Chaerea, Fecisti: nam si ego digna hac contumelia Sum maxume, at tu indignus qui faceres tamen[14]; and her kindness is equally manifest in her ready admission of his excuse, Non adeo inhumano ingenio sum, Chaerea, Neque ita imperita, ut quid amor valeat, nesciam[15]. Gnatho is a new and more subtly conceived type of the parasite, and in Thraso the 'Miles Gloriosus' does not transcend the limits of credibility. Parmeno and Phaedria are natural embodiments of the confidential slave and the weak lover. Their relations to one another are brought out with more delicate irony and finer psychological analysis, though with less vigour than those of Pseudolus and Calidorus, or of Ludus and Pistoclerus in the Pseudolus and Bacchides of Plautus. The Davus, Geta, and Syrus of the other plays are tamer and less humorous than the slaves of Plautus; but they play their part with wit and liveliness, and the _rôle_ which they have to perform is not felt to be incompatible with the ordinary conditions of life. Aeschinus, in the Adelphoe, shows a higher spirit and more energy of character than most of the other lovers in Plautus or Terence. The contrast between the genial, indulgent, selfish man of the world, and the harder type of character produced by exclusive devotion to business, is well brought out in the Micio and Demea of the Adelphoe, and in the Chremes and Menedemus of the Heauton Timorumenos. The two brothers in the 'Phormio,' Demipho and Chremes, are also happily characterised and distinguished from one another; and Phormio is himself a type of the parasite, as distinct from Gnatho, as he is from the Gelasimus or Curculio of Plautus. The character-painting in Terence is altogether free from the tendency to exaggeration and caricature which is the besetting fault of some of the greatest humourists. Yet with all his truth of detail, his careful avoidance of the extreme forms of villainy, roguery, and inhuman hardness, it may be doubted whether the life represented by Terence is not on the whole more purely conventional than that represented by Plautus. His personages seem to move about in a kind of 'Fools' paradise' without the knowledge of good or evil. All the sentimental virtues seem to flourish spontaneously, even in the hearts of his courtesans: and though he holds up a true ideal of fidelity in love and loyalty in friendship, yet the chief practical lesson that seems to be suggested is the necessity of overcoming the restraints imposed by prudence and conscience on the indulgence of natural inclination. If we consider the form, substance, and spirit of these six plays, we find that their merit consists in the art with which the situation is unfolded and the plot developed, the consistency and moderation with which a conventional view of life and various types of character are set before us, and in the large part played in them by the tender and sympathetic emotions. But their great attraction, both to ancient and modern readers, has been their charm of style. The diction of Terence, while it wants the creativeness and exuberance of Plautus, is free from the mannerisms which accompanied these large endowments of the older poet. The superiority of his style over that of Lucilius, who wrote a generation after him, is almost immeasurable. The fine Attic flavour is more perceptible in his Latin, than in the Greek of his contemporaries. He does not attempt to emulate the 'numeri innumeri' of Plautus, but limits himself almost entirely to those metres which suit the natural flow of placid or more animated conversation, viz. the iambic (senarian or septenarian) and the trochaic septenarian. The effect of his metre is to introduce measure, propriety, grace, and point into ordinary speech without impairing its ease and spontaneousness. The natural vivacity and urbanity of his style is equally apparent in dialogue, or in rapid and picturesque narrative of incidents and pathetic situations[16]. He is full of happy often-quoted sayings, such as Hinc illae lacrimae. Amantium irae amoris integratiost. Quot homines, tot sententiae. Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto. Tacent: satis laudant. Nosse omnia haec salus est adulescentulis. Cantilenam eandem canis--laterem lavem,--etc. etc. Many of these--such as 'ne quid nimis,' 'ad restim res redit mihi,' 'auribus teneo lupum,' etc.--are obviously translations from Greek proverbial sayings; and in all his use of language we may trace the influence of a close observation and sympathetic enjoyment of Greek subtlety, reserve, delicate allusiveness, curious felicity in union with direct simplicity. These qualities of style, reproduced in the purest Latin idiom, had a great influence on the familiar style of Horace. Expressions in his Satires and Epistles, and even in his Odes, show how closely he studied the language of Terence[17]. It is from a scene in Terence that Horace takes his example of the weakness of passion[18]; and the mode in which he tells how his father trained him to correct his own faults by observing other men must have been suggested by the conversation between Demea and Syrus in the Adelphoe[19]:-- _De._ Denique Inspicere tamquam in speculum in vitas omnium Iubeo atque ex aliis sumere exemplum sibi. 'Hoc facito.' _Sy._ Recte sane. _De._ 'Hoc fugito.' _Sy._ Callide. _De._ 'Hoc laudist.' _Sy._ 'Istaec res est.' _De._ 'Hoc vitio datur.'[20] Again, the remonstrance of Micio to Demea, Si esses homo, Sineres nunc facere, dum per aetatem licet, expresses the philosophy of many of his love poems and his drinking songs. The Epicurean sentiment and reflexion borrowed from Menander were congenial to one side of Horace's nature, as the manly independence and serious spirit of Lucilius were to another: and in his own style he has incorporated the conversational urbanity of the one writer no less than the intellectual vigour of the other. But Horace was much richer and more varied in the subjects of his art, as he was larger and more penetrating in his knowledge of the world, and more manly and serious in his view of life, than the comic poet who died so early in his career. But not Horace only, but some of the best judges and greatest masters of style both in ancient and modern times have been among his chief admirers. Cicero frequently reproduces his expressions, applies passages in his plays to his own circumstances, and refers to his personages as typical representatives of character[21]. Julius Caesar characterises him as 'puri sermonis amator.' Quintilian applies to his writing the epithet 'elegantissimus,' and in that connexion refers to the belief that his plays were the work of Scipio Africanus. Cicero, on the other hand, speaks of the belief that they were the work of Laelius, 'cuius fabellae propter elegantiam sermonis putabantur a C. Laelio scribi[22].' The imputation in the poet's own time, which he does not altogether disclaim, appears to have been that both friends assisted him in his task. His works were studied and learned by heart by the great Latin writers of the Renaissance, such as Erasmus and Melanchthon: and Casaubon, in his anxiety that his son should write a pure style, inculcates on him the constant study of Terence. Montaigne applies to him the phrase of Horace,-- Liquidus puroque simillimus amni. He speaks of 'his fine expression, elegancy, and quaintness,' and adds, 'he does so possess the soul with his graces that we forget those of his fable[23].' It is among the French, the great masters of the prose of refined conversation, that his merits have been most appreciated in modern times. Sainte-Beuve, in his 'Nouveaux Lundis,' devotes to him two papers of delicate and admiring criticism. He quotes Fénelon and Addison, 'deux esprits polis et doux, de la même famille littéraire,' as expressing their admiration for the illimitable beauty and naturalness of one of his scenes. Fénelon is said to have preferred him even to Molière. Sainte-Beuve calls Terence the bond of union between Roman urbanity and the Atticism of the Greeks, and adds that it was in the seventeenth century, when French literature was most truly Attic, that he was most appreciated. M. Joubert is quoted[24] as applying to him the words 'Le miel Attique est sur ses lèvres; on croirait aisément qu'il naquit sur le mont Hymette.' After the death of Terence the only writer of _palliatae_ of any name was Sextus Turpilius, who died about the end of the second century B.C. No new element seems to have been contributed by him to the Roman Stage. After the decline of the Comoedia palliata, the Comoedia togata, which professed to represent the Roman and Italian life of the middle classes, first obtained popular favour. The principal writers of this branch of comedy were T. Quintius Atta and L. Afranius. The latter was regarded as the Roman Menander:-- Dicitur Afrani toga convenisse Menandro. The admiration which he expressed for Terence, whom he regarded as the foremost of all the Roman comic poets, is in keeping with this criticism. From the testimony of Quintilian[25] we may infer that the change of scene from Athens to Rome and the provincial towns of Italy did not improve the morality of the Roman stage. A further decline both in intellectual interest and in moral tendency appeared in the resuscitation in a literary form of the Fabulae Atellanae, the chief writers of which were L. Pomponius and Novius. A still further degradation was witnessed in the later days of the Republic and under the Empire in the rise of the 'Mimus,' as a recognised branch of dramatic literature. If the influence of the comic stage, when its chief representatives were Plautus and Terence, is to be regarded as only of a mixed character, it is difficult to associate any idea of intellectual pleasure with the gross buffooneries of the Atellan farce, when it had passed from the spontaneous hilarity of primitive times into the conditions of an artistic performance, and still less with the 'mimi,' which were intended to gratify the lowest propensities of the spectators. The rapid degeneracy of the mass of the people from the characteristic virtues of the older Republic is testified as much by the popularity of such spectacles as by the passionate delight excited by the gladiatorial combats. [Footnote 1: 'In argumento Caecilius poscit palmam,' quoted from Varro.] [Footnote 2: Ep. ad Attic. vii. 3; Brutus, 74.] [Footnote 3: Cf. Mommsen, vol. ii. p. 435, English Translation.] [Footnote 4: 'Consulari utroque ac poeta.' Life of Terence, by Suetonius.] [Footnote 5: Cf. Prologue to the Hecyra.] [Footnote 6: Ritschl reads 'ingressus,' which would make him a year younger.] [Footnote 7: Prol. Andria, l. 20.] [Footnote 8: Eunuchus, Prologue, l. 22, etc.] [Footnote 9: Prol. to Phormio, l. 5, etc.] [Footnote 10: Prol. Adelph. 15-21.] [Footnote 11: The Phormio is taken from Apollodorus.] [Footnote 12: We have one or two Latin puns. Such as the play of words in _amentium_ and _amantium_, _verba_ and _verbera_; one or two cases of alliteration and asyndeton, e.g.-- Hic est victus, vetus, veternosus senex,-- and Profundat, perdat, pereat, etc.; but such mannerisms, which abound in Plautus, are extremely rare in the younger poet.] [Footnote 13: In the Heauton Timorumenos.] [Footnote 14: 'This act was not worthy of you, Chaerea: for even if it is quite fitting that I should receive such an insult, all the same it was not fitting that it should come from you.'] [Footnote 15: 'I am not so wanting in natural feeling or so unschooled in its ways as not to know what love is capable of.'] [Footnote 16: E.g. Andria, 115-136; 282-298; Heauton Timorumenos, 273-301.] [Footnote 17: The original of such expressions as--Appone lucro; Dulce est desipere in loco; Rimosa quae deponuntur in aure; Qua parte debacchentur ignes; Cena dubia; Paucorum hominum et mentis bene sanae; Quam sapere et ringi; Quid non ebrietas designat?--and others, are to be found in Terence.] [Footnote 18: Eunuch. A. i. 1; cf. Hor. Sat. ii. 3, 260, etc.] [Footnote 19: 414, etc.] [Footnote 20: 'Then I bid him look into the lives of men as into a mirror, and to form for himself an example from others.' 'Do this.' _Sy._ 'Quite right.' _De._ 'Avoid this.' _Sy._ 'Cleverly said.' _De._ 'This is honourable.' _Sy._ 'That is it.' _De._ 'This is discreditable.'] [Footnote 21: Cf. Ep. ad Fam. i. 9. 19; Phil. ii. 15.] [Footnote 22: Ep. ad Att. vii. 3. 10.] [Footnote 23: Essays of Montaigne, Cotton's Translation, ch. lxvii.] [Footnote 24: By E. Negrette, in his Histoire de la Littérature Latine.] [Footnote 25: Quint. x. 1, 100.] CHAPTER VIII. EARLY ROMAN SATIRE--C. LUCILIUS, DIED 102 B.C. Poetical satire, as a branch of cultivated literature, arose out of the social and political circumstances, and the moral and literary conditions of Roman life in the last half of the second century B.C. The tone by which that form of poetry has been characterised, in ancient and modern times, is derived from the genius and temper of a remarkable man, belonging to that era, and from the spirit in which he regarded the world. C. Lucilius invented satire, by first imparting a definite purpose to an inartistic kind of metrical composition, in which miscellaneous topics had been treated in accordance with the occasional mood or interests of the writer. Although the satire of Lucilius was rude and unfinished, and evidently retained much of the vague general character belonging to the satura of Ennius, yet he was undoubtedly the first Roman writer who used his materials with the aim and in the manner which poetical satire has permanently assumed. The indigenous satura existing at Rome before the rise of regular literature had been merged partly in the Latin comedy of Naevius, Plautus, Caecilius, etc., partly in the metrical miscellanies of Ennius and Pacuvius, which, though not written for the stage, retained the name of the old scenic medley. The new satire differed from Latin comedy in form and style, and in the personal and national aims which it set before itself. The satire of Lucilius, and even that of Horace, retained many features in common with the desultory medley which Ennius had formed out of the older satura. But the latter was the parent of no permanent form of literary art. The miscellanies of Varro, the most famous work produced on this model, were composed partly in prose and partly in verse, and were never ranked by the Romans among their poetical works. The former, on the other hand, was the parent of the satire of Horace, of Persius, and of Juvenal, and, through that, of the poetical satire of modern times. The spirit of censorious criticism, in which Lucilius treated the politics and morals, the social manners and the literary taste of his age, has become the essential characteristic of that form of literature which derived its name from the old Italian satura. Of all the forms of Roman poetry, satire was least indebted to the works of the Greeks. Quintilian claims it altogether for his countrymen--'satira tota nostra est.' Horace characterises it as 'Graecis intacti carminis.' While the names by which they are known at once betray the Greek invention of the other great forms of poetic art, the name of satire alone indicates a Roman origin. It is true that Lucilius, like every educated man of his time, was acquainted with the Greek language and literature. It is true also that the critical spirit in Greece had found vent for itself in the works of the early iambic writers, Archilochus, Simonides of Amorgos, and Hipponax, of the great authors of the old political comedy of Athens, and apparently in later writings such as the satiric discourses of Bion of Borysthenes, mentioned in Horace's line-- Ille Bioneis sermonibus et sale nigro. But Roman satire sprang up and flourished independently of any of those kinds of composition. In national spirit and moral purpose it was unlike the personal lampoons of the Greek satirists. It was perhaps not less personal, but was more ethical; it professed at least to be animated not by private enmity but by public spirit. It embraced also a much greater variety of topics. Horace finds a closer parallel to the satire of Lucilius in the old Athenian comedy. These two kinds of literature have this in common, that they are the expression of public, not of personal feeling. But though Lucilius probably, like Horace after him, studied the old comic poets 'Eupolis, Cratinus and Aristophanes,' to catch something of their spirit and manner in his satire, Roman satire was not an imitation of Greek comedy. Where Roman literature professes to be an imitation of Greek, it is the form and the metre much more than the spirit and matter that are reproduced. Greek comedy and Roman satire were the independent results of freedom of speech and criticism in different ages and countries. Their difference in form arose out of fundamental differences in the character as well as in the genius of the two nations. Although Roman speakers and writers exercised a license of speech and of personal criticism equal to that which prevailed in the Athenian democracy, and beyond what the spirit of personal honour tolerates in modern times, yet the exposure of public men to ridicule on the stage was utterly repugnant to the instincts of an aristocratic republic in which one of the great bonds of union was respect for outward authority[1]. The tendency of the Roman mind to reduce all things to rule and to express itself in abstract comments on life, rather than to represent human nature in living forms, also favoured the assumption by Lucilius of a mode of literature addressing itself to the understanding of readers, and not to the curiosity of spectators. The spirit by which satire is animated was native to Italy. The germ out of which it was developed was the _Fescennina licentia_, or, as it is called by Dionysius, the [Greek: kertomos kai satyrikê paidia], peculiar to the Italian people. But in assuming a regular literary form, this native raillery was tempered by the serious spirit and vigorous understanding of Rome, and liberalised by the tastes and ideas derived from a Greek education. The age in which satire arose,--the age of the Gracchi,--was one of social discontent, of political excitement, of intellectual activity, of moral and religious unsettlement: and all these conditions exercised a powerful influence on its character. As addressed not to the imagination but to the practical understanding, it was in a peculiar manner the literary product of a people 'rebus natus agendis.' It combined the practical philosophy of the 'abnormis sapiens,' expressing itself in proverbial sayings, anecdotes, and homely illustrations; the keen perceptions, the criticism, and vivacity of a circle, educated, well-bred, and versed in affairs; the serious purpose of a moral censor; and the knowledge of life, which results from the mixed study of men and books. Their circumstances, temper, and pursuits, united these various elements, in different proportions, first in Lucilius, and after him in Horace. By writing what interested themselves, in accordance with their own natural bent, they satisfied the practical and social tastes of their countrymen. While the higher poetical imagination was a rare and exceptional gift among Roman authors, and was appreciated only by a limited class of readers, there was in Roman satire a true popular ring and a close adaptation to the national character, understanding, and circumstances. Martial writes in his day-- Nescis heu, nescis dominae fastidia Romae: Crede mihi nimium Martia turba sapit: Maiores nusquam rhonchi; iuvenesque senesque Et pueri nasum rhinocerotis habent[2].--i. 4. 2-6. As the most genuine product of actual Roman life, satire was, if not so luxuriant, a more vigorous plant than any other species of Roman poetry. It is seen growing up in hardy vigour under the free air of the Republic, attaining to mature perfection amid the rich intellectual life of the Augustan age, and still fresh and vital in the general intellectual languor and corruption of the Empire. The Roman character of satire is attested also by the fact that other Roman poets and authors, besides those who professed to follow in the footsteps of Lucilius, have exhibited the satiric spirit. The caustic sense of Ennius, the generous scorn of Lucretius, the license of Catullus, attest their affinity, in some elements of character, to the Roman satirists. There may be remarked also in the best modern works of poetical satire,--such as the Absalom and Achitophel, the Prologue to Pope's Satires, the Vanity of Human Wishes,--a conscious or unconscious echo of that vigorous sense and nervous speech, which accompanied the great practical energy of the Romans. Satire was not only national in its intellectual and moral characteristics, but it played a part in public life at Rome. Even under the Empire, when free speech and comment on the government were no longer possible, the Roman satirists claimed to perform an office similar in spirit to that which the Republic in its best days had devolved on its most honourable magistracy. But the satire of the Republic, besides performing this magisterial office, played an active part in the politics of the day. It combined the freedom of a tribune with the severity of a censor. It held up to public criticism the delinquencies of leading politicians, and of the mass of the people in their elective divisions,-- Primores populi arripuit populumque tributim. Nor was it confined to aggressive criticism: it was used also as an instrument of political partisanship, to paint the virtues of Scipio as well as the vices of his antagonists. It thus performed something of the same kind of public office as the political pamphlet of an earlier time, and the newspaper of the present day. It endeavoured also, by acting on individual character, to effect objects which the Roman State strove to accomplish by direct legislation. The various sumptuary laws of that age, and the enactments made to repress the study of Greek rhetoric and philosophy, emanated from the same spirit which led Lucilius to denounce the increase of luxury and the affectation of Greek manners among his contemporaries. The strong Roman appetites and the novelty of new studies prevailed alike over the artificial restraints of legislative enactments, and over the contemptuous and the earnest teaching of satire. But the influence of satire could reach further than that of censors or sumptuary laws. While it could brand notorious offenders it was able also to unmask hypocritical pretences-- Detrahere et pellem, nitidus qua quisque per ora Cederet, introrsum turpis. It could stimulate to virtue as well as denounce flagrant offences. It wielded something of the power of the preacher to produce an inward change in the characters of men. By its close contact with real experience and its close adherence to the national standard of virtue, it might educate men for the duties of citizens more effectually than the teaching of Greek rhetoric or philosophy. But while satire in its earlier manifestation, from one side, is to be regarded as the directest expression of Roman public life, it was, at the same time, the truest exponent of the character, pursuits, and interests of the individual writer. The old definition of it by a Latin grammarian, 'Carmen maledicum et ad carpenda hominum vitia compositum,' is quite inapplicable to those familiar writings of Horace, in which he gives a pleasant account of his habits and mode of life in town and country, or that in which he humorously narrates his various adventures on his journey to Brundisium. The writings of Horace and Lucilius bore a more varied and miscellaneous character than that of the satire of the Empire or of modern times. Horace expresses his opinions and feelings in the form sometimes of a dialogue, sometimes of a familiar epistle, sometimes of a discourse put into the mouth of another, sometimes of a moral disquisition. He makes abundant use of fables, anecdotes, personal portraiture, real and imaginary, autobiography, and self-analysis. The fragments of Lucilius, and the notices about him in ancient authors, prove that in these respects Horace followed in his footsteps. The testimony of the lines-- Ille velut fidis arcana sodalibus olim, etc., implies that Lucilius used his satire as a natural vehicle for expressing everything that interested him, in his own life and in the circumstances of his time. In regard to the miscellaneous nature of the topics treated by him, and the frankness of his personal revelations, his truest modern parallel is Montaigne,--the father of the prose essay, which has performed the function of the older Roman satire more completely than even the poetical satire of modern times. Among the poets of the Republic, whose works have reached us only in fragments, Lucilius is only second in importance to Ennius. Roman Satire owes as much in form, substance, and spirit to him as the Roman epic does to the older poet. While Ennius represents the highest mood of Rome, and first gave expression to that imperial idea which ultimately realised itself in history, Lucilius is the exponent of her ordinary moods, manifested in the streets and the forum, and of those internal dissensions and destructive forces by which her political life was agitated and ultimately overthrown. His personal characteristics and literary position can be inferred with nearly as much certainty as those of Ennius. The most important external evidence from which we form our idea of him is that of Horace and Cicero. But the numerous fragments of his writings bear a strong impress of his personality. From the confirmation which they give to other testimonies, we may endeavour to recover some of the lines and colours of that 'votiva tabula' which the contemporaries of Horace found in his books, and to realise the nature of the work performed by him and of the influence which he exercised over his countrymen. The time at which he appeared was one of the most critical epochs in Roman history, the end of one great era,--that of the undisputed ascendency of the Senate,--the beginning of the century of revolution which ended with the Battle of Actium. The mind of the nation began then to turn from the monotonous spectacle of military conquest and to busy itself with the conditions of internal well-being. A spirit of discontent with these, similar to that which called forth the legislation of the Gracchi, opened up a new path for Latin literature. It began then to concern itself, not with the national idea of conquest and empire, but with the actual condition of men. It sought for its material, not in the representation which had been fashioned by Greek dramatic art out of the heroic legends of early Greece or the citizen life of her later days, but out of the every day life of the Roman streets, law-courts, public assemblies, dinner-tables, and literary coteries, and out of the baser details of actual experience by which the magnificent ideal of Roman greatness was largely qualified. Though there is considerable difficulty in accepting the dates usually assigned for the birth and death of Lucilius, there is no reason to doubt that his active literary career began about the time of the tribunates of Tib. Gracchus, and continued till nearly the end of the first century B.C. This period is so important and interesting that such glimpses of light as are afforded by the fragments of the contemporary satirist are highly to be prized. The dates of his birth and death, according to Jerome, were 148 B.C. and 102 B.C. We are told, on the same authority, that he died at Naples and received the honour of a public funeral. The chief difficulty in accepting these dates arises from the statement of Velleius that Lucilius served as an 'eques' under Scipio in the Numantine War[3], and from the fact, attested by Horace and other authorities, of his great intimacy with both Scipio and Laelius[4]. Horace also mentions that he celebrated in his writings the justice and valour of Scipio,-- Attamen et iustum poteras et scribere fortem Scipiadem ut sapiens Lucilius--; and the parallel there suggested between the relation of Lucilius to the great soldier and statesman of his age, and of Horace to Augustus, would be inappropriate unless the praises there spoken of had been bestowed on Scipio in his lifetime. Fragments from one book of the Satires appear to be parts of a letter written by Lucilius to congratulate his friend on the capture of Numantia[5]. One line of Book xxvi,-- Percrepa pugnam Popilli, facta Corneli cane, contrasts the defeat of M. Popillius Laenas in 138 B.C. with the subsequent successes of Scipio. In another fragment Lucilius charges Scipio with affectation for pronouncing the word 'pertaesum' as if it were 'pertisum[6].' He is also mentioned as one of those whose criticism Lucilius dreaded[7]. These and other passages must have been written in the lifetime of Scipio--i.e. before 129 B.C. Thus, if the date assigned for the birth of Lucilius is correct, he must have served in the Numantine War at the age of fourteen or fifteen, he must have been admitted into the most intimate familiarity with the greatest man of the age, and must have composed some books of his Satires, and thus introduced a new form of literature, before the age of nineteen. L. Müller in his edition of the Fragments adduces other considerations for rejecting the dates given by Jerome, such as the allusions to the career of Lupus (whom he supposes to be the same as the Censor of 147 B.C.) and to the war with Viriathus. He holds also that the words of Horace-- Quo fit ut omnis Votiva pateat veluti descripta tabella Vita _senis_-- lose their point, unless _senis_ is to be understood in its usual sense. He supposes that the mistake of Jerome arose from a similarity in the names of the Consuls of 148 B.C. and 180 B.C., and would therefore throw the date of the poet's birth more than thirty years further back than that commonly received. Whatever strength there may be in the other objections urged against accepting the date 148 B.C. as that of the birth of Lucilius, it is difficult to believe that Lucilius should have taken part in the Numantine War, and been admitted to apparently equal intimacy with Scipio before he had attained the age of fifteen. It is still more difficult to suppose that the earliest book or books of his Satires, composed before the death of Scipio, should be the work of a boy under nineteen years of age. But with these admissions it is not necessary to throw back the date of the poet's birth so far as is done by Müller. A more probable explanation of the error in the date was suggested by Mr. Munro in the Journal of Philology. He supposes that Jerome in copying the words of Suetonius referring to the death and funeral of Lucilius substituted the 'anno aetatis xlvi. for lxiv. or lxvi., and then adapted the year of birth to the annus Abrahae which would correspond to this false reading.' Mr. Munro adds, 'Everything would now run smooth. Lucilius when he went with Scipio to Spain would be in the prime of manhood, thirty-two or thirty-four years of age. Soon after that time he would be writing and publishing his earliest Books, xxvi.-xxix., and then xxx. Some of these at all events would be published before the death of Scipio, when the poet would be thirty-seven or thirty-nine[8].' It may be added against the supposition that Lucilius was born in the year 180 B.C., that, in that case, we should have expected to have found in his numerous fragments allusions to events even earlier than the Censorship of P. Cornelius Lupus or the wars with Viriathus. Moreover the notices of his relation to Scipio and Laelius, as in the 'discincti ludere' of Horace, and in the story told by the Scholiast on that passage, of Laelius coming on them, when the poet was chasing Scipio round the table with a napkin, seem to indicate the familiar footing of a much younger to older men. His birth-place was Suessa Aurunca in Campania. Juvenal calls him 'Auruncae magnus alumnus.' He belonged to the equestrian order, a fact indicated in the passage in which Horace speaks of himself as 'infra Lucili censum.' The Scholiast on that passage mentions that he was on the mother's side grand-uncle to Pompey--a relationship confirmed by a passage in Velleius, who mentions that the mother of Pompey was named Lucilia. His satires were written in thirty Books. The remaining fragments amount to about 1100 lines. Most of these are single lines, preserved by grammarians as illustrative of the use of words. The amount and variety of these, if they had no other value, would at least be suggestive of the industry with which grammatical and philological research into their own language was carried on by Roman writers. Some fragments are found in ancient commentaries on the Satires and Epistles of Horace. The longer passages are quoted by Cicero, Gellius, Lactantius, and others. The Books from i. to xx. were written in hexameters; Book xxii., apparently, in elegiacs, a metre which had hitherto been employed only in short epigrams. Of the intervening Books between xxii. and xxvi. there remains only one line[9]. Books xxvi. and xxix., from which a large number of lines have been preserved, were written in trochaics and iambics. The last Book (xxx.) was written in hexameters. From the fact that the trochaic and iambic metres had been chiefly employed by the older writers of saturae, it seems probable that Lucilius made his first attempts in these metres, that he afterwards adopted the hexameter, and that in one or two of his latest books he attempted to write continuously in elegiacs. The allusions in Book xxvi. to the Spanish wars and to the 'exploits of Cornelius,' and the statement of his reasons for coming forward as an author, render it not improbable that this Book was the earliest in order of composition. It was in this Book that he appeared most conspicuously as the censor and critic of the older writers, a position not unlikely to have been assumed, at the very outset of his career, by one who claimed to initiate a change in Roman literature. The first impression produced by reading these fragments, as they have been arranged by Müller or Lachmann, is one of extreme desultoriness and discursiveness of treatment. The words applied by Horace to Lucilius,-- Garrulus atque piger scribendi ferre laborem, characterise not his style only but his whole mode of composition. Subjects most widely removed from one another seem to have been introduced into the same book. We have no means of determining whether the separate books consisted of one or several miscellaneous pieces. He seems to start off on some new chase on the slightest suggestion, verbal or otherwise, as in the opening of Book v.-- Quo me habeam pacto, tametsi non quaeri', docebo, Quando in eo numero mansti, quo in maxima nunc est Pars hominum, Ut periise velis quem visere nolueris, cum Debueris. Hoc nolueris et debueris te Si minu' delectat, quod [Greek: technion] Isocratium est, [Greek: Lêrôdes]que simul totum ac [Greek: symmeirakiôdes], Non operam perdo[10]. We cannot accordingly expect to trace in them anything of the unity of purpose, the formal discourse and illustration of a set topic, which characterise the Satires of Persius and Juvenal, nor yet, of the apparently artless, but carefully meditated ease with which Horace, in his Satires, reproduces the manner of cultivated conversation. Lucilius adopts many modes of bringing himself into relations with his reader. Sometimes he speaks of himself by name, and appears to be communing with himself on his own fortunes or feelings. Sometimes he carries on a controversy in the form of dialogue; at other times he addresses the reader directly; or again, he puts a discourse in the mouth of another, as that on the luxury of the table in the mouth of Laelius. He makes frequent use of the epistolary form--a form which in prose and verse became one of the happiest products of Roman literature. He employs fables, quotations, and parodies, to illustrate his subject. He gives a narrative of his travels, and describes scenes and incidents at which he was present, such as a fight between two gladiators, a rustic feast, and a storm which he encountered in his voyage to Sicily. In other places he plays the part of a moralist, and discourses to a friend on the nature of virtue. More frequently he takes on himself the special office of a censor, and assails the vices of the day by direct denunciation and living examples. In other places he appears as a literary critic and a dictator on questions of grammar and orthography. In Book i., dedicated to Aelius Stilo the grammarian, a council of the gods was introduced, debating how the Roman State was still to be preserved; and some of the most notorious men of the time were exposed by name to public reprobation. Book iii. contained an account of the author's journey from Rome to the Sicilian Strait, and has been imitated by Horace in his journey to Brundisium. From the line-- Mantica cantheri costas gravitate premebat[11]-- it appears that some part of the journey was made on horseback, but other lines[12] show that the latter part was made by water, and that a severe storm was encountered on the voyage. In Book iv., imitated by Horace (Sat. ii. 2), and by Persius in his third satire, was included the discourse of Laelius against gluttony. In this book mention was made of the sturgeon which gained notoriety for Gallonius[13]. Book v. contained a letter to a friend of the poet, who had neglected to visit him when ill. Book ix. was composed of a dissertation on questions of grammar, orthography, and criticism. Book xi. treated of the wars in Spain and Transalpine Gaul, and contained criticisms and anecdotes of various public men. Book xvi. was named 'Collyra,' in honour of the poet's mistress. In other books the castigation of particular vices formed a prominent topic, and some of the latest (probably the earliest in the order of composition), were largely filled with personal explanations and with criticisms of the older poets. But the desultory, discursive, self-communing character seems to have been common to all of them; and it would be contrary to our evidence to speak of any single book as composed on a definite plan, or as treating of a special topic. The fragments however, when read collectively, bring out the main sources of interest which the Romans found in the writings of Lucilius; first, the interest of a self-portraiture and close personal relation established with the reader[14]: second, the interest of a censorious criticism on politics, morals, and literature[15]. Among the personal indications of the author we note the great freedom and independence of his life and character. In his mode of expressing this freedom and independence he reminds us of Horace, who seems to have imitated him in his view of life as well as in his writings. Thus, Lucilius declares his indifference to public employment, and his unwillingness to change his own position for the business of the Publicani of Asia, just as Horace declares that he would not exchange his leisure for all the wealth of Arabia[16]. Like Horace, he speaks of the joy of escaping from the storms of life into a quiet haven of repose[17], or inculcates contentment with one's own lot[18] and immunity from envy[19], and the superiority of plain living to luxury[20]. Like Horace, while holding to his independence of life, he put a high value on friendship, and strove to fulfil its duties[21]. Like him, while condemning excess and weakness, he did not conform to any austerer standard of morals than that of the world around him. Like Horace, too, in his later years, he seems to have been something of a valetudinarian[22], and to have had much of the self-consciousness which accompanies that condition. On the whole the impression we get of him is that of an independent, self-reliant character,--of a man living in strong contact with reality, taking all the rubs of life cheerfully[23],--enjoying society, travelling[24], the exercise of his art[25],--a warm friend and partisan, and a bold and uncompromising enemy,--not professing any austerity of life, but knowing and following the course which gave his own nature most satisfaction[26], while, at the same time, upholding a high standard of public duty and personal honour[27]. This establishment of a personal relation with his readers was one of the most original elements in the Lucilian satire. He was the first of Roman, and one of the first among all, writers, who took the public into his confidence, and gained their ear, without exposing himself to contempt, by making a frank and unreserved display of his inmost and most personal thoughts and feelings. Had his works reached us entire, we should probably have found the same kind of attraction in them, from the sense of familiar intimacy with a man of interesting character and intelligence, which we find in the Epistles of Cicero and the Satires and Epistles of Horace. His independent social position, and the character of the times in which he lived, enabled him to perform the office of a political satirist with more freedom than any other Roman writer. He belonged to the middle party between the extreme partisans of the aristocracy and of the democracy, the party of Scipio and Laelius, and that to which Cicero, in a later age, naturally inclined. He directed his satire against the corruption, incapacity, and arrogance[28] of the nobles by whom the wars abroad and affairs at home were mismanaged. His service under Scipio, and his admiration of his generalship, made him keenly sensitive to the disgrace incurred by the Roman arms under 'the limping Hostilius and Manius[29],' and in the war against Viriathus. Among those assailed by him on political grounds, L. Hostilius Tubulus, notorious for openly receiving bribes while presiding at a trial for murder, and C. Papirius Carbo, the friend of Tib. Gracchus and the suspected murderer of Scipio, were conspicuous. The more reputable names of Q. Caecilius Metellus Macedonicus and Mucius Scaevola are also mentioned among the objects of his satire[30]. Personal motives--and especially his devotion to Scipio[31]--may have stimulated these animosities; but there were instances enough of incapacity in war, profligacy and extortion in the government of the provinces, corruption and favouritism in the administration of justice, of venality and ignorance in the electoral bodies, to justify the bold exposure by Lucilius of 'the leading men of the State and of the mass of the people in their tribes.' The personality of his attacks probably made him many enemies; and thus we hear that he was assailed by name on the stage, and was unable to obtain redress, while a writer who had taken a similar liberty with the tragic poet Accius was condemned. But the honour of a public funeral awarded to him at his death would indicate that the final verdict of his contemporaries was that in assuming the censorial function of attaching marks of infamy against the names of eminent men he was actuated, in the main, by worthy motives, and had done good service to the State. The chief social vices which Lucilius attacks are those which reappear in the pages of the later satirists. They are the two extremes to which the Roman temperament was most prone, rapacity and meanness in gaining money, vulgar ostentation and coarse sensuality in using it[32]. These were opposite results of a sudden influx of wealth among a people trained through many generations to habits of thrift and self-restraint, and, through this accumulated vital force, unaccompanied, as it was, with much capacity for refined enjoyment, animated by a strong craving for the coarser enjoyments of life. The intensity and concentrativeness of the Roman temperament also tended to produce those one-sided types of character, which are the favourite objects of satiric portraiture. The parasites and spendthrifts, the misers and money-makers of Horace's Satires and Epistles, Maenius and Avidienus for instance, are among the most strongly marked of his personal sketches. Lucilius witnessed the same tendencies in his time and exposed them with greater freedom. The names which are typical of certain characters in Horace, such as Nomentanus, Pantolabus (probably a nickname) Maenius and Gallonius, had first been taken by Lucilius from the streets and dinner-tables of Rome. This indifference to the claims of personal feeling, in which Lucilius emulates the license of the old Greek comedy, although sanctioned by the approval of Horace in a poet of an earlier age, would probably have been forbidden by the greater urbanity and decorum of the Augustan age. The excesses of his contemporaries in the way of good living, against which numerous sumptuary laws (the Lex Fannia and Lex Licinia for instance), enacted in that age, vainly contended, were largely satirised by Lucilius. Such passages as these-- O Publi, O gurges Galloni, es homo miser, inquit, Cenasti in vita numquam bene, quom omnia in ista Consumis squilla atque acipensere quum decumano. Hoc fit item in cena, dabis ostrea millibu' nummum Empta. Occidunt, Lupe, saperdae te et iura siluri. Vivite lurcones, comedones, vivite ventres. Illum sumina ducebant atque altilium lanx Hunc pontes Tiberinu' duo inter captu' catillo. Purpureo tersit tunc latas gausape mensas, etc.[33] show the proportions already assumed by a form of sensuality the beginnings of which may be traced in Plautus and in the publication of the Hedyphagetica of Ennius, but of which the final culmination is to be sought in the ideal of life realised under the Empire, by Apicius, Vitellius, Elagabalus, and many men of less note. The other extreme of unceasing activity in getting, and sordid meanness in hoarding money, and the discontent produced among all classes by the restless passion to grow rich, which fills so large a place in the Satires and Epistles of Horace, appears also frequently in the fragments of Lucilius; as, for instance, in the following:-- Milia dum centum frumenti tolli medimnum, Vini mille cadum.-- Denique uti stulto nihil est satis, omnia cum sint.-- Rugosi passique senes eadem omnia quaerunt.-- Mordicus petere aurum e flamma expediat, e caeno cibum.-- Aquam te in animo habere intercutem[34]. The following description of a miser seems to have suggested the beginning of one of Catullus' lampoons[35]:-- Cui neque iumentumst nec servos nec comes ullus, Bulgam et quidquid habet nummum secum habet ipse, Cum bulga cenat, dormit, lavit; omnis in unast Spes homini bulga. Bulga haec devincta lacertost[36]. In other passages he inculcates the lessons of good sense and moderation in the use of money, or urges, in the person of an objector, that a man is regarded in proportion to the estimate of his means. In his enumeration of the various constituents of virtue, one on which he dwells with emphasis, is the right estimation of the value of money. In all his thoughts and expressions on this subject it is easy to see how closely Horace follows on his traces. The extravagance, airs, and vices of women, are another theme of his satire. But he deals with these topics rather in the spirit of raillery adopted by Plautus, than in that of Juvenal. In one fragment he compares, in terms neither delicate nor complimentary, the pretensions to beauty of the Roman ladies of his time with those of the Homeric heroines. In another he contrasts the care which they take in adorning themselves when expecting the visits of strangers with their indifference as to their appearance when alone with their husbands,-- Cum tecum'st, quidvis satis est: visuri alieni Sint homines, spiras, pallam, redimicula promit[37]. Another fragment-- Homines ipsi hanc sibi molestiam ultro atque aerumnam offerunt, Ducunt uxores, producunt quibus haec faciant liberos,-- indicates the same repugnance to marriage, which is expressed in a fragment of contemporary oratory, quoted by A. Gellius: 'If, Quirites, we could get on at all without wives, we should all keep clear of that nuisance; but since, in the way of nature, life cannot go on comfortably with them, nor at all without them, we ought rather to provide for the continued well-being of the world than for our temporary comfort.' The dislike to incur the responsibilities of family life, which appears so conspicuously among the cultivated classes in the later times of the Republic, was probably, if we are to judge from the testimony and examples of Lucilius and Horace, as much the result of the license allowed to men, as of the extravagant habits or jealous imperiousness of women. The intellectual, as well as the moral and social peculiarities of the age were noted by Lucilius. One fragment is directed against the terrors of superstition, and shows that Lucilius, like all the older poets, was endowed with that strong secular sense which enabled the educated Romans, notwithstanding the forms and ceremonies of religion encompassing every private and public act, to escape, in all their ordinary relations, from supernatural influences. This passage affords a fair specimen of the continuous style of the author:-- Terriculas Lamias, Fauni quas Pompiliique Instituere Numae, tremit has, hic omnia ponit; Ut pueri infantes credunt signa omnia ahena Vivere, et esse homines; et sic isti omnia ficta Vera putant, credunt signis cor inesse in ahenis; Pergula pictorum, veri nihil, omnia ficta[38]. His attitude to philosophy, like his attitude to superstitious terrors, was not unlike that of Horace. We find mention in his fragments of the 'Socratici charti,' of the 'eidola atque atomus Epicuri' of the four [Greek: stoicheia] of Empedocles, of the 'mutatus Polemon,' spoken of in Horace (Sat. ii. 3, 253), of Aristippus, and of Carneades; but his own wisdom was that of the world and not of the schools. In these lines,-- Paenula, si quaeris, canteriu', servu', segestre, Utilior mihi, quam sapiens; and-- Nondum etiam, qui haec omnia habebit, Formosus, dives, liber, rex solu' feretur, we find an anticipation of the tones in which Horace satirised the professors of Stoicism in his own time. The affectation of Greek manners and tastes is ridiculed in the person of Titus Albutius, in a passage which Cicero describes as written 'with much grace and pungent wit'[39]:-- Graecum te, Albuci, quam Romanum atque Sabinum, Municipem Ponti, Tritanni, Centurionum, Praeclarorum hominum ac primorum signiferumque, Maluisti dici. Graece ergo praetor Athenis, Id quod maluisti, te, cum ad me accedi', saluto: Chaere, inquam, Tite. Lictores turma omni' cohorsque Chaere, Tite. Hinc hostis mi, Albucius, hinc inimicus[40]. We learn from Cicero's account of the orators antecedent to, and contemporary with himself, that this denationalising fastidiousness was a not uncommon result of the new studies. The practice of Lucilius of mixing Greek words and phrases with his Latin style might, at first sight, expose him to a similar criticism. But this mannerism of style, which is condemned by the good sense of Horace, is merely superficial, and does not impair the vigorous nationality of the sentiment expressed by the Roman satirist. Like the similar practice in the Letters of Cicero, it was probably in accordance with the familiar conversational style of men powerfully attracted by the interest and novelty of the new learning, but yet strong enough in their national self-esteem to adhere to Roman standards in all the greater matters of action and sentiment. Lucilius seems however to recognise a deeper mischief than that of mere literary affectation in the general insincerity of character produced by the rhetorical and sophistical arts fostered by the new studies, and finding their sphere of action in the Roman law-courts. The satire of Lucilius, besides its political, moral, and social function, assumed the part of a literary critic and censor. The testimony of Horace on this point,-- Nil comis tragici mutat Lucilius Acci? Non ridet versus Enni gravitate minores, Cum de se loquitur non ut maiore reprensis? confirmed by that of Gellius[41], is amply borne out by extant fragments. These criticisms formed a large part of the twenty-sixth book, which Müller supposes to have been the earliest of the compositions of Lucilius. Several lines preserved from that book are either quotations or parodies from the old tragedies[42]. We observe in these and other quotations the peculiarities of style, noticed in the two tragic poets, such as their tendencies to alliteration and the use of asyndeta, the strained word-formations of Pacuvius, and the occasional inflation of Accius[43]. We trace the influence of these criticisms in the sneer of Persius,-- Est nunc Briseis quem venosus liber Acci, Sunt quos Pacuviusque et verrucosa moretur Antiopa, aerummis cor luctificabile fulta. The antagonism displayed by Lucilius to the more ambitious style of the tragic and epic poets was perhaps as much due to his own deficiency in poetical imagination, as to his keen critical discernment, the 'stili nasus' or 'emunctae nares' attributed to him by Pliny and Horace. The criticism of Lucilius was not only aggressive, but also directly didactic. In the ninth book he discussed, at considerable length, disputed questions of orthography; and a passage is quoted from the same book, in which a distinction is drawn out between 'poëma' and 'poësis.' Under the first he ranks-- Epigrammation, vel Distichum, epistula item quaevis non magna; under the second, whole poems, such as the Iliad, or the Annals of Ennius. The only interest attaching to these fragments is that, like the didactic works of Accius, they testify to the crude critical effort that accompanied the creative activity of the earlier Roman poets. As specimens of his continuous style the two following passages may be given. The first exemplifies the serious moral spirit with which ancient satire was animated; the second vividly represents and rebukes one of the most prevalent pursuits of the age-- Virtus, Albine, est pretium persolvere verum, Queis in versamur, queis vivimu' rebu', potesse: Virtus est hominis, scire id quod quaeque habeat res. Virtus scire homini rectum, utile, quid sit honestum; Quae bona, quae mala item, quid inutile, turpe, inhonestum; Virtus quaerendae rei finem scire modumque: Virtus divitiis pretium persolvere posse: Virtus id dare quod re ipsa debetur honori: Hostem esse atque inimicum hominum morumque malorum, Contra defensorem hominum morumque bonorum, Hos magnifacere, his bene velle, his vivere amicum; Commoda praeterea patriae sibi prima putare, Deinde parentum, tertia jam postremaque nostra[44]. If there is no great originality of thought nor rhetorical grace of expression in this passage, it proves that Lucilius judged of questions of right and wrong from his own point of view. To him, as to Ennius, common sense and a just estimate of life were large ingredients in virtue. To be a good hater as well as a staunch friend, and to choose one's friends and enemies according to their characters, is another quality of his virtuous man. With him, as with the best Romans of every age, love of country, family, and friends, were the primary motives to right action. The next passage, written in language equally plain and forcible, gives a graphic picture of the growing taste for forensic oratory-- Nunc vero a mane ad noctem, festo atque profesto, Toto itidem pariterque die, populusque patresque Iactare indu foro se omnes, decedere nusquam, Uni se atque eidem studio omnes dedere et arti, Verba dare ut caute possint, pugnare dolose, Blanditia certare, bonum simulare virum se Insidias facere, ut si hostes sint omnibus omnes[45]. These passages are probably not unfavourable specimens of the author's continuous style. At its best that style appears to be sincere, serious, rapid, and full of vital force, but careless, redundant, and devoid of all rhetorical point and subtle suggestiveness. Even to these passages the censure of Horace applies,-- At dixi fluere hunc lutulentum. If we regard these passages as on the ordinary level of his style we cannot hesitate to recognise his immense inferiority to Terence in elegance and finish[46], and to Plautus in rich and humorous exuberance of expression. There is scarcely a trace of imaginative power, or of susceptibility to the grandeur and pathos of human life, or to the beauty and sublimity of Nature in the thousand lines of his remains. We find a few vivid touches, as in this half-line-- Terra abit in nimbos imbresque, but we fail to recognise not only the 'disjecti membra poetae,' but even the elements of the rhetorician, or of the ironical humourist-- Parcentis viribus atque Extenuantis eas consulto. Thus it is difficult to understand what Cicero means when he speaks of the 'Romani veteres atque urbani sales' as being 'salsiores' than those of the true masters of Attic wit, such as were Aristophanes, Plato, and Menander. But these passages are simple, direct, and clear, compared with many of the single lines or longer passages, already quoted in illustration of the substance of his satire. These leave an impression not only of a total want of the 'limae labor,' but of an abnormal harshness and difficulty, beyond what we find in the fragments of Pacuvius, Accius, or Ennius. The fragments of his trochaics and iambics are much simpler, 'much less depart from the natural order of the words,' than those of his hexameters: a fact which reminds us of the great advance made by Horace in adapting the heroic measure to the familiar experience of life. Lucilius is moreover a great offender against not only the graces but the decencies of language. Lines are found in his fragments as coarse as the coarsest in Catullus or Juvenal: nor could he urge the extenuating plea of having forgotten the respect due to his readers from the necessity of relieving his wounded feelings or of vindicating morality. Yet it is undoubted that, notwithstanding the most glaring faults and defects in form and style, he was one of the most popular among the Roman poets. The testimony of Cicero, Persius, Juvenal, Quintilian, Tacitus, and Gellius, confirms on this point the more ample testimony of Horace. If, as Mr. Munro thinks, Horace may have expressed, in deference to the prevailing taste of his time, a less qualified admiration for him than he really felt, this only shows how strong a hold his writings had over the reading public in the Augustan age. But Horace shows by no means the same deference to the admirers of Plautus and Ennius. To Lucilius he pays also the sincerer tribute of frequent imitation. He made him his model, in regard both to form and substance, in his satires; and even in his epistles he still acknowledges the guidance of his earliest master. In reading both the Satires and Epistles we are continually coming upon the vestiges of Lucilius, in some turn of expression, some personal or illustrative allusion. Similar vestiges are found, imbedded in the harsh and jagged diction of Persius, and though not to the same extent, in the polished rhetoric of Juvenal. Nor was his literary influence confined to Roman satirists. Lucretius, Catullus, and even Virgil, have not disdained to adopt his thoughts or imitate his manner[47]. But if we cannot altogether account for, we may yet partially understand the admiration which his countrymen felt for Lucilius. In every great literature, while there are some works which appeal to the imagination of the whole world, there are others which seem to hit some particular mood of the nation to which their author belongs, and are all the more valued from the prominence they give to this idiosyncracy. Every nation which has had a literature seems to have valued itself on some peculiar humour or vein of observation and feeling, which it regards as specially allotted to itself, over and above its common inheritance of the sense of the ludicrous, which it shares with other races. Those writers who have this last in unusual measure become the favourite humourists of the world. But their own countrymen often prefer those endowed with the narrower domestic type; and of this type Lucilius seems to have been a true representative. The 'antiqua et vernacula festivitas,' attributed to him, seems to have been more combative and aggressive than genial and sympathetic. The 'Italum acetum' was employed by the Romans as a weapon of controversy with the view of damaging an adversary and making either himself or the cause he represented appear ridiculous and contemptible. The dictum of a modern humourist, that to laugh at a man properly you must first love him, would have seemed to an ancient Roman a contradiction in terms. When Horace writes-- Ridiculum acri Fortius et melius magnas plerumque secat res, he means that men are more likely to be made better by the fear of contempt than of moral reprobation. But Lucilius had much more than this power of personal raillery, exercised with the force supplied and under the restraints imposed by an energetic social and political life. He is spoken of not only as 'comis et urbanus,' but also as 'doctus' and 'sapiens.' Even his fragments indicate that he was a man of large knowledge of 'books and men.' Horace testifies to the use which he made of the old comic poets of Athens:-- Hinc omnis pendet Lucilius, hosce secutus. His fragments show familiarity with Homer, with the works of the Greek physical and ethical philosophers, with the systems of the rhetoricians, and some acquaintance with the writings of Plato, Archilochus, Euripides, and Aesop. His habit of building up his Latin lines with the help of Greek phrases illustrates the first powerful influence of the new learning before the Roman mind was able thoroughly to assimilate it, but when it was in the highest degree stimulated and fascinated by it. The mind of Lucilius was susceptible to the novelty of the new thoughts and new impressions, but like that of his contemporaries was insensible to the grace and symmetry of Greek art. Terence is the only writer in the ante-Ciceronian period who had the sense of artistic form. But all this foreign learning was, in the mind of Lucilius, subsidiary to the freshest observation and most discerning criticism of his own age. He was a spectator of life more than an actor in it, but he yet had been present at one of the most important military events of the time, and he had lived in the closest intimacy with the greatest soldier and most prudent statesman of his age. His satire had thus none of the limitation and unreality which attaches to the work of a student and recluse, such as Persius was. To the writings of Lucilius more perhaps than to those of any other Roman would the words of Martial apply-- Hominem pagina nostra sapit. It is his strong realistic tendency both in expression and thought that seems to explain his antagonism to the older poets who treated of Greek heroes and heroines in language widely removed from that employed either in the forum or in the social meetings of educated men. The popularity of Lucilius among the Romans may thus be explained on much the same grounds as that of Archilochus among the Greeks. He first introduced the literature of the understanding as distinct from that either of the graver emotions or of humorous and sentimental representation. And, while writing with the breadth of view and wealth of illustration derived from learning, he did not, like the poets of later times, write for an exclusive circle of critical readers, but rather, as he himself said, 'for Tarentines, Consentini, and Sicilians[48].' There was nothing about him of the fastidiousness and shyness of a too refined culture. Every line almost of his fragments attests his possession of that quality which, more than any other, secures a wide, if not always a lasting, popularity, great vitality and its natural accompaniment, boldness and confidence of spirit. While he saw clearly, felt keenly, and judged wisely the political and social action of his time, he reproduced it vividly in his pages. Whatever other quality his style may want, it is always alive. And the life with which it is animated is thoroughly healthy. There is a singular sincerity in the ring of his words, the earnest of a mind, absolutely free from cant and pretence, not lashing itself into fierce indignation as a stimulant to rhetorical effect, nor forcing itself to conform to any impracticable scheme of life, but glowing with a hearty scorn for baseness, and never shrinking from its exposure in whatever rank and under whatever disguise he detected it[49], and ever courageously 'upholding the cause of virtue and of those who were on the side of virtue'-- Scilicet uni aequus virtuti atque eius amicis. It was by the rectitude and manliness of his character, as much as by his learning, his quick and true discernment, his keen raillery and vivid portraiture, that he became the favourite of his time and country, and, alone among Roman writers, succeeded in introducing a new form of literature into the world. [Footnote 1: Bernhardy quotes the following words from Cicero, de Rep. iv. ap. Augustin. C. D. ii. 9:-- Etsi eiusmodi cives (scil. Cleonem, Cleophontem, Hyperbolum) a censore melius est, quam a poeta notari ... iudiciis enim magistratuum, disceptationibus legitimis propositam vitam, non poetarum ingeniis habere debemus; nec probrum audire nisi ea lege ut respondere liceat et iudicio defendere.] [Footnote 2: 'You know not, ah you know not the airs of Imperial Rome: believe me the people of Mars is too critical: nowhere are there greater sneers; young men and old and even boys have the nose of a rhinoceros.'] [Footnote 3: Vell. Paterc. ii. 9. The service of Lucilius in Spain seems to be confirmed by a line in one of his Satires:-- Publiu' Pavu' mihi [ ] quaestor Hibera In terra fuit, lucifugus, nebulo, id genu' sane.] [Footnote 4: Hor. Sat. ii. I. 71-5.] [Footnote 5: Cf. L. Müller's edition of the Fragments.] [Footnote 6: Quo facetior videare et scire plus quam caeteri Pertisum hominem, non pertaesum dices. The comment of Festus shows that these words were addressed by Lucilius to Scipio.] [Footnote 7: Cic. de Fin. i. 3.] [Footnote 8: Journal of Philology, vol. viii. 16.] [Footnote 9: Iucundasque puer qui lamberat ore placentas. One of many lines imitated and almost reproduced by Horace.] [Footnote 10: 'I will tell you how I am, though you don't ask me, since you are of the fashion of most men now, and would rather that the man whom you did not choose to visit, when you ought, had died. If you don't like this "nolueris" and "debueris," because it is the trick of Isocrates, and altogether nonsensical and puerile, I don't waste my time on the matter.' This passage illustrates two characteristics of Lucilius--his habit of mixing Greek with Latin words, and the attention he bestowed on technical rules of style.] [Footnote 11: Imitated by Horace in the lines:-- Nunc mihi curto Ire licet mulo, vel, si libet, usque Tarentum, Mantica cui lumbos onere ulceret, atque eques armos.] [Footnote 12: Promontorium remis superamu' Minervae.-- Hinc media remis Palinurum pervenio nox.-- Tertius hic mali superat decumanis fluctibus--carchesia summa.] [Footnote 13: Hor. Sat. ii. 2. 46:-- Haud ita pridem Galloni praeconis erat acipensere mensa Infamis.] [Footnote 14: Quo fit ut omnis Votiva pateat veluti descripta tabella Vita senis.] [Footnote 15: Secuit Lucilius urbem-- Primores populi arripuit populumque tributim-- Non ridet versus Enni gravitate minores--?] [Footnote 16: Mihi quidem non persuadetur publiceis mutem meos. Publicanu' vero ut Asiae fiam scriptuarius Pro Lucilio, id ego nolo, et uno hoc non muto omnia. Cf. Hor. Ep. i. 7. 36:-- Nec Otia divitiis Arabum liberrima muto.] [Footnote 17: Quodque te in tranquillum ex saevis transfers tempestatibus.] [Footnote 18: Nam si quod satis est homini, id satis esse potisset, Hoc sat erat; nam cum hoc non est, qui credimu' porro Divitias ullas animum mi explere potisse.] [Footnote 19: Nulli me invidere: non strabonem fieri saepius Deliciis me istorum.] [Footnote 20: O lapathe, ut iactare nec es sati cognitu' qui sis-- Quod sumptum atque epulas victu praeponis honesto.] [Footnote 21: Munifici comesque amicis nostris videamur viri-- Sic amici quaerunt animum, rem parasiti ac ditias. Among the friends of Lucilius, besides Scipio and Laelius, were Aelius Stilo, Albinus, and Granius, whom Cicero quotes for his wit.] [Footnote 22: Querquera consequitur capitisque dolores Infesti mihi.-- Si tam corpu' loco validum ac regione maneret. Scriptoris quam vera manet sententia cordi.] [Footnote 23: Verum haec ludus ibi susque omnia deque fuerunt, Susque et deque fuere, inquam, omnia ludu' iocusque.] [Footnote 24: Et saepe quod ante Optasti, freta Messanae, Regina videbis Moenia.] [Footnote 25: Quantum haurire animus Musarum ec fontibu' gestit.] [Footnote 26: Cum sciam nil esse in vita proprium mortali datum Iam qua tempestate vivo chresin ad me recipio. Cf. Vitaque mancipio nulli datur, omnibus usu.] [Footnote 27: Cf. Virtus, Albine, etc. Infra, p. 240.] [Footnote 28: Peccare impune rati sunt Posse et nobilitate procul propellere iniquos.] [Footnote 29: Hostiliu' contra Pestem permitiemque catax quam et Maniu' nobis.] [Footnote 30: Cf. Cic. De Or. 1. 16: Sed ut solebat C. Lucilius saepe dicere, homo tibi (i.e. Scaevolae) subiratus, mihi propter eam causam minus quam volebat familiaris, sed tamen et doctus et perurbanus. Hor. Sat. ii. 1. 67:-- Aut laeso doluere Metello Famosisque Lupo cooperto versibus? Pers. i. 115:-- Secuit Lucilius urbem, Te Lupe, te Muci, et genuinum fregit in illis.] [Footnote 31: Fuit autem inter P. Africanum et Q. Metellum sine acerbitate dissensio.] [Footnote 32: Cf. Diversisque duobus vitiis, avaritia et luxuria civitatem laborare.--Livy, xxxiv. 4.] [Footnote 33: 'O Publius Gallonius, thou whirlpool of excess; thou art a miserable man, says he; never in thy life hast thou supped well, since thou spendest all thy substance in that lobster of thine and that monstrous sturgeon.' 'This too is the case at dinner, you will give oysters, bought at a thousand sesterces.' 'Sardines and fish-sauce are your death, O Lupus.' 'Long live, ye gluttons, gourmands, belly-gods.' 'One was attracted by sow-teats and a dish of fatted fowls; another by a gourmandising pike caught between the two bridges.' 'Then he wiped the ample table with a purple cloth.' The two last passages are reproduced by Horace in the lines:-- Unde datum sentis, lupus hic Tiberinus, an alto Captus hiet, pontesne inter iactatus, an amnis Ostia sub Tusci?--Sat. ii. 2. 31. And Gausape purpureo mensam pertersit.--Ib. ii. 8. 11.] [Footnote 34: Cf. Crescit indulgens sibi dirus hydrops, etc.] [Footnote 35: Furei cui neque servus est neque arca, etc.] [Footnote 36: 'Who has neither beast, nor slave, nor attendant; he carries about him his purse and all his money; with his purse he sleeps, dines, bathes--his whole hopes centre in his purse; this purse is fastened to his arm.'] [Footnote 37: Cp. the speech of Cato (Livy, xxxiv. 4) in support of the Oppian law: 'An blandiores in publico quam in privato, et alienis quam vestris estis?'] [Footnote 38: 'These bugbears and goblins from the days of the Fauni and Numa Pompilius fill him with terror; he believes anything of them. As children suppose that statues of brass are real and living men, so they fancy all these delusions to be real: they believe that there is understanding in brazen images: mere painter's blocks, no reality, all a delusion.' Cf. Horace, Ep. ii. 2. 208:-- Somnia, terrores magicos, miracula, sagas, Nocturnos lemures portentaque Thessala rides?] [Footnote 39: De Fin. i. 3.] [Footnote 40: 'You preferred, Albucius, to be called a Greek, rather than a Roman or Sabine, a fellow-countryman of the Centurions, Pontius, Tritannius, excellent, first-rate men, and our standard-bearers. Accordingly, I, as praetor of Athens, when you approach me, greet you, as you wished to be greeted. "Chaere," I say, Titus; my lictors, escort, staff, address you with "Chaere." Hence you are to me a public and private enemy.'] [Footnote 41: Et Pacuvius, et Pacuvio iam sene Accius, clariorque tunc in poematis corum obtrectandis Lucilius fuit.] [Footnote 42: E.g. Ego enim contemnificus fieri et fastidire Agamemnona.-- Di monerint meliora, amentiam averruncassint tuam.-- Hic cruciatur fame, Frigore, inluvie, inperfundie, inbalnite, incuria.-- Nunc ignobilitas his mirum, taetrum, ac monstrificabile-- Dividant, differant, dissipent, distrahant.] [Footnote 43: In the same spirit is the following line:-- Verum tristis contorto aliquo ex Pacuviano exordio. And this from another book of Satires:-- Ransuro tragicus qui carmina perdit Oreste. Among the phrases of Ennius at which Lucilius carped was one which Virgil did not disdain to adopt. The passage of the old poet,-- Hastis longis campus splendet et horret,-- parodied by the Satirist in the form 'horret et alget,' was justified by being reproduced in the Virgilian phrase, Tum late ferreus hastis Horret ager.] [Footnote 44: 'Virtue, Albinus, consists in being able to give their true worth to the things on which we are engaged, among which we live. The virtue of a man is to understand the real meaning of each thing: to understand what is right, useful, honourable for him; what things are good, what bad, what is unprofitable, base, dishonourable; to know the due limit and measure in making money; to give its proper worth to wealth; to assign what is really due to office; to be a foe and enemy of bad men and bad principles; to stand by good men and good principles; to extol the good, to wish them well, to be their friend through life. Lastly, it is true worth to look on our country's weal as the chief good; next to that, the weal of our parents; third and last, our own weal.'] [Footnote 45: 'But now from morning till night, on holiday and work-day, the whole day alike, common people and senators are bustling about within the Forum, never quitting it--all devoting themselves to the same practice and trick of wary word-fencing, fighting craftily, vying with each other in politeness, assuming airs of virtue, plotting against each other as if all were enemies.'] [Footnote 46: Cp. Mr. Monro's criticism in the Journal of Philology.] [Footnote 47: Passages of Lucilius apparently imitated by Lucretius:-- (1) Quantum haurire animus Musarum ec fontibu' gestit. (2) Cum sciam nil esse in vita proprium mortali datum Iam qua tempestate vivo, chresin ad me recipio. (3) Ut pueri infantes credunt signa omnia ahena Vivere et esse homines, sic istic omnia ficta Vera putant. Virgil's 'rex ipse Phanaeus' is said by Servius to be imitated from the [Greek: Chios te dynastês] of Lucilius. Other imitations are pointed out in Macrobius and in Servius. An apparent imitation by Catullus has been already noticed.] [Footnote 48: Cic. De Fin. i. 3.] [Footnote 49: Detrahere et pellem nitidus qua quisque per ora cederet, introrsum turpis.] CHAPTER IX. REVIEW OF THE FIRST PERIOD. The poetic literature reviewed in the last five chapters is the product of the second century B.C. The latest writers of any importance belonging to the earlier period of the poetry of the Republic were Lucilius and Afranius. Half a century from the death of Lucilius elapsed before the appearance of the poems of Lucretius and Catullus, which come next to be considered. But before passing on to this more familiar ground, a few pages may be devoted to a retrospect of some general characteristics marking the earlier period, and to a consideration of the social and intellectual conditions under which literature first established itself at Rome. With striking individual varieties of character, the poets whose works have been considered present something of a common aspect, distinct from that of the literary men of later times. They were placed in different circumstances, and lived in a different manner from either the poets who adorned the last days of the Republic or those who flourished in the Augustan age. The spirit animating their works was the result of the forces acting on the national life, and the form and style in which they were composed were determined by the stage of culture which the national mind had reached, and the stage of growth through which the Latin language was passing under the stimulus of that culture. Like nearly all the literary men of later times, these poets were of provincial or foreign birth and origin. They were thus born under circumstances more favourable to, or at least less likely to repress, the expansion of individual genius, than the public life and private discipline of Rome. Their minds were thus more open to the reception of new influences; and their position as aliens, by cutting them off from an active public career, served to turn their energies to literature. Their provincial birth and Greek education did not, however, check their Roman sympathies, or prevent them from stamping on their writings the impress of a Roman character. While, like many of the later poets, they came originally as strangers to Rome, unlike them, they seem to have in later years resided habitually within the city. The taste for country life prevailing in the days of Cicero and of Horace was not developed to any great extent in the times of Ennius or Lucilius. The great Scipio, indeed, retired to spend the last years of his life at Liternum; and Cicero mentions the boyish delight of Laelius and the younger Africanus in escaping from the public business and the crowded streets of Rome to the pleasant sea-shore of Caieta[1]. Accius seems to have possessed a country farm, and Lucilius showed something of a wandering disposition, and possessed the means to gratify it. But most of these writers were men of moderate means; nor had it then become the practice of the patrons of literature to bestow farms or country-houses on their friends. By their circumstances, as well as the general taste of their time, they were thus brought almost exclusively into contact with the life and business of the city; and their works were consequently more distinguished by their strong sense and understanding than by the passionate or contemplative susceptibility which characterises the great eras of Latin literature. It is remarkable that nearly all the early poets lived to a great age, and maintained their intellectual vigour unabated to their latest years; while of their successors none reached the natural term of human life, and some among them, like many great modern poets, were cut off prematurely before their promise was fulfilled. The finer sensibility and more passionate agitation of the poetic temperament appear, in some cases, to exhaust prematurely the springs of life; while, in natures more happily balanced, or formed by more favourable circumstances, the gifts of genius are accompanied by stronger powers of life, and thus maintain the freshness of youth unimpaired till the last. The length of time during which Naevius, Plautus, Ennius, Pacuvius, Accius, and probably Lucilius, exercised their art suggests the inference, either that they were men of firmer fibre than their successors, or that they were braced to a more enduring strength by the action of their age. As the work of men writing in the fulness of their years, the serious poetry of the time appealed to the mature sympathies of manhood; and even the comic poetry of Plautus deals with the follies of youth in a genial spirit of indulgence, tempered by the sense of their absurdity, such as might naturally be entertained by one who had outlived them. But perhaps the most important condition determining the original scope of Roman poetry was the predominance in that era of public over personal interests. Like Virgil and Horace, most of the early poets were men born in comparatively a humble station; yet by their force of intellect and character they became the familiar friends of the foremost men in the State. But while the poets of the Augustan age owed the charm of their existence to the patronage of the great, the earlier poets depended for their success mainly on popular favour. The intimacy subsisting between the leaders of action and of literature during the second century B.C. arose from the mutual attraction of greatness in different spheres. The chief men in the Republic obtained their position by their services to the State, and thus the personal attachment subsisting between them and men of letters was a bond connecting the latter with the public interest. The early poetry of the Republic is not the expression of an educated minority keeping aloof from public life. If it is animated by a strong aristocratic spirit, the reason is that the aristocratic spirit was predominant in the public life of Rome during that century. In this era, more than in any later age, the poetry of Rome, like that of Greece in its greatest eras, addressed itself to popular and national, not to individual tastes. The crowds that witnessed and applauded the representations of tragedy as well as comedy, afford a sufficient proof that the reproduction of Greek subjects and personages could be appreciated without the accomplishment of a Greek education. The popularity of the poem of Ennius is attested by his own language, as well as by the evidence of later writers. The honour of a public funeral awarded to Lucilius, implies the general appreciation with which his contemporaries enjoyed the verve, sense, and moral strength which secured for his satire the favour of a more refined and critical age. This general popularity is an argument in favour of the original spirit animating this early literature. It implies the power of embodying some sentiment or idea of national or public interest. Thus Roman tragedy appears to have been received with favour, chiefly in consequence of the grave Roman tone of its maxims, and the Roman bearing of its personages. The epic poetry of the age did not, like the Odyssey, relate a story of personal adventure, but unfolded the annals of the State in continuous order, and appealed to the pride which men felt, as Romans, in their history and destiny. The satire of Lucilius was not intended merely to afford amusement by ridiculing the follies of social life, but played a part in public affairs by political partisanship and antagonism, and maintained the traditional standard of manners and opinions against the inroads of foreign influences. Latin comedy, indeed, was a more purely cosmopolitan product. The plays of Terence especially would affect those who listened to them simply as men and not as Roman citizens. But the comedy of Plautus abounded in the humour congenial to the Italian race, and owed much of its popularity to the strong Roman colouring spread over the Greek outlines of his representations. The national character of this poetry is attested also by the spirit and character which pervades it. Among all the authors who have been reviewed, Ennius alone possessed in a large measure that peculiar vein of imaginative feeling which is the most impressive element in the great poets of a later age. The susceptibility of his mind to the sentiment that moulded the institutions and inspired the policy of the Imperial Republic, entitles him to rank as the truest representative of the genius of his country, notwithstanding his apparent inferiority to Plautus in creative originality. The glow of moral passion, which is another great characteristic of Latin literature, as it was of the best types of the Latin race, reveals itself in the remains of all the serious writers of the age. The struggle between the old Roman self-respect and the new modes of temptation, is exemplified in the antagonistic influence exercised by the tragic, epic, and satiric poetry on the one hand, and the comedy of Plautus and Terence on the other. The more general popularity of comedy was a symptom of the facility with which the severer standard of life yielded to the new attractions. The graver writers, equally with the writers of comedy, shared in the sceptical spirit, or the religious indifference, which was one of the dissolving forces of social and political life during this age. The strong common sense which characterised all the writers of the time, could not fail to bring them into collision with the irrational formalism of the national religion; while the distaste for speculative philosophy which Ennius and Plautus equally express, and the strong hold which they all have on the immediate interests of life, explain the absence of any, except the most superficial, reflections on the more mysterious influences which in the belief of the great Greek poets moulded human destiny. The political condition of Rome in the second century B.C. is reflected in the changes through which her literature passed. For nearly two-thirds of that century, Roman history seems to go through a stage of political quiescence, as compared at least with the vigorous life and stormy passions of its earlier and later phases. But under the surface a great change was taking place, both in the government and the social condition of the people, the effects of which made themselves sufficiently manifest during the last century of the existence of the Republic. The outbreak of the long gathering forces of discontent and disorder is as distinctly marked in Roman history, as the outbreak of the revolutionary forces in modern Europe. The year 133 B.C., the date of the first tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus, has the same kind of significance as the year 1789 A.D. Nor is it a mere coincidence that about the same time a great change takes place in the spirit of Roman literature. The comedies of Plautus, written in the first years of the century, while they reflect the political indifference of the mass of the people, are yet indicative of their general spirit of contentment, and their hearty enjoyment of life. The epic of Ennius, written a little later, proclaims the undisputed ascendency of an aristocracy, still moulded by its best traditions, and claiming to lead a united people. The remains of Roman tragedy breathe the high spirit of the governing class, and attest the severer virtue still animating its best representatives. The comedies of Terence seem addressed to the taste of a younger generation of greater refinement, but of a laxer moral fibre than their fathers, and of a class becoming separated by more elaborate culture from ordinary Roman citizens. Expressions in his prologues[2], however, show that there was as yet no division between classes arising from political discontent. But in the satire of Lucilius we read the protest of the better Roman spirit against the lawless arrogance of the nobles, their incapacity in war, their corrupt administration of justice, their iniquitous government of the provinces; against the ostentatious luxury of the rich; the avarice of the middle classes; the venality of the mob, and the profligacy of their leaders; and against the insincerity and animosities fostered among the educated classes by the contests of the forum and the law-courts. In passing from the substance and spirit of this early literature to its form and style, we can see by the rudeness of the more original ventures which the Roman spirit made, how slowly it was educated by imitative effort to high literary accomplishment. The only writer who aimed at perfection of form was Terence, and his success was due to his close adherence to his originals. But as some compensation for their artistic defects, these early writers display much greater productiveness than their literary successors. They were like the settlers in a new country, who are spared the pains of exact cultivation owing to the absence of previous occupation of the soil, and the large extent of ground thus open to their industry. The contrast between the standard aimed at, and the results attained by the sincerest literary force in two different eras of Roman literature, is brought home to the mind by contrasting the rude fragments of the lost works of Ennius, embodying the results of a long, hearty, active, and useful life, with the small volume which still preserves the flower of a few passionate years, as fresh as when the young poet sent it forth:-- Arido modo pumice expolitum. The style of the early poets was marked by haste, harshness, and redundance, occasionally by verbal conceits and similar errors of taste. That of the writers of comedy, on the other hand, is easy, natural, and elegant. The Latin language seems thus to have adapted itself to the needs of ordinary social life more readily than to the expression of elevated feeling. Though many phrases in the fragments which have been reviewed are boldly and vigorously conceived, few passages are written with continuous ease and smoothness, and the language constantly halts, as if inadequate to the meaning which labours under it. The style has, in general, the merits of directness and sincerity, often of freshness and vigour, but wants altogether the depth and richness of colour, as well as the finish and moderation which we expect in the literature of a people to whom poetry and art are naturally congenial, and associated with many old memories and feelings. Their merits of style, such as the simple force with which they go directly to the heart of a matter, and the grave earnestness of their tone, are qualities characteristic rather of oratory than of poetry. But this colouring of their style is very different from the artificial rhetoric of the literature of the Empire. The oratorical style of the early poets was the natural result of a sympathy with the most practical intellectual instrument of their age. The rhetoric of the Empire was the expression of an artificial life, in which literature was cultivated to beguile the tedium of compulsory inaction, and the highest form of public speaking had sunk from its proud office as the organ of political freedom into a mere exercise of pedants and schoolboys[3]. The same impulse in this age which gave birth to the forms of serious poetry, stimulated also the growth of oratory and history. While these different modes of mental accomplishment all acted and reacted on one another, oratory appears to have exercised the most influence on the others. Roman literature is altogether more pervaded by oratorical feeling than that of any other nation, ancient or modern. From the natural deficiency of the Romans in the higher dramatic and speculative genius, the rhetorical element entered largely into their poetry, their history, and their ethical discussions. Cicero identifies the faculties of the orator with those of the historian and the philosopher. His treatise _De Claris Oratoribus_ bears witness to the energy with which this art was cultivated for more than a century before his own time; and the remains of Ennius and Lucilius confirm this testimony. It was from the impassioned and dignified speech of the forum and senate-house that the Roman language first acquired its capacity of expressing great emotions. All the serious poetry of the age bears traces of this influence. Roman tragedy shows its affinity to oratory in its grave and didactic tone. This affinity is further implied in the political meaning which the audience attached to the sentiments expressed, and which the actor enforced by his voice and manner. It is also attested by the fact that in the time of Cicero, famous actors were employed in teaching the external graces of public speaking. The theatre was a school of elocution as much as a place of dramatic entertainment. Cicero specifies among the qualifications of a speaker, 'Vox tragoedorum, gestus paene summorum actorum.' Although the epic poetry of the time mainly appealed to a different class of sympathies, yet the fragments of speeches in Ennius indicate that kind of rhetorical power which moves an audience by the weight and authority of the speaker. Roman satire could wield other weapons of oratory, such as the fierce invective, the lashing ridicule, the vehement indignation which have often proved the most powerful instruments of debate in modern as well as ancient times. Historical composition also took its rise at Rome at this period. Although the earliest Roman annalists composed their works in the Greek language, it was not from the desire of imitating the historic art of Greece that this art was first cultivated at Rome. The origin of Roman history may be referred rather to the same impulse which gave birth to the epic poems of Naevius and Ennius. The early annalists were men of action and eminent station, who desired to record the important events in which they themselves had taken part, and to fix them for ever in the annals of their country. History originated at Rome in the impulse to keep alive the record of national life, not, as among the Greeks, in the spell which human story and the wonder of distant lands exercised over the imagination. Its office was not to teach lessons of political wisdom, but to commemorate the services of great men, and to satisfy a Roman's pride in the past, and his trust in the future of his country. The word _annales_ suggests a different idea of history from that entertained and exemplified by Herodotus and Thucydides. The purpose of building up the record of unbroken national life was present to, though probably not realised by, the earliest annalists who preserved the line of magistrates, and kept account of the religious observances in the State: in the time of the expansion of Roman power, this purpose directed the attention of men of action to the composition of prose annals, and stimulated the productive genius of Naevius and Ennius: and when, in the Augustan age, the national destiny seemed to be fulfilled, the same purpose inspired the great epic of Virgil, and the 'colossal masterwork of Livy.' Another form of literature, in which Rome became pre-eminent, first began in this era,--the writing of familiar letters. It was natural that a correspondence should be maintained among intimate friends and members of an active social circle, separated for years from one another by military service, or employment in the provinces; and the new taste for literature would induce the writers to give form and finish to these compositions, so that they might be interesting not only to the persons addressed, but to all the members of the same circle. The earliest compositions of this kind of which we read, are the familiar letters in verse ('Epistolas versiculis facetis ad familiares missas' Cicero calls them) written to his friends by the brother of Mummius, during the siege of Corinth[4]. That these had some literary value may be inferred from the fact that they survived down to the age of Cicero, and are spoken of in the letters to Atticus, as having often been quoted to him by a member of the family of Mummii. One of the earliest satires of Lucilius appears to have been a letter written to Scipio after the capture of Numantia; and several of his other satires were written in an epistolary form. How happily the later Romans employed this form in prose and verse is sufficiently proved by the letters of Cicero and Pliny, and the metrical Epistles of Horace. This era also saw the beginning of the critical and grammatical studies which flourished through every period of Roman literature, and continued long after the cessation of all productive originality. This critical effort was a necessary condition of the cultivation of art by the Romans. The perfection of form attained by the great Roman poets of a later time was no exercise of a natural gift, but the result of many previous efforts and failures, and of much reflection on the conditions which had been, with no apparent effort, fulfilled by their Greek masters. Neither did their language acquire the symmetry, precision, and harmony, which make it so effective a vehicle in prose and verse, except as the result of assiduous labour. The natural tendency of the spoken language was to rapid decomposition. This was first arrested by Ennius, who cast the literary language of Rome into forms which became permanent after his time. Among his poetic successors in this era Accius and Lucilius made critical and grammatical studies the subjects of some of their works. Lucilius was a contemporary and friend of the most famous of the early grammarians, Aelius Stilo, the critic to whom is attributed the saying that 'if the muses were to speak in Latin, they would speak in the language of Plautus.' Critical works in trochaic verse were written by Porcius Licinus, and Volcatius Sedigitus, who appear to have been the chief authorities from whom later writers derived their information as to the lives of the early poets. It is characteristic of the want of spontaneousness in Latin literature, as compared with the fresh and varied impulses which the Greek genius obeyed in every stage of its literary development, that reflection on the principles of composition, efforts to form the language into a more certain and uniform vehicle, and comment on living writers, were carried on concurrently with the creative efforts of the more original minds. The existing works of the two great writers of Roman comedy have an acknowledged value of their own, but even the fragments of this early literature, originally scattered through the works of many later authors, and collected together and arranged by the industry of modern scholars, are found to possess a peculiar interest. They recall the features of the remarkable men by whom the foundations of Roman literature were laid, and the Latin language was first shaped into a powerful and symmetric organ. They present the Roman mind in its earliest contact with the genius of Greece; and they are almost the sole contemporary witnesses of national character and public feeling in the most vigorous and interesting age of the Republic. They throw also much light on the national sources of inspiration in the later Roman literature. The early poets are seen to be men living the life of citizens in a Republic, appealing rather to popular taste than to the sympathies of a refined and limited society; men of mature years and understanding, animated by a serious purpose and with a strong interest in the affairs of their time; rude and negligent but direct and vigorous in speech,--more remarkable for energy, industry, and common sense, than for the finer gifts and susceptibility of genius. Their poetry springing from their sympathy with national and political life, and from the impulses of the will and the manlier energies, was less rich, varied, and refined than that which flows out of the religious spirit of man, out of his passions and affections, or of his imaginative sense of the life and grandeur of Nature. But in these respects the early poetry was essentially Roman in spirit, in harmony with the strength and sagacity, the sobriety and grave dignity of Rome. The accomplished art of the last age of the Republic and of the Augustan age owed much of its national and moral flourishment to the vigorous life of this early literature. The earnest enthusiasm of Ennius was inherited by Lucretius,--his patriotic tones were repeated by Virgil. The lofty oratory of the Aeneid sometimes sounds like an echo of the grave and ardent style of early tragedy. The strong sense and knowledge of the world, the frank communicativeness and lively portraiture of Lucilius reappeared in the familiar writings of Horace, while his fierce vehemence and bold invective were reproduced by the vigorous satirist of the Empire. [Footnote 1: De Orat. ii. 6.] [Footnote 2: Adelphi, 18-21:-- Quom illis placet, Qui vobis univorsis et populo placent, Quorum opera in bello, in otio, in negotio Suo quisque tempore usust sine superbia.] [Footnote 3: Cf. Juv. x. 167:-- Ut pueris placeas et declamatio fias.] [Footnote 4: Referred to by Mommsen.] SECOND PERIOD. THE CLOSE OF THE REPUBLIC. * * * * * LUCRETIUS AND CATULLUS. CHAPTER X. TRANSITION FROM LUCILIUS TO LUCRETIUS AND CATULLUS. An interval of nearly half a century elapsed between the death of Lucilius and the appearance of the poem of Lucretius. During this period no poetical works of any value were produced at Rome. The only successors of the older tragedians, C. Julius Caesar (Consul B.C. 88) and C. Titius, never obtained a success on the stage approaching to that still accorded to the older dramas. No rival appeared to dispute the popularity enjoyed by Plautus, Caecilius, and Terence, as authors of the Comoedia Palliata; but the literary activity of Afranius and of T. Quintius Atta, the most eminent among the authors of the Fabulae togatae, extended into the early years of the first century B.C. It was during this period also that the Fabula Atellana was raised by L. Pomponius of Bononia and Novius into the rank of regular literature. The tendency to depart more and more from the Greek type of comedy, and to revert to the scenic entertainment native to Italy, is seen in the attempt of Laberius, in the last years of the Republic, to raise the Mimus into the sphere of recognised literary art. The Annalistic epic of Hostius on the Istrian war, and the Annales of Furius, of Antium, a friend of the elder Catulus, perpetuated the traditional influence of Ennius, during the interval between Lucilius and Lucretius. The first attempts to introduce the erotic poetry of Alexandria, in the form of epigrams and short lyrical poems, also belong to this period. The writers of this new kind of poetry,--Valerius Aedituus, Q. Lutatius Catulus (the Colleague of Marius in his consulship of the year 102 B.C.), and Laevius, the author of Erotopaegnia, have significance only as indicating the direction which Roman poetry followed in the succeeding generation. Cicero in his youth cultivated verse-making, both as a translator of the poem of Aratus, and as the author of an original poem on his townsman Marius. His hexameters show considerable advance in rhythmical smoothness and exactness beyond the previous condition of that metre, as exemplified in the fragments of Ennius and Lucilius: and his translation of Aratus marks a stage in the history of Latin poetry as affording a native model, which Lucretius did not altogether disregard in the structure of his verse and diction[1]. But Cicero is not to be ranked among the poets of Rome. He merely practised verse-making as part of his general literary training. He retained the accomplishment till his latest years, and shows his facility by translating passages from the Greek tragedians in his philosophical works. That he had no true poetical faculty is shown by the apparent indifference with which he regarded the works of the two great poets of his time. This indifference is the more marked from his generous recognition of the oratorical promise and accomplishment of the men of a younger generation. The tragedies of Q. Cicero were mere literary exercises and made no impression on his generation. Though several of the multifarious works of Varro were written in verse, yet the whole cast of his mind was thoroughly prosaic. His tastes and abilities were those of an antiquarian scholar, not of a man of poetic genius and accomplishment. The period of nearly half a century, from 102 till about 60 B.C., must thus be regarded as altogether barren in genuine poetical result. During this long interval there appeared no successor to carry on the work of developing the poetical side of a national literature, begun by Plautus, Ennius, and Lucilius. The only metrical compositions of this time were either inferior reproductions of the old forms or immature anticipations of the products of a later age. The political disturbance of the times between the tribunate of Tib. Gracchus and the first consulship of Crassus and Pompey (B.C. 70) was unfavourable to the cultivation of that poetry which is expressive of national feeling: and the Roman genius for art was as yet too immature to produce the poetry of individual reflection or personal passion. The state of feeling throughout Italy, before and immediately subsequent to the Social War, alienated from Rome the sympathetic genius of the kindred races from whom her most illustrious authors were drawn in later times. It was in the years of comparative peace, between the horrors of the first civil war and the alarm preceding the outbreak of the second, that a new poet grew apparently unnoticed to maturity, and the silence was at last broken after the long repression of Italian genius by a voice at once stronger in native vitality and richer in acquired culture than any which had preceded it. But there is one thing significant in the literary character of this period, otherwise so barren in works of taste and imagination. Those by whom the art of verse was practised are no longer 'Semi-Graeci' or humble provincials, but Romans of political or social distinction. The chief authors in the interval between the first and second era of Roman poetry are either members of the aristocracy or men of old family belonging to the equestrian order. And this connexion between literature and social rank continues till the close of the Republic. The poets of the Ciceronian age,--Hortensius, Memmius, Lucretius, Catullus, Calvus, Cinna, &c.--either themselves belonged to the governing class, or were men of leisure and independent means, living as equals with the members of that class. This circumstance explains much of the difference in tone between the literature of that age and both the earlier and later literature. The separation in taste and sympathy between the higher classes and the mass of the people which had begun in the days of Terence, grew wider and wider with the growth of culture and with the increasing bitterness of political dissensions. It was only among the rich and educated that poetry could now expect to find an audience; and the poetry written for them appealed, for the most part, to the convictions, tastes, pleasures, and animosities which they shared as members of a class, not, like the best Augustan poetry, to the higher sympathies which they might share as the depositaries of great national traditions. But if this poetry was too exclusively addressed to a class--a class too, though refined by culture, yet living for the most part the life of fashion and pleasure--it had the merit of being the sincere expression of men writing to please themselves and their equals. It was not called upon to make any sacrifice of individual conviction or public sentiment to satisfy popular taste or the requirements of an Imperial master. But though barren in poetry this interval was far from being barren in other intellectual results. This was the era of the great Roman orators, the successors of Laelius, Carbo, the Gracchi, etc., and the immediate predecessors and contemporaries of Cicero. It was through the care with which public speaking was cultivated that Latin prose was formed into that clear, exact, dignified, and commanding instrument, which served through so many centuries as the universal organ of history, law, philosophy, learning, and religion,--of public discussion and private correspondence. While Latin poetry is, both in spirit and manner, quite as much Italian as Roman, Latin prose bears the stamp of the political genius of Rome. It was the deliberate expression of the mind of men practised in affairs, exercised in the deliberations of the Senate, the harangues of the public assemblies, the pleadings of the courts,--of men accustomed to determine and explain questions of law and to draw up edicts binding on all subjects of the State,--trained, moreover, to a sense of literary form by the study of Greek rhetoric, and naturally guided to clearness and dignity of expression by the orderly understanding, the strong hold on reality, and the authoritative bearing which were their birthright as Romans. The effort which obtained its crowning success in the prose style of Cicero left its mark on other forms of literature. History continued to be written by members of the great governing families to serve both as a record of events and a weapon of party warfare. The large and varied correspondence of Cicero shows how general the accomplishment of style had become among educated men. And if this result was, in the main, due to the fervour of mind and temper elicited by the contests of public life, the systematic teaching of grammarians and rhetoricians acted as a corrective of the natural exuberance or carelessness of the rhetorical faculty. Perfection of style attained in one of the two great branches of a national literature cannot fail to react on the other. It was the peculiarity of Latin literature that this perfection or high accomplishment was reached in prose sooner than in poetry. The contemporaries of Cicero and Caesar, whose genius impelled them to awaken into new life the long silent Muses of Italy, were conscious that the great effort demanded of them was to raise Latin verse to a similar perfection of form, diction, and musical cadence. What Cicero did for Latin prose, in revealing the fertility of its resources, in giving to it more ample volume, and eliciting its capabilities of sonorous rhythmical movement, Lucretius aspires to do for Latin verse. Although Catullus in forming his more elaborate style worked carefully after the manner of his Greek models, yet we may attribute something of the terseness, the idiomatic verve, the studied simplicity of expression in his lighter pieces to the literary taste which he shared with the younger race of orators, who claimed to have substituted Attic elegance for Asiatic exuberance of ornament. During all this interval, in which native poetry was neglected, the art and thought of Greece were penetrating more deeply into Italy. Cicero, in his defence of Archias, attests the eagerness with which Greek studies were cultivated during the early years of the century; 'Erat Italia tunc plena Graecarum artium ac disciplinarum, studiaque haec et in Latio vehementius tum colebantur quam nunc iisdem in oppidis, et hic Romae propter tranquillitatem reipublicae non neglegebantur.' With the reviving tranquillity of the Republic these studies also revived. Learned Greeks continued to flock to Rome and to attach themselves to members of the great houses,--the Luculli, the Metelli, Pompey, etc.; and it became more and more the custom for young men of birth and wealth to travel or spend some years of study among the famous cities of Greece and Asia. This new and closer contact of the Greek with the Roman mind came about, not as the earlier one through dramatic representations, but, in a great measure, through the medium of books, which began now to be accumulated at Rome both in public and private libraries. Probably no other cause produces so great a change in national character and intellect as the awakening of the taste and the creating of facilities for reading. By the diffusion of books, as well as by the instruction of living teachers, the Romans of this generation came under the influence of a new class of writers, whose spirit was more in harmony with the modern world than the old epic and dramatic poets, viz. the exponents of the different philosophic systems and the learned poets of Alexandria. These new influences helped to denationalise Roman thought and literature, to make the individual more conscious of himself, and to stimulate the passions and pleasures of private life. While the endeavour to regulate life in accordance with a system of philosophy tended to isolate men from their fellows, the study of the Alexandrine poets, the cultivation of art for its own sake, the exclusive admiration of a particular manner of writing fostered the spirit of literary coteries as distinct from the spirit of a national literature. But making allowance for all these drawbacks, it is to the Alexandrine culture that the education of the Roman sense of literary beauty is primarily due. Along with this culture, indeed, the taste for other forms of art, which was rapidly developed and largely fed in the last age of the Republic, powerfully cooperated. Lucretius specifies among the 'deliciae vitae' Carmina, picturas, et daedala signa[2]; and, in more than one place, he writes, with sympathetic admiration, of the charm of instrumental music, Musaea mele per chordas organici quae Mobilibus digitis expergefacta figurant[3]. The delicate appreciation of the paintings, statues, gems, vases, etc., either brought to Rome as the spoils of conquest, or seen in their original home by educated Romans, travelling for pleasure or employed in the public service, was not without effect in calling forth the ideal of literary form, realised in some of the master-pieces of Catullus. We may suppose too that the cultivation of music had some share in eliciting the lyrical movement in Latin verse from the fact mentioned by Horace, that the songs of Catullus and Calvus were ever in the mouths of the fashionable professors of that art in a later age. If the life of the generation which witnessed the overthrow of the Republic was one of alarm and vicissitude, of political unsettlement and moral unrestraint, it was, at the same time, very rich in its capabilities of sensuous and intellectual enjoyment. The appetite for pleasure was still too fresh to produce that deadening of energy and of feeling, which is most fatal to literary creativeness. The passionate life led by Catullus and his friends may have shortened the days of some of them, and tended to limit the range and to lower the aims of their genius, but it did not dull their vivid sense of beauty, chill their enjoyment of their art, or impair the mastery over its technical details, for which they strove. As the bent given to philosophical and literary studies developed the inner life and personal tastes of the individual, the political disorganisation of the age tended to stimulate new modes of thought and life, which had not, in any former generation, been congenial to the Roman mind. While the work of political destruction was being carried on along with the most strenuous gratification of their passions by one set among the leading men at Rome--such as Catiline and his associates, and, somewhat later, Clodius, Curio, Caelius, Antony, etc.--among men of more sensitive and refined natures the pleasures of the contemplative life began to exercise a novel fascination. The comparative seclusion in which men like Lucullus and Hortensius lived in their later years may, perhaps, be accounted for by other reasons than the mere love of ease and pleasure. It was a symptom of that despair of the Republic which is so often expressed in Cicero's letters, and of the consequent diversion of thought from practical affairs to the questions and interests which concern the individual. In the same way the unsettlement and afterwards the loss of political life at Athens gave a great impulse both to the various philosophical sects on the one hand, and to the literature of the new comedy, which deals exclusively with private life, on the other. In Rome this alienation from politics naturally allied itself, among members of the aristocracy, with the acceptance of the Epicurean philosophy. The slow dissolution of religious belief which had been going on since the first contact of the Roman mind with that of Greece, awoke in Rome, as it had done in Greece, a deeper interest in the ultimate questions of the existence and nature of the gods and of the origin and destiny of the human soul. We see how the contemplation of these questions consoled Cicero when no longer able to exercise his energy and vivid intelligence on public affairs. He discusses them with candour and seriousness of spirit and with a strong leaning to the more hopeful side of the controversy, but scarcely from the point of view which regards their settlement as of supreme importance to human well-being. But they are raised from much greater depths of feeling and inward experience by Lucretius, to whom the life of political warfare and personal ambition was utterly repugnant, and who had dedicated himself, with all the intensity of his passionate and poetical temperament, to the discovery and the teaching of the true meaning of life. The happiest results of his recluse and contemplative life were the revelation of a new delight open to the human spirit through sympathy with the spirit of Nature, and the deepening beyond anything which had yet found expression in literature of the fellow-feeling which unites man not only to humanity but to all sentient existence. The taste, so congenial to the Italian, for country life found in him its first and most powerful poetical interpreter: while the humanity of sentiment, first instilled through the teaching of comedy, and fostered by later literary and ethical study, was enforced with a greatness of heart and imagination which has seldom been equalled in ancient or modern times. The dissolution of traditional beliefs and of the old loyalty to the State produced very different results on the art and life of the younger poets of that generation. The pursuit of pleasure, and the cultivation, purely for its own sake, of art which drew its chief materials from the life of pleasure, became the chief end and aim of their existence. In so far as they turned their thoughts from the passionate pleasures of their own lives and the contemplation of passionate incidents and situations in art, it was to give expression to the personal animosities which they entertained to the leaders of the revolutionary movement. Nor did this animosity spring so much from public spirit as from a repugnance of taste towards the coarser partisans of the popular cause, and from the instinctive sense that the privileges enjoyed by their own caste were not likely to survive any great convulsion of the State. The intensity of their personal feelings of love and hatred, and the limitation of their range of view to the things which gave the most vivid and immediate pleasure to themselves and to others like them, were the sources of both their strength and weakness. Of the poetry which arose out of these conditions of life and culture, two representatives only are known to us in their works, Lucretius and Catullus. From the testimony of their contemporaries we know them to have been recognised as the greatest of the poets of that age. Lucretius in his own province held an unquestioned pre-eminence. Yet that other minds were occupied with the topics which he alone treated with a masterly hand is proved by the existence of a work, of a somewhat earlier date, by one Egnatius, bearing the title 'De Rerum Natura,' and also by Cicero's notice, in connexion with his mention of Lucretius, of the 'Empedoclea' of Sallustius. Varro also is mentioned by ancient writers, in connexion with Empedocles and Lucretius, as the author of a metrical work 'De Rerum Natura[4].' More satisfactory evidence is afforded by the discussions in the 'De Natura Deorum,' the 'Tusculan Questions,' and the 'De Finibus,' of the interest taken by educated men in the class of questions which Lucretius professed to answer. Yet neither the antecedent nor the later attention devoted to these subjects explains the powerful attraction which they had for Lucretius. In him, more than in any other Roman, we recognise a fresh and deep source of poetic thought and feeling appearing in the world. The culture of his age may have suggested or rendered possible the channel which his genius followed, but cannot account for the power and intensity with which it poured itself into that channel. He cannot be said either to sum up the art and thought contemporary with himself, or, like Virgil, to complete that of preceding times. The work done by him, and the influence exercised by him on the poetry of Rome and on the world, are to be explained only by his original and individual force. Catullus, on the other hand, was the most successful among a band of rival poets with most of whom he lived in intimacy. Among the men older than himself, Hortensius, the orator, and Memmius were known as writers of amatory poetry. His name as a lyric poet is most usually coupled with that of his friend Calvus; and a well-known passage of Tacitus[5] brings together his lampoons and those of Bibaculus as being 'referta contumeliis Caesarum.' Among others to whom he was bound by the ties of friendship and common tastes were C. Helvius Cinna, author of an Alexandrine epic, called Zmyrna, and Caecilius, author of a poem on Cybele. Ticidas and Anser, mentioned by Ovid among his own precursors in amatory poetry, also belong to this generation. Among the swarms of poetasters-- Saecli incommoda, pessimi poetae,-- a countryman of his own, Volusius[6], the author of a long Annalistic epic, is held up by Catullus to especial obloquy. While so much of the literature of that age has perished, we are fortunate in possessing the works of the greatest authors in prose and verse. The poems of Lucretius and Catullus enable us, better perhaps than any other extant Latin works, to appreciate the most opposite capacities and tendencies of the Roman genius. In their force and individuality, they are alike valuable as the last poetic voices of the Republic, and as, perhaps, the most free and sincere voices of Rome. The first is one of the truest representatives of the national strength, majesty, seriousness of spirit, massive constructive energy; the second is the most typical example of the strong vitality and passionate ardour of the Italian temperament and of its vivid susceptibility to the varied beauties of Greek art. [Footnote 1: Mr. Munro, in his Introduction to Part II of his Commentary on Lucretius, illustrates this relation of the work of the poet to this youthful production of Cicero.] [Footnote 2: v. 1451.] [Footnote 3: ii. 412; cf. also ii. 505-6:-- Et cycnea mele Phoebeaque daedala chordis Carmina consimili ratione oppressa silerent. These lines point to the union of music and lyrical poetry.] [Footnote 4: Cp. the passages quoted from Quintilian, Lactantius, etc. by W.S. Teuffel, Wagner's Translation, p. 239.] [Footnote 5: Annals, iv. 34.] [Footnote 6: Tanusius Geminus, who has generally been identified with Volusius from the passage in Seneca, Ep. 93. 11, 'Annales Tanusii scis quam ponderosi sint et quid vocentur,' is supposed, on the evidence of Suetonius, to have been the author of a prose history, which he, Plutarch, and Strabo used as an authority for the times. Seneca certainly must have identified them. He may have written both in prose and verse, or perhaps the Annals in verse may have been the historical authority appealed to. There is, however, this further difficulty in identifying them, that there is no apparent reason why Catullus should in his case have deviated from his invariable practice of speaking of the objects of his satire by their own names. Cf. Schmidt, Catullus, Prolegomena, p. xlvi.] CHAPTER XI. LUCRETIUS.--PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS. It is in keeping with the isolated and independent position which Lucretius occupies in literature, that so little is known of his life. The two kinds of information available for literary biography,--that afforded by the author himself, and that derived from contemporaries, or from later writers who had access to contemporary testimony,--almost entirely fail us in his case. The form of poetry adopted by him prevented his speaking of himself and telling his own history, as Catullus, Horace, Ovid, etc., have done in their lyrical, elegiac, and familiar writings. His work appears to have been first published after his death: nor is there any reason to believe that he attracted the attention of the world in his lifetime. To judge from the silence of his contemporaries, and from the attitude of mind indicated in his poem, the words 'moriens natusque fefellit' might almost be written as his epitaph. Had he been prominent in the social or literary circles of Rome during the years in which he was engaged on the composition of his poem, some traces of him must have been found in the correspondence of Cicero or in the poems of Catullus, which bring the personal life of those years so close to modern readers. It is thus impossible to ascertain on what original authority the sole traditional account of him preserved in the Chronicle of Jerome was based. That account, like similar notices of other Roman writers, came to Jerome in all probability from the lost work of Suetonius, 'de viris illustribus.' But as to the channels through which it passed to Suetonius, we have no information. The well-known statement of Jerome is to this effect,--'The poet Lucretius was born in the year 94 B.C. He became mad from the administration of a love-philtre, and after composing, in his lucid intervals, several books which were afterwards corrected by Cicero, he died by his own hand in his forty-fourth year.' The date of his death would thus be 50 B.C. But this date is contradicted by the statement of Donatus in his life of Virgil, that Lucretius died (he says nothing of his supposed suicide) on the day on which Virgil assumed the 'toga virilis,' viz. October 15, 55 B.C. And this date derives confirmation from the fact that the first notice of the poem appears in a letter of Cicero to his brother, written in the beginning of 54 B.C. As the condition in which the poem has reached us confirms the statement that it was left by the author in an unfinished state, it must have been given to the world by some other hand after the poet's death; and, as Mr. Munro observes, we should expect to find that it first attracted notice some three or four months after that event. We must accordingly conclude that here, as in many other cases, Jerome has been careless in his dates, and that Lucretius was either born some years before 94 B.C., or that he died before his forty-fourth year. His most recent Editors, accordingly, assign his birth to the end of the year 99 B.C. or the beginning of 98 B.C. He would thus be some seven or eight years younger than Cicero, three or four years younger than Julius Caesar[1], about the same age as Memmius to whom the poem is dedicated, and from about twelve to fifteen years older than Catullus and the younger poets of that generation[2]. But is this story of the poet's liability to fits of derangement, of the cause assigned for these, of his suicide, and of the correction of his poem by Cicero, to be accepted as a meagre and, perhaps, distorted account of certain facts in his history transmitted through some trustworthy channels, or is it to be rejected as an idle fiction which may have assumed shape before the time of Suetonius, and been accepted by him on no other evidence than that of a vague tradition? Though no certain answer can be given to this question, yet some reasons may be assigned for according a hesitating acceptance to the main outlines of the story, or at least for not rejecting it as a transparent fiction. It may indeed be urged that if this strange and tragical history had been known to the Augustan poets, who, in greater or less degree, acknowledge the spell exercised upon them by the genius of Lucretius, some sympathetic allusion to it would probably have been found in their writings, such as that in Ovid to the early death of Catullus and Calvus. It would seem remarkable that in the only personal reference which Virgil, who had studied his poem profoundly, seems to make to his predecessor, he characterises him merely as 'fortunate in his triumph over supernatural terrors.' But, not to press an argument based on the silence of those who lived near the poet's time, and who, from their recognition of his genius might have been expected to be interested in his fate, the sensational character of the story justifies some suspicion of its authenticity. The mysterious efficacy attributed to a love-philtre is more in accordance with vulgar credulity than with experience. The supposition that the poem, or any considerable portion of it, was written in the lucid intervals of derangement seems hardly consistent with the evidence of the supreme control of reason through all its processes of thought. The impression both of impiety and melancholy which the poem was likely to produce on ordinary minds, especially after the religious reaction of the Augustan age, might easily have suggested this tale of madness and suicide as a natural consequence of, or fitting retribution for, such absolute separation from the common hopes and fears of mankind[3]. Yet indications in the poem itself have been pointed out which might incline us to accept the story rather as a meagre tradition of some tragic circumstances in the poet's history, than as the idle invention of an uncritical age. The unrelieved intensity of thought and feeling, by which more almost than any other work of literature it is characterised, seems indicative of an overstrain of power, which may well have caused the loss or eclipse of what to the poet was the sustaining light and joy of his life[4]. Under such a calamity it would have been quite in accordance with the principles of his philosophy to seek refuge in self-destruction, and to imitate an example which he notes in the case of another speculative thinker, on becoming conscious of failing intellectual power[5]. But this general sense of overstrained tension of thought and feeling is, as was first pointed out by his English Editor, much intensified by references in the poem (as at i. 32; iv. 33, etc.), to the horror produced on the mind by apparitions seen in dreams and waking visions[6]. 'The emphatic repetition,' says Mr. Munro, 'of these horrid visions seen in sickness might seem to confirm what is related of the poet being subject to fits of delirium or disordering sickness of some sort.' He further shows by quotation from Suetonius' 'Life of Caligula,' that such mental conditions were attributed to the administration of a love-philtre. The coincidence in these recorded cases may imply nothing more than the credulity of Suetonius, or of the authorities whom he followed: but it is conceivable that Lucretius may have himself attributed what was either a disorder of his own constitution, or the result of a prolonged overstrain of mind, to the effects of some powerful drug taken by him in ignorance[7]. Thus, while the statement of Jerome admits neither of verification nor refutation, it may be admitted that there are indications in the poem of a great tension of mind, of an extreme vividness of sensibility, of an indifference to life, and, in the later books, of some failure in the power of organising his materials, which incline us rather to accept the story as a meagre and distorted record of tragical events in the poet's life, than as a literary myth which took shape out of the feelings excited by the poem in a later age. Yet this qualified acquiescence in the tradition does not involve the belief that any considerable portion of the poem was written 'per intervalla insaniae,' or that the disorder from which the poet suffered was actually the effect of a love-philtre. The statement involved in the words 'quos Cicero emendavit,' has also been the subject of much criticism. No one can read the poem without recognising the truth of the conclusion established by Lachmann, and accepted by the most competent Editors of the poem since his time, that the work must have been left by the author in an unfinished state and given to the world by some friend or some person to whom the task of editing it had been entrusted. But there is some difficulty in accepting the statement that this editor was Cicero. His silence on the subject of his editorial labours, when contrasted with the frank communicativeness of his Epistles in regard to anything which for the time interested him, and the slight esteem with which he regarded the philosophy which is embodied in the poem, justify some hesitation in accepting the authority of Jerome on this point also. He only once mentions the poem in a letter to his brother Quintus[8], and in passages of his philosophical works in which he seems to allude to it he expresses himself slightingly and somewhat contemptuously[9]. In the disparaging references to the Latin writers on Greek philosophy before the appearance of his own Tusculan Questions and Academics, he makes no exception in favour of Lucretius. The words in his letter to his brother Quintus are these, 'Lucretii poemata, ut scribis, ita sunt, multis luminibus ingenii, multae tamen artis: sed cum veneris, virum te putabo, si Sallustii Empedoclea legeris, hominem non putabo.' Professor Tyrrell in his 'Correspondence of Cicero,' remarks on this passage (vol. II. page 106): 'The criticism of Quintus, with which Cicero expresses his accord, was that Lucretius had not only much of the _genius_ of Ennius and Attius, but also much of the _art_ of the poets of the new school, among them even Catullus, who are fashioning themselves on the model of the Alexandrine poets, especially Callimachus and Euphorion of Chalcis. This new school Cicero refers to as the [Greek: neôteroi] (Att. VII. 2. 1) and as _hi cantores Euphorionis_ (Tusc. III. 45). Their _ars_ seemed to Cicero almost incompatible with the _ingenium_ of the old school. This criticism on Lucretius is not only quite just from Cicero's point of view, but it is most pointed. Yet the editors from Victorius to Klotz will not let Cicero say what he thought. They insert a _non_ either before _multis_ or before _multae_, and thus deny him either _ingenium_ or _ars_. The point of the judgment is that Lucretius shows the genius of the old school and (what might seem to be incompatible with it) the art of the new[10].' Thus if his notice of the poem is slight, it is not deficient in appreciation. Mr. Munro succeeds in explaining Cicero's silence on the subject in his other correspondence. It is in his Letters to his oldest and most intimate correspondent, the Epicurean Atticus, that we should expect to find notices of his editorial labours. It was a task on which Atticus might have given most valuable help from his large employment of educated slaves in the copying of manuscripts. Cicero's silence on the subject in the Letters to Atticus is fully explained by the fact that they were both in Rome during the greater part of the time between the death of Lucretius and the publication of his poem. Again, Cicero's strong opposition to the Epicurean doctrines was not incompatible with the closest friendship with many who professed them; and this opposition was not conspicuously declared till some years after this time. Lucretius would have sympathised with Cicero's political attitude, as he appears to commend Memmius for adopting a similar attitude in his Praetorship, and he must have known that Cicero was the man of widest literary culture then living. There is thus no great difficulty in supposing that the work of even so uncompromising a partisan as Lucretius should have been placed, either by his own request or by the wish of his friends, in the hands of one who was not attracted to it either by strong poetical or philosophical sympathy. The energetic kindliness of Cicero's nature, and his active interest in literature, would have prompted him not to decline the service if he were asked to render it. Thus, although on this point too our judgment may well be suspended, we may think with pleasure of the good-will and kindly offices of the most humane and energetic among Roman writers, as exercised in behalf of Lucretius after his untimely death. This is all the direct external evidence available for the personal history of Lucretius. It is remarkable, when compared with the information given in his other notices, that the record of Jerome does not even mention the poet's birth-place. This may be explained on the supposition either that the authorities followed by Jerome knew very little about him, or that, if he were born at Rome, there would not be the same motive for giving prominence to the place of his birth, as in the case of poets and men of letters who brought honour to the less famous districts of Italy. While Lucretius applies the word _patria_ to the Roman State ('patriai tempore iniquo'), and the adjective _patrius_ to the Latin language, these words are used by other Roman poets,--Ennius and Virgil for instance,--in reference to their own provincial homes. The Gentile name Lucretius was one eminently Roman, nor is there ground for believing that, like the equally ancient and noble name borne by the other great poet of the age, it had become common in other parts of Italy. The name suggests the inference that Lucretius was descended from one of the most ancient patrician houses of Rome, but one, as is pointed out by Mr. Munro, more famous in the legendary than in the later annals of the Republic. Some members of the same house are mentioned in the letters of Cicero among the partisans of Pompey: and possibly the Lucretius Ofella, who was one of the victims of Sulla's tyranny, may have been connected with the poet. As the position indicated by the whole tone of the poem is that of a man living in easy circumstances, and of one, who, though repelled by it, was yet familiar with the life of pleasure and luxury, he must have belonged either to a senatorian family, or to one of the richer equestrian families, the members of which, if not engaged in financial and commercial affairs, often lived the life of country gentlemen on their estates and employed their leisure in the cultivation of literature. The tone of the dedication to Memmius, a member of a noble plebeian house, and of the occasional addresses to him in the body of the poem, is not that of a client to a patron, but of an equal to an equal:-- Sed tua me virtus tamen et sperata voluptas Suavis amicitiae--. While Lucretius pays the tribute of admiration to the literary accomplishment of his friend, and to the active part which he played in politics, he yet addresses him with the authority of a master. In a society constituted as that of Rome was in the last age of the Republic this tone could only be assumed to a member of the governing class by a social equal. Memmius combined the pursuits of a politician, a man of letters, and a man of pleasure; and in none of these capacities does he seem to have been worthy of the affection and admiration of Lucretius. But as he filled the office of Praetor in the year 58 B.C.[11] it may be inferred that he and the poet were about the same age, and thus the original bond between them may probably have been that of early education and literary sympathies. That Memmius retained a taste for poetry amid the pursuits and pleasures of his profligate career is shown by the fact that he was the author of a volume of amatory poems, and also by his taking with him, in the year 57 B.C., the poets Helvius Cinna and Catullus, on his staff to Bithynia. The keen discernment of the younger poet, sharpened by personal animosity, formed a truer estimate of his chief, than that expressed by the philosophic enthusiast. But at the time in which the words-- Nec Memmi clara propago Talibus in rebus communi deesse saluti-- were written, even Cicero regarded him as one of the bulwarks of the senatorian cause against Clodius and his influential supporters. And neither the scandal of his private nor of his public life prevented his being in later years among the orator's correspondents. This relation to Memmius is the only additional fact which an examination of the poem brings into light. Nothing is learned from it of the poet's parentage, his education, his favourite places of residence, of his career, of his good or evil fortune. There were eminent Epicurean teachers at Athens and Rome (Patro, Phaedrus, Philodemus, etc.) during his youth and manhood, but it is useless to ask what influence of teachers or personal experience induced him to become so passionate a devotee of the doctrines of Epicurus. Yet though no direct reference to his circumstances is found in his writings, we may yet mark indirect traces of the impression produced upon him by the age in which his youth and manhood were passed; we seem to catch some glimpses of his habitual pursuits and tastes, to gain some real insight into his being, to apprehend the attitude in which he stood to the great teachers of the past, and to know the man by knowing the objects in life which most deeply interested him. Nothing, we may well believe, was further from his wish or intention than to leave behind him any record of himself. No Roman poet has so entirely sunk himself and the remembrance of his own fortunes in absorption in his subject. But his strong personal force and individuality have penetrated deeply into all his representation, his reasoning, and his exhortation. From the beginning to the end of the poem we feel that we are listening to a living voice speaking to us with the direct impressiveness of personal experience and conviction. No writer ever used words more clearly or more sincerely: no one shows a greater scorn for the rhetorical artifices which disguise the lack of meaning or insinuate a false conclusion by fine-sounding phrases:-- Quae belle tangere possunt Auris et lepido quae sunt fucata sonore[12]. The union of an original and independent personality with the utmost sincerity of thought and speech is a characteristic in which Lucretius resembles Thucydides. It is this which gives to the works of both, notwithstanding their studied self-suppression, the vivid interest of a direct personal revelation. The tone of many passages in the poem clearly indicates that Lucretius, though taking no personal part in the active politics of his age, was profoundly moved by the effects which they produced on human happiness and character. Thus the lines at iii. 70-74-- Sanguine civili rem conflant, etc.-- recall the thought and spectacle of crime and bloodshed vividly presented to him in the impressible years of his youth[12]. Other passages are an immediate reflexion of the disturbance and alarm of the times in which the poem was written. Thus the opening lines of the second book, which contrast the security of the contemplative life with the strife of political and military ambition, seem to be suggested by the action of what is sometimes called the first triumvirate. The lines-- Si non forte tuas legiones per loca campi, etc.-- have been noted[14] as a probable allusion to the position actually taken up by Julius Caesar outside of Rome in the opening months of the year 58 B.C. Some earlier lines of the same passage-- Certare ingenio, contendere nobilitate, Noctes atque dies niti praestante labore Ad summas emergere opes rerumque potiri,-- have a resemblance to words directly applied by Cicero to Caesar[15], and are certainly more applicable to him than to any other of the poet's contemporaries. The political reflexions in the poem, as for instance that at v. 1123, seem, in almost all cases, to be forced from him by the memory of the first civil war, or the vague dread of that which was impending. It is not from any effeminate recoil from danger, but rather from horror of the turbulence, disorder, and crimes against the sanctities of human life, involved in the strife of ambition, that Lucretius preaches the lessons of political quietism. And while his humanity of feeling makes him shrink from the prospect of evil days, like those which he well remembered, again awaiting his country, his capacity for pure and simple pleasures makes him equally shrink from the spectacle of prodigal luxury which Rome then presented in a degree never before witnessed in the world. Thus the first general impression of Lucretius which we form from his poem is that of one who, from a strong distaste to the life of action and social pleasure, deliberately chose the life of contemplation,--the 'fallentis semita vitae.' Some illustrations of his argument--as, for instance, a description of the state of mental tension produced by witnessing public games and spectacles for many days in succession[16], of the reflexion of the colours cast on the stage by the awnings of the theatre[17], of the works of art adorning the houses of the great[18], etc.--imply that he had not always been a stranger to the enjoyments of city life, and that they attracted him by a certain fascination of pomp and novelty. His pictures of the follies of the 'jeunesse dorée' (at iv. 1121, etc.), and of sated luxury (at iii. 1060, etc.), show that he had been a witness of the conditions of life out of which they were engendered. At iv. 784, in speaking of the power of the mind to call up images, he specifies 'conventus hominum, pompam, convivia, pugnas.' But such illustrations are rare when compared with those which speak of a life passed in the open air, and of intimate familiarity with many aspects of Nature. The vivid minuteness with which outward things are described, as well as the occasional use of such words as _vidi_[19], show that though a few of the sights observed by him may have been drawn from the physics of Epicurus[20], the great mass of them had either been originally observed by himself or at least had been verified in his own experience. He was endowed not only with the poet's susceptibility to the beauty and movement of the outward world, but also with the observing faculty and curiosity of a naturalist: and by both impulses he was more attracted to the solitudes of Nature than to the haunts of men. Many bright illustrations of his argument tell of hours spent by the sea shore. Thus he notes minutely the effect of the exhalations from the salt water in wearing away rocks and walls (i. 336; iv. 220), of the invisible influence of the sea-air in producing moisture in clothes (i. 305; vi. 472), or a salt taste in the mouth (iv. 222), of the varied forms of shells paving the shore (ii. 374), of the sudden change of colour when the winds raise the white crest of the waves (ii. 765), of the appearance of sky and water produced by a black storm-cloud passing over the sea (vi. 256). Other passages show his familiarity with inland scenes,--with the violent rush of rivers in flood (i. 280, etc.), or their stately flow through fresh meadows (ii. 362), or their ceaseless unperceived action in eating away their banks (v. 256);--or again, with all the processes of husbandry, the growth of plants and trees, the ways of flocks and herds in their pastures, and the sounds and sights of the pathless woods. While he anticipates Virgil in his Italian love of peaceful landscape, he shows some foretaste of the modern passion for the mountains,--as (at ii. 331) where he speaks of 'some spot among the lofty hills,' commanding a distant view of a wide expanse of plain, and (at iv. 575) where he recalls the memory of wanderings among mountain solitudes-- Palantis comites cum montis inter opacos Quaerimus et magna dispersos voce ciemus,-- and (at vi. 469) where he notices the more powerful action of the wind on the movements of the clouds at high altitudes-- Nam loca declarat sursum ventosa patere Res ipsa et sensus, montis cum ascendimus altos. Even some of the metaphorical phrases in which he figures forth the pursuit of truth seem to be taken from mountain adventure[21]. The mention of companionship in some of these wanderings, and in other scenes in which the charm of Nature is represented as enhancing the enjoyment of a simple meal-- Propter aquae rivum sub ramis arboris altae,-- enables us to think of him as, although isolated in his thoughts from other men, yet not separated from them in the daily intercourse of life by any unsocial austerity. Such separation would have been quite opposed both to the teaching and the example of his master. Some remembrance of active adventure is suggested by illustrations of his philosophy drawn from the experience of a sea-voyage (iv. 387, etc., 432), of riding through a rapid stream (iv. 420), of watching the action of dogs tracking their game through woods and over mountains (i. 404), or renewing the memories of the chase in their dreams (v. 991, etc.). The lines (at ii. 40, etc., and 323, etc.) show that his imagination had been moved by witnessing the evolutions of armies, not indeed in actual warfare, but in the pomp and pageantry of martial spectacles,--'belli simulacra cientes.' These and many other indirect indications afford some glimpses of his habitual manner of life and of the pursuits that gave him most lively pleasure: but they do not give us any special knowledge of the particular districts of Italy in which he lived, or of the scenes in foreign lands which he may have visited. The poem tells us nothing immediately of the trials or passions of his life, though of both he seems to bear the scars. But as passages in which he reveals the deep secrets of human passion and suffering prove him to have been a man of strong, ardent, and vividly susceptible temperament, so the numerous illustrations drawn from the repertory of his personal observation tell of an eye trained to take delight in the outward face of Nature as well as of a mind unwearied in its search into her hidden laws. One great charm of his work is that it breathes of the open air more than of the library. If, in dealing with the problems of human life, his strain-- 'Is fraught too deep with pain,' yet to him too might be applied the lines written of one who, though not comparable to him in intellectual and imaginative power, yet, in his spiritual isolation from the world, seems almost like his modern counterpart-- 'And thou hast pleasures too to share With those who come to thee, Balms floating on thy mountain air And healing sights to see[22].' But we may trust with even more confidence to the indications of his inner than of his outward life. The spirit and purpose which impelled Lucretius to expound his philosophy can be understood without any collateral knowledge of his history. The dominant impulse of his being is the ardent desire to emancipate human life from the fears and passions by which it is marred and degraded. He has more of the zeal of a religious reformer than any other ancient thinker, except one who in all his ways of life was most unlike him, the Athenian Socrates. The speculative enthusiasm which bears him along through his argument is altogether subsidiary to the furtherance of his practical purpose. Even the poetical power to which the work owes its immortality was valued chiefly as a pleasing means of instilling the unpalatable medicine of his philosophy[23] into the minds and hearts of unwilling hearers. It is the constant presence of this practical purpose, and the profound sense which he has of the actual misery and degradation of human life, and of the peace and dignity which are attainable by man, that impart to his words the peculiar tone of impassioned earnestness to which there is no parallel in ancient literature. Among his personal characteristics none is more prominent than his consciousness both of the greatness of the work on which he was engaged, and of his own power to cope with it. The passage in which his high self-confidence is most powerfully proclaimed (i. 920, etc.) has been imitated both by Virgil and Milton. The sense of novelty, adventure, and high aspiration expressed in the lines-- Avia Pieridum peragro loca nullius ante Trita solo-- moved Virgil less powerfully in speaking of his humbler theme-- Sed me Parnassi deserta per ardua dulcis Raptat amor; and inspired the English poet in his great invocation:-- 'I thence Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song, That with no middle flight intends to soar Above the Aonian mount, while it pursues Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme. The sense of difficulty and the joy of overcoming it meet us with a keen bracing effect in many passages of the poem. He speaks disdainfully of those enquirers who fall into error by shrinking from the more adventurous paths that lead to truth-- Ardua dum metuunt amittunt vera viai. Without disowning the passion for fame,--'laudis spes magna,' so powerful an incentive to the Roman temperament,--he is more inspired and supported in his arduous task by 'the sweet love of the Muses.' The delight in the exercise of his art and the joyful energy sustained through the long processes of gathering and arranging his materials appear in such passages as iii. 419-20:-- Conquisita diu dulcique reperta labore Digna tua pergam disponere carmina cura: and again at ii. 730-- Nunc age dicta meo dulci quaesita labore Percipe. The thoroughness and devotion of a student tell their own tale in such expressions as the 'studio disposta fideli,' and the 'noctes vigilare serenas' in the dedication to Memmius, and in the more enthusiastic acknowledgment of the source from which he drew his philosophy at iii. 29, etc.-- Tuisque ex, inclute, chartis, Floriferis ut apes in saltibus omnia libant, Omnia nos itidem depascimur aurea dicta. The absorbing interest with which he carried on the work of enquiry and of composition appears in illustrations of his argument drawn from his own pursuits; as where (ii. 979) in arguing that, if the atoms have the properties of sense, those of which man is compounded must have the intellectual attributes of man, he says,-- Multaque de rerum mixtura dicere callent Et sibi proporro quae sint primordia quaerunt[24]; and, again (at iv. 969), in explaining how men in their dreams seem to carry on the pursuits to which they are most devoted, how lawyers seem to plead their causes, generals to fight their battles over again, sailors to contend with the elements, he adds these lines:-- Nos agere hoc autem et naturam quaerere rerum Semper et inventam patriis exponere chartis[25]. His frequent use of the sacrificial phrase 'Hoc age,' affords evidence of the religious earnestness with which he had devoted himself to his task. The feeling animating him through all his great adventure,--through the wastest flats as well as the most commanding heights over which it leads him,--is something different from the delight of a poet in his art, of a scholar in his books, of a philosopher in his thought, of a naturalist in his observation. All of these modes of feeling are combined with the passion of his whole moral and intellectual being, aroused by the contemplation of the greatest of all themes--'maiestas cognita rerum'--and concentrated on the greatest of practical ends, the emancipation and elevation of human life. The life of contemplation which he alone among the Romans deliberately chose and realised he carried out with Roman energy and fortitude. It was with him no life of indolent musing, but one of thought and study, varied and braced by original observation. It was a life, also, of strenuous literary effort employed in giving clearness to obscure materials, and in eliciting poetical charm from a language to which the musical cadences of verse had been hitherto almost unknown. Above all, it was the life of one who, while feeling the spell of Nature more profoundly than any poet who had gone before him, did not in that new rapture forget 'The human heart by which we live.' His high intellectual confidence, based on his firm trust in his master, shows itself in a spirit of intolerance towards the school which was the chief antagonist of Epicureanism at Rome. His argument is a vigorous protest against philosophical error and scepticism, as well as against popular ignorance and superstition. His polemical attitude is seen in the frequent use of such expressions as 'vinco,' 'dede manus,' etc., addressed to an imaginary opponent. Discussion of topics, not apparently necessary to his main argument, is raised with the object of carrying the war into the enemy's camp. Such frequently recurring expressions as 'ut quidam fingunt,' 'perdelirum esse videtur,' etc., are invariably aimed at the Stoics[26]. Of other early philosophers, even when dissenting from their opinions, he speaks in terms of admiration and reverence: but Heraclitus, whose physical explanation of the universe was adopted by the Stoics, is described in terms of disparagement, levelled as much against his later followers as against himself, as-- Clarus ob obscuram linguam magis inter inanis Quamde gravis inter Graios qui vera requirunt. The traditional opposition between Democritus and Heraclitus lived after them. Adherence to the doctrine of 'atoms and the void,' and to that of 'the pure fiery element,' became the symbol of a radical divergence in the whole view of human life. While there is frequent allusion to the Stoics in the poem, there is no direct mention either of them or of their chief teachers, Zeno, Chrysippus, or Cleanthes. Neither do the greater names of Socrates, Plato, or Aristotle appear in it, though one or two passages clearly imply some familiarity with the writings of Plato[27]. But among the moral teachers of antiquity he acknowledges Epicurus only. The whole enthusiasm of his temperament breaks out in admiration of him. He alone is the true interpreter of Nature and conqueror of superstition (i. 75); the reformer 'who has made pure the human heart' (vi. 24); the 'guide out of the storms and darkness of life into calm and light' (iii. 1; v. 11, 12); the 'sun who at his rising extinguished all the lesser stars' (iii. 1044). He is to be ranked even as a God on account of his great services to man, in teaching him the mastery over his fears and passions:-- Deus ille fuit, deus, inclute Memmi[28]. He speaks of his master throughout not only with the affection of a disciple, but with an emotion akin to religious ecstasy[29]. His admiration for him springs from a deeper source of spiritual sentiment than that of Ennius for Scipio, or of Virgil for Augustus. Though Epicurus inspired much affection in his lifetime, and though other great writers after Lucretius,--such as Seneca, Juvenal, and Lucian,--vindicate his name from the dishonour which the perversion of his doctrines brought upon it, yet even the most favourable criticism of his life and teaching must find it difficult to sympathise with the idolatry of Lucretius. Yet his error, if it be one, springs from a generous source. He attributes his own imaginative interest in Nature to a philosopher who examined the phenomena of the outward world merely to find a basis for the destruction of all religious belief. He saturates with his own deep human feeling a moral system which professes to secure human happiness by emptying life of its most sacred associations, most passionate longings, and profoundest affections. There was a truer affinity of nature between Lucretius and another philosopher whom he names with the warmest feelings of love and veneration--Empedocles of Agrigentum--the most famous of the early physiological poets of Greece. He flourished during the fifth century B.C., and was the author of a didactic poem on Nature, of which some fragments still remain, sufficient to indicate the nature of the work and the character of the man. These fragments prove that Lucretius had carefully studied the older poem, and adopted it as his model in using a poetical form and diction to expound his philosophical system. He declares, indeed, his opposition to the doctrine of Empedocles, which traced the origin of all things to four original elements; but he adopted into his own system many both of his expressions and of his philosophical ideas. The line in which the Roman poet enunciates his first principle,-- Nullam rem e nilo gigni divinitus unquam, was obviously taken from the lines of the old poem [Greek: peri physeôs]-- [Greek: ek tou gar mê eontos amêchanon esti genesthai to t' eon exollysthai anênyston kai aprêkton.] Speaking of Sicily as a rich and wonderful land, Lucretius pays his tribute of love and admiration to his illustrious predecessor in these lines,-- Nil tamen hoc habuisse viro praeclarius in se Nec sanctum magis et mirum carumque videtur. Carmina quin etiam divini pectoris eius Vociferantur et exponunt praeclara reperta, Ut vix humana videatur stirpe creatus[30]. There is a close agreement between the two poetical philosophers in their imaginative mode of conceiving Nature. They both represented the principle of beauty and life in the universe under the symbol of the Goddess of Love--'[Greek: Kypri basileia]'; 'alma Venus, genetrix.' They both explain the unceasing process of decay and renovation in the world by an image drawn from the most impressive spectacle of human life--a mighty battle, waged through all time between opposing forces. The burden and the mystery of life seem to weigh heavily on both, and to mould their very language to a deep, monotonous solemnity of tone. But along with this affinity of temperament there is also a marked difference in their modes of thought and feeling. The view of Nature in the philosophy of Empedocles appears to be just emerging out of the anthropomorphic fancies of an earlier time: the first rays of knowledge are seen trying to pierce through the clouds of the dawn of enquiry: the dreams and sorrows of religious mysticism accompany the awakened energies of the reason. His mournful tone is the voice of the intellectual spirit lamenting its former home, and baffled in its eager desire to comprehend 'the whole.' Lucretius, on the other hand, saw the outward world as it looks in the light of day, neither glorified by the mystic colours of religion, nor concealed by the shadows of mythology. He was moved neither by the passionate longing of the soul, nor by the 'divine despair' of the intellect: but he felt profoundly the sorrows of the heart, and was weighed down by the ever-present consciousness of the misery and wretchedness in the world. The complaint of the first is one which has been uttered from time to time by some solitary thinker in modern as in ancient days:-- [Greek: pauron de zôês abiou meros athrêsantes hôkymoroi, kapnoio dikên arthentes apeptan, auto monon peisthentes, hotô prosekursen hekastos, pantos' elaunomenoi; to d' oulon epeuchetai heurein autôs. out' epiderkta tad' andrasin out' epakousta oute noô perilêpta[31].] The other gives a real and expressive utterance to that 'thought of inexhaustible melancholy,' which has weighed on every human heart:-- Miscetur funere vagor Quem pueri tollunt visentis luminis oras: Nec nox ulla diem neque noctem aurora secutast Quae non audierit mixtos vagitibus aegris Ploratus mortis comites et funeris atri[32]. Besides Epicurus and Empedocles Lucretius mentions Democritus and Anaxagoras, and speaks even of those whom he confutes as 'making many happy discoveries by divine inspiration,' and as 'uttering their responses from the shrine of their own hearts with more holiness and truth than the Pythia from the tripod and laurel of Apollo.' The reverence which other men felt in presence of the ceremonies of religion he feels in presence of the majesty of Nature; and to the interpreters of her meaning he ascribes the holiness claimed by the ministers of religion. Thus, to a doctrine of Democritus he applies the words 'sancta viri sententia.' The divinest faculty in man is that by which truth is discovered. The highest office of poetry is to clothe the discoveries of thought with the charm of graceful expression and musical verse[33]. Of other Greek authors, Homer and Euripides are those of whom we find most traces in the poem. To the first he awards a high pre-eminence above all other poets,-- Adde repertores doctrinarum atque leporum, Adde Heliconiadum comites; quorum unus Homerus Sceptra potitus eadem aliis sopitu' quietest[34]. The passages in which Lucretius imitates him show how clearly he recognised his exact vision of outward things, and his true appreciation of the moral strength and dignity of man. The frequent imitations of Euripides[35] show that while he felt the spell of his pathos, he was also attracted by the poetic mould into which the tragic poet has cast the physical speculations of Anaxagoras. Allusion is made in tones of indifference or disparagement to other poets of Greece, as having, in common with the painters of former times, given shape and substance to the superstitious fancies of mankind. It is characteristic of his powerful and independent genius, that, unlike the younger poets of his generation, he adheres to the older writers of the great days of Greece, and acknowledges no debt to the Alexandrine School. Although amply furnished with the knowledge necessary for the performance of his task, he is a poet of original genius much more than of learning and culture: and he is thus more drawn to those who acted on him by a kindred power, than to those who might have served him as models of poetic form or repertories of poetic illustration. The strength of his understanding attracted him to some of the great prose-writers of Greece, by whom that quality is most conspicuously displayed; notably to Thucydides, whom he has closely followed in his account of the 'Plague at Athens,' and, as has been shown by Mr. Munro, to Hippocrates. The kind of attraction which the last of these has for him confirms the criticism of Goethe, that Lucretius shows the observing faculty of a physician, as well as of a poet. The diction and rhythm of the poem, as well as the more direct tribute of personal acknowledgment[36], prove that he was an admiring student of his own countryman Ennius, to whom in some qualities of his temperament and genius he bore a certain resemblance. Many lines, phrases, and archaic words in Lucretius, such as-- Per gentis Italas hominum quae clara clueret,-- Lumina sis oculis etiam bonus Ancu' reliquit,-- inde super terras fluit agmine dulci,-- multa munita virum vi; caerula caeli Templa; Acherusia templa; luminis oras; famul infimus; induperator; Graius homo, etc.-- have a clear ring of the old poet. The few allusions to Roman history in the poem, as, for instance, the line-- Scipiadas, belli fulmen, Carthaginis horror,-- the specification at iii. 833 of the second Punic War as a momentous crisis in human affairs,--the description at v. 1226 of a great naval disaster, such as happened in the first Punic War--the introduction there of elephants into the picture of the pomp and circumstance of war,--suggest the inference that, just as events and personages of the earlier history of England live in the imaginations of many English readers from their representation in the historical plays of Shakspeare, so the past history of his country lived for Lucretius in the representation of Ennius. But of the national pride by which the older poet was animated, the work of Lucretius bears only scanty traces. The feeling which moved him to identify the puissant energy pervading the universe with 'the mother of the Aeneadae,' and the motive of his prayer for peace addressed to that Power,-- Nam neque nos agere hoc patriai tempore iniquo,-- seem indeed to spring from sources of patriotic affection, perhaps all the deeper because not too loudly proclaimed. But in the body of the poem his illustrations are taken as frequently from Greek as from Roman story, from the strangeness of foreign lands as from the beauty of Italian scenes. The Georgics of Virgil, in the whole conception of Nature as a living power, and in many special features, owe much to the imaginative thought of Lucretius; but nothing can be more unlike the spirit of the older poet than the episodes in which Virgil pours forth all his Roman feeling and his love of Italy. The height from which Lucretius contemplates all human history, as 'a procession of the nations handing on the torch of life from one to another,' is wide apart from that from which Virgil beholds all the nations of the world doing homage to the majesty of Rome. The poem of Lucretius breathes the spirit of a man, apparently indifferent to the ordinary sources of pleasure and of pride among his countrymen. Living in an era, the most momentous in its action on the future history of the world, he was only repelled by its turbulent activity. The contemplation of the infinite and eternal mass and order of Nature made the issues of that age and the imperial greatness of his country appear to him as transient as the events of the old Trojan and Theban wars. To him, as to the modern poet, whose imagination most nearly resembles his, the thought of more enduring things had 'Power to make Our noisy years seem moments in the being Of the eternal silence.' But while by his silence on the subject of national glory and his ardent speculative enthusiasm Lucretius seems to be more of a Greek than of a Roman, yet no Roman writer possessed in larger measure the moral temper of the great Republic. He is a truer type of the strong character and commanding genius of his country than Virgil or Horace. He has the Roman conquering energy, the Roman reverence for the majesty of law, the Roman gift for introducing order into a confused world, the Roman power of impressing his authority on the minds of men. In his fortitude, his superiority to human weakness, his seriousness of spirit, his dignity of bearing, he seems to embody the great Roman qualities 'constantia' and 'gravitas.' If in the force and sincerity of his own nature he reminds us of the earliest Roman writer of genius, in these last qualities, the acquired and inherited virtues of his race, he reminds us of the last representative writer, whose tone is worthy of the 'Senatus populusque Romanus.' But Lucretius is much more than a type of the strong Roman qualities. He combines a poetic freshness of feeling, a love of simple living, an independence of the world, with a tenderness and breadth of sympathy, and a power of sounding into the depths of human sorrow, such as only a very few among the ancients--Homer, Sophocles, Virgil,--and not many among the poets or thinkers of the modern world have displayed. In no quality does he rise further above the standard of his age than in his absolute sincerity and his unswerving devotion to truth[37]. He combines in himself some of the rarest elements in the Greek and the Roman temperament,--the Greek ardour of speculation, the Roman's firm hold on reality. A poet of the age of Julius Caesar, he is animated by the spirit of an early Greek enquirer. He unites the speculative passion of the dawn of ancient science with the minute observation of its meridian; and he applies the imaginative conceptions formed in the first application of abstract thought to the universe to interpret the living beauty of the world. [Footnote 1: According to Mommsen's opinion that Julius Caesar was born in 102 B.C.] [Footnote 2: Woltier in Phil. Jahrb. cxxix, referred to in Schmidt's Catullus, attempts to show by an examination of the dates assigned for the birth of Lucretius, that he was born in 97 B.C. and died in 53 B.C. But the most definite statement we have is that he died on the day in which Virgil assumed the _toga virilis_, and that was in the second consulship of Pompey and Crassus, i.e. 55 B.C. Besides both tradition and internal evidence lead to the conclusion that his poem was not given to the world till after his death, and it certainly had been read by both the Ciceros early in 54 B.C. F. Marx in the Rheinisches Museum, 'de aetate Lucretii,' holds that he was born in 97 B.C., and died in his 42nd year, B.C. 55. He makes a more important contribution to the controversy in the remark 'acceptissima vero Enniana Lucretii poesis fuisse putanda est Ciceroni.' Whether Lucretius died in his 44th or 42nd year cannot be of much consequence to anybody; and, in the general uncertainty of Jerome's dates, it seems impossible to determine it one way or other.] [Footnote 3: Professor Wallace in his interesting account of 'Epicureanism' writes, in reference to the way in which Epicurus himself was regarded in a later age, 'And the maladies of Epicurus are treated as an anticipatory judgment of Heaven upon him for his alleged impieties.'--Epicureanism, p. 46.] [Footnote 4: This consideration is urged by De Quincey in one of his essays.] [Footnote 5: iii. 1039, etc.] [Footnote 6: iv. 33-38:-- Atque eadem nobis vigilantibus obvia mentes Terrificant atque in somnis, cum saepe figuras Contuimur miras simulacraque luce carentum, Quae nos horrifice languentis saepe sopore Excierunt, ne forte animas Acherunte reamur Effugere aut umbras inter vivos volitare.] [Footnote 7: An article in the Fortnightly Review of September, 1878, on 'Hallucination of the Senses,' suggests a possible explanation of the mental condition of Lucretius, during the composition of some part of his work. The writer speaks of the power of calling these hallucinations up as being quite consistent with perfect sanity of mind, but as sometimes inducing madness. He goes on, 'Or, if the person does not go out of his mind, he may be so distressed by the persistence of the apparition which he has created, as to fall into melancholy and despair, and even to commit suicide.'] [Footnote 8: The theory of Lachmann and others that Q. Cicero was the editor may possibly be true. He dabbled in poetry himself, and he was more nearly of the same age as Lucretius, and thus perhaps more likely to have been a friend of his. The fact that Cicero's remark is in answer to one of his might suggest the opinion that the poem had been read by him before it became known to the older brother, and perhaps been sent by him to Cicero. But if Q. Cicero was the editor, Jerome must here also have copied his authorities carelessly. In the time of Jerome the familiar name of Cicero must have been understood as applying to the great orator and philosophic writer, not to his comparatively obscure brother. The only certain inference which can be drawn from this mention of the poem is that it had been read, shortly after its appearance, in the beginning of the year 54 B.C., by both brothers. Yet the consideration of the whole case does not lead to the rejection of the statement that M. Cicero was the editor as incredible, or even as highly improbable. If it was he, he must have performed his task very perfunctorily. Possibly, as Mr. Munro suggests, all that he may have been asked to do was to introduce the work to the public by the use of his name. The actual revision and arrangement of the poem may have been made by one of the 'librarii' of Atticus.] [Footnote 9: E.g. Tusc. Disp. i. 21, especially the sentence--'Quae quidem cogitans soleo saepe admirari non nullorum insolentiam philosophorum qui naturae cognitionem admirantur, eiusque inventori et principi gratias exultantes agunt eumque venerantur ut deum.'] [Footnote 10: The use of _tamen_ in the sense of 'all the same' is not uncommon in the colloquial language of Terence, which the language of Cicero's familiar letters closely resembles.] [Footnote 11: At that time he would be about forty-one years of age--the same age as Lucretius, if, as is most probable, he was born in 99 B.C.] [Footnote 12: i. 643-4; cf. [Greek: oute hôs logographoi xunethesan epi to prosagôgoteron tê akroasei ê alêthesteron].--Thuc. i. 21.] [Footnote 13: The lines (v. 999)-- At non multa virum sub signis milia ducta Una dies dabat exitio, etc.-- might well be a reminiscence of the great massacre at the Colline gate.] [Footnote 14: Cp. Munro, Note II, p. 413. Third Edition.] [Footnote 15: 'Si jam violentior aliqua in re C. Caesar fuisset, si eum magnitudo contentionis, studium gloriae, praestans animus, excellens nobilitas aliquo impulisset.'--In Vatinium 6.] [Footnote 16: iv. 973, etc.] [Footnote 17: iv. 75, etc.] [Footnote 18: ii. 24, etc.] [Footnote 19: In places where he is not drawing from his own observation, he uses such expressions as _memorant_; e.g. iii. 642.] [Footnote 20: E.g. iv. 353, etc.] [Footnote 21: E.g. Ardua dum metuunt amittunt vera viai, and Avia Pieridum peragro loca.] [Footnote 22: Obermann, by M. Arnold.] [Footnote 23: i. 935-50.] [Footnote 24: 'And can discourse much on the combination of things, and enquire moreover, what are their own first elements.'] [Footnote 25: 'While I seem ever to be plying this task earnestly, to be enquiring into Nature, and explaining my discoveries in writings in my native tongue.' This is one of those passages which seem to indicate an unhealthy overstrain which may have been the precursor of the final disturbance of 'his power to shape.'] [Footnote 26: Cp. Munro's notes on the passages where these expressions occur.] [Footnote 27: E.g. ii. 77, etc. Augescunt aliae gentes, etc., suggested by a passage in the Laws:--[Greek: gennôntas te kai ektrephontas paidas, kathaper lampada ton bion paradidontas allois ex allôn]--and the lines which recur several times, etc. 'Nam veluti pueri trepidant,' which Mr. Munro aptly compares with the words in the Phaedo (77), [Greek: isôs eni tis kai en hêmin pais, hostis ta toiauta phobeitai.]] [Footnote 28: v. 8.] [Footnote 29: Cf. His ibi me rebus quaedam divina voluptas Percipit adque horror.] [Footnote 30: 'But nought greater than this man does it seem to have possessed, nor aught more holy, more wonderful, or more beloved. Yea, too, strains of divine genius proclaim aloud and make known his great discoveries, so that he seems scarcely to be of mortal race.'--i. 729-33.] [Footnote 31: 'When they have gazed for a few years of a life that is indeed no life, speedily fulfilling their doom, they vanish away like a smoke, convinced of that only which each hath met in his own experience, as they were buffeted about to and fro. Vainly doth each boast to have discovered the whole. The eye cannot behold it, nor the ear hear it, nor the mind of man comprehend it.'] [Footnote 32: 'With death there is ever blending the wail of infants newly born into the light. And no night hath ever followed day, no morning dawned on night, but hath heard the mingled sounds of feeble infant wailings and of lamentations that follow the dead and black funeral train.'--ii. 576-80.] [Footnote 33: i. 943-50.] [Footnote 34: iii. 1036-38.] [Footnote 35: Cf. notes ii. of Mr. Munro's edition.] [Footnote 36: i. 117, etc.] [Footnote 37: Mr. Froude, in his 'Julius Caesar,' says, 'The age was saturated with cant.' Perhaps, to that condition of the age we, in part, owe one of the sincerest protests against cant, and unreality of every kind, ever written. Both speculatively and practically Cicero appears at a great disadvantage when compared with Lucretius in these respects.] CHAPTER XII. THE PHILOSOPHY OF LUCRETIUS. The peculiarity of the poem of Lucretius, that which makes it unique in literature, is the fact that it is a long sustained argument in verse. The prosaic title of the poem, 'De rerum natura,'--a translation of the Greek [Greek: peri physeôs],--indicates that the method of exposition was adopted, not primarily with the view of affecting the imagination, but with that of communicating truth in a reasoned system. In the lines, in which the poet most confidently asserts his genius, he professes to fulfil the three distinct offices of a philosophical teacher, a moral reformer, and a poet,-- Primum quod magnis doceo de rebus et artis Religionum animum nodis exsolvere pergo, Deinde quod obscura de re tam lucida pango Carmina, musaeo contingens cuncta lepore[1]. We have, accordingly, to examine the poem in three different aspects:-- I. as the exposition of a system of speculative philosophy. II. as an attempt to emancipate and reform human life. III. as a work of poetical art and genius. But these three aspects, though they may be considered separately, are not really independent of one another. The speculative ideas on which the system of philosophy is ultimately based impart confidence and elevation to the moral teaching, and new meaning and imaginative grandeur to the interpretation of Nature and of human life, on which the permanent value of the poem depends. Thus, although the philosophical argument, which forms as it were the skeleton of the work, is in many places barren and uninteresting, yet it is necessary to master it before we can form a true estimate of the personality of the poet, of the main passion and labour of his life, of the full meaning of his thought, and the full compass of his poetic genius. Moreover, the study of the argument is interesting on its own account. In no other work are the strength and the weakness of ancient physical philosophy so apparent. If the poem of Lucretius adds nothing to the knowledge of scientific facts, it throws a powerful light on one phase of the ancient mind. It is a witness of the eager imagination and of the searching thought of that early time, which endeavoured, by the force of individual thinkers and the intuitions of genius, to solve a problem which is perhaps beyond the reach of the human faculties, and to explain, at a single glance, secrets of Nature which have only slowly been revealed to the patient labours and combined investigations of many generations of enquirers. I.--EXAMINATION OF THE ARGUMENT. I. The philosophical system expounded in the poem is the atomic theory of Democritus[2], in the form in which it was accepted by Epicurus, and made the basis of his moral and religious doctrines. Lucretius lays no claim to original discovery as a philosopher: he professes only to explain, in his native language, 'Graiorum obscura reperta.' His originality consists, not in any expansion or modification of the Epicurean doctrine, but in the new life which he has imparted to its exposition, and in the poetical power with which he has applied it to reveal the secret of the life of Nature and of man's true position in the world. After enunciating the first principles of the atomic philosophy, he discusses in the last four books of the poem some special applications of that doctrine, which formed part of the physical system of Epicurus. But the extent to which he carries these discussions is limited by the practical purpose which he has in view. The impelling motive of all his labour is the impulse to purify human life, and, especially, to emancipate it from the terrors of superstition. The source of these terrors is traced to the general ignorance of certain facts in Nature,--ignorance, namely, of the constitution and condition of our souls and bodies, of the means by which the world came into existence and is still maintained, and lastly, of the causes of many natural phenomena, which are attributed to the direct agency of the gods. With the view of establishing knowledge in the room of ignorance on these questions, it is necessary, in the first place, to give a full account of the original principles of being: and to this enquiry the two first books of the poem are devoted. Had his purpose been merely speculative, the subject of the fifth book,--viz. the origin of the world, of life, and of human society,--would naturally have been treated immediately after the exposition of these first principles. But the order of treatment is determined by the immediate object of attacking the chief stronghold of superstition: and, accordingly, the third and fourth books contain an examination of the nature of the soul, a proof of its non-existence after death, and an explanation of the origin of the belief in a future state. In the fifth and sixth books an attempt is made to show that the creation and preservation of the world, the origin and progress of human society, and the phenomena of thunder, tempests, volcanoes, and the like, are the results of natural laws, without Divine intervention. Although he sometimes carries his argument into greater detail than is necessary for his purpose, and addresses himself to the reform of other evils to which the human heart is liable, yet his whole treatment of his subject is determined by the thought of the irreconcilable opposition between the truths of Nature and the falsehood of the ancient religions. The key-note to the argument is contained in the lines, which recur as a kind of prelude to the successive stages on which it enters, in the first, second, third, and sixth books:-- Hunc igitur terrorem animi tenebrasque necessest Non radii solis neque lucida tela diei Discutiant, sed naturae species ratioque[3]. The action of the poem might be described as the gradual defeat of the ancient dominion of superstition by the new knowledge of Nature. This meaning seems to be symbolised in its magnificent introduction, where the genial, all-pervading Power--the source of order, beauty, and delight in the world and in the heart of man,--and the grim phantom of superstition-- Horribili super aspectu mortalibus instans,-- the cause of ignorance, degradation, and misery,--are vividly personified and presented in close contrast with one another. The thought, thus symbolised, pervades the poem. The processes of Nature are explained not chiefly for the purpose of satisfying the love of knowledge (although this end is incidentally attained), but as the means of establishing light in the room of darkness, peace in the room of terror, faith in the laws and the facts of the universe in the room of a base dependence on capricious and tyrannical Powers. What then was this philosophy which supplied to Lucretius an answer to the perplexities of existence? The object contemplated by all the early systems of ontology was the discovery of the original substance or substances out of which all existing things were created, and which alone remained permanent amid the changing aspects of the visible world. Various systems, of a semi-physical, semi-metaphysical character, were founded on the answers given by the earliest enquirers to this question. In the first book of the poem several of these theories are discussed. Lucretius, following Epicurus, adopts the answer given by Democritus to this question, that the original substances were the 'atoms and the void'--[Greek: atoma kai kenon]. After the invocation and the address to Memmius, and the representation of the universal tyranny exercised by superstition until its power was overcome by Epicurus, and after a summary of the various topics to be treated in order to banish this influence from the world, he lays down this principle as the starting-point of his argument,--that no existing thing is formed out of nothing by divine agency-- Nullam rem e nilo gigni divinitus unquam. The apprehension of this principle--a principle common to all the ontological systems of antiquity--is the first step in the enquiry, as to what are the original substances out of which all creation comes into being and is maintained. The proof of this principle is the manifest order and causation recognisable in the world. If things could arise out of nothing, all existence would be confused and capricious. The regularity of Nature subsists-- Materies quia rebus reddita certast Gignundis e qua constat quid possit oriri. The complement of this first principle is the proposition that nothing is annihilated, but all existences are resolved into their ultimate elements. As the first is a necessary inference from the existence of universal order, the second is proved by the perpetuity of creation and the observed transformation of things into one another. The original substances out of which all things are produced, and into which they are ultimately resolved, are found to be certain primordial particles of matter or atoms, which are called by various names--'materies,' 'genitalia corpora,' 'semina rerum,' 'corpora prima.' Some of these names, it may be observed, are expressive not only of their primordial character, but also of a germinative or productive power. The objection that these atoms are invisible to our senses is met by showing that there are many invisible forces acting in Nature, the effects of which prove that they must be bodies,-- Corporibus caecis igitur natura gerit res. In addition to bodily substance there must also be vacuum or space; otherwise there could be no motion in the universe, and without motion nothing could come into being. The existence of matter is proved by our senses, of vacuum by the necessity of there being space for matter to move in, and also by the varying density of bodies. But besides body and vacuum there is no other absolute substance-- Ergo praeter inane et corpora tertia per se Nulla potest rerum in numero natura relinqui[4]. All material bodies are either elemental substances or compounded out of a union of these substances. The elemental substances are indestructible and indivisible. This is proved by the necessities of thought (i. 498, etc.) and of Nature. If there were no ultimate limit to the divisibility of these substances, if there were not something immutable underlying all phenomena, there could be no law or order in the world. The existence and ultimate constitution of the atoms is thus enunciated-- Sunt igitur solida primordia simplicitate Quae minimis stipata cohaerent partibus arte, Non ex illarum conventu conciliata, Sed magis aeterna pollentia simplicitate, Unde neque avelli quicquam neque deminui iam Concedit natura reservans semina rebus[5]. At this stage in the argument, from line 635 to 920 of Book I, the first principles of other philosophies, and particularly of the systems of Heraclitus, Empedocles, and Anaxagoras, are discussed at considerable length, and shown to be inconsistent with the actual appearance of things and with the principles already established. The argument starts anew at line 920, and it is shown that the atoms must be infinite in number, and space infinite in extent;--the contrary supposition being both inconceivable and incompatible with the origin, preservation, and renewal of all existing things. It is shown also that the existing order of things has not come into being through design, but by infinite experiments through infinite time. The doctrine that all things tend to a centre is denied, and the book concludes with the imaginative presentation of the thought that, if matter were not infinite, the whole visible fabric of the world would perish in a moment, 'and leave not a rack behind.' The second book opens with an impressive passage, in which the security and charm of the contemplative life is contrasted with the restless anxieties and alarms of the life of worldly ambition. The argument then proceeds to explain the process by which these atoms, primordial, indestructible, and infinite in number, combine together in infinite space, so as to carry on the birth, growth, and decay of all things. While the sum of things always remains the same, there is constant change in all phenomena. This is explicable only on the supposition of the original elements being in eternal motion. The atoms are borne through space, either by their own weight, or by contact with one another, with a rapidity of motion far beyond that of any visible bodies. All motion is naturally in a downward direction and in parallel lines, but to account for the contact of the atoms with one another it must be supposed that in their movements they make a slight declension from the straight line at uncertain intervals. This liability to declension is the sole thing to break the chain of necessity--'quod fati foedera rumpat.' It is through this liability in the primal elements that volition in living beings becomes possible. As the sum of matter in the universe is constant, so the motions of the atoms always have been and always will be the same[6]. All things are in ceaseless motion, although they may present to our senses the appearance of perfect rest. It is necessary further to assume the existence of other properties in the atoms, in order to account for the variety in Nature, and the individuality of existing things. They have original differences in form; some are smooth, others round, others rough, others hooked, &c. These varieties in form are not infinite, but limited in number. As the diversity in the world depends on the diversity of these forms, the order and regularity of Nature imply that there is a limit to these varieties. But while they are limited, the individuals of each kind are infinite, otherwise the primordial atoms would be finite in number, and there could be no cohesion among atoms of the same kind, in the vast and chaotic sea of matter-- Unde ubi qua vi et quo pacto congressa coibunt Materiae tanto in pelago turbaque aliena[7]? The motions which tend to the support and the destruction of created things are balanced by one another: there must be an equilibrium in these opposing forces-- Sic aequo geritur certamine principiorum Ex infinito contractum tempore bellum[8]. Death and birth succeed one another, as now the vitalising, now the destructive forces gain the upper hand. Further, the great diversity in Nature is to be accounted for by diversity, not only in the original forms of matter, but also in their modes of combination. No existing thing is composed solely of one kind of atoms. The greater the variety of forces and powers which anything displays, the greater is the variety of the elements out of which it was originally composed. Of all visible objects the earth contains the greatest number of elements; therefore it has justly obtained the name of the universal mother. There is however a limit to the modes in which atoms can combine with one another: each nature appropriates elements suitable to its being and rejects those unsuitable. All existing things differ from one another in consequence of the difference in their elements and in their modes of combination. The different modes of combination give rise to many of the secondary properties of matter, which are not in the original elements. Colour, for instance, is not one of the original properties of atoms: for all colour is changeable, and all change implies the death of what previously existed. Moreover, colour depends on light, and the atoms never come forth into the light. The atoms are also devoid of heat and cold, of sound, taste, and smell. All these properties must be kept distinct from the original elements-- Immortalia si volumus subiungere rebus Fundamenta quibus nitatur summa salutis; Ne tibi res redeant ad nilum funditus omnes[9]. Further, although they are the origin of all living and sentient things, the atoms themselves are devoid of sense and life, otherwise they would be liable to death. All living things are merely results of the constant changes in the primordial elements contained in the heavens and the earth. Hence the heaven is addressed as the father, the earth as the mother, of all things that have life. Finally, from the infinity of space and matter, it may be inferred that there are infinite other worlds and systems beside our own. Many elements were added from the infinite universe to our system before it reached maturity: and many indications prove that the period of growth is now past, and that we are living in the old age of the world. The sum of the first two books, in which the principles of the atomic philosophy are methodically unfolded and illustrated, is, accordingly, to this effect:--that all things have their origin in, and are sustained by, the various combinations and motions of solid elemental atoms, infinite in number, various in form, but not infinite in the variety of their forms,--not perceptible to our senses, and themselves devoid of sense, of colour, and of all the secondary properties of matter. These atoms, by virtue of their ultimate conditions, are capable only of certain combinations with one another. These combinations have been brought about by perpetual motion, through infinite space and through all eternity. As the order of things now existing has come into being, so it must one day perish. Only the atoms will permanently remain, moving unceasingly through space, and forming new combinations with one another. These first principles being established, the way is made clear for the true explanation, according to natural laws, of those phenomena which give rise to and maintain the terrors of superstition. The third book treats of the nature of the mind, and of the vital principle. As it is by the fear of death, and of eternal torment after death, that human life is most disturbed, it is necessary to explain the nature of the soul, and to show that it perishes in death along with the body. The mind and the vital principle are parts of the man as much as the hands, feet, or any other members. The mind is the directing principle, seated in the centre of the breast. The vital principle is diffused over the whole body, obedient to and in close sympathy with the mind. The power which the mind has in moving the body proves its own corporeal nature, as motion cannot take place without touch, nor touch without the presence of a bodily substance. The soul (including both the mind and vital principle) is, therefore, material, formed of the finest or minutest atoms, as is proved by the extreme rapidity of its movement, and by the fact that there is nothing lost in appearance or weight immediately after death:-- Quod simul atque hominem leti secura quies est Indepta atque animi natura animaeque recessit, Nil ibi libatum de toto corpore cernas Ad speciem, nil ad pondus: mors omnia praestat Vitalem praeter sensum calidumque vaporem[10]. Four distinct elements enter into the composition of the soul--heat, wind, calm air, and a finer essence 'quasi anima animai.' The variety of disposition in men and animals depends on the proportion in which these elements are mixed. The soul is the guardian of the body, inseparably united with it, as the odour is with frankincense; nor can the soul be disconnected from the body without its own destruction. This intimate union of soul and body is proved by many facts. They are born, they grow, and they decay together. The mind is liable to disease, like the body. Its affections are often dependent on bodily conditions. The difficulties of imagining the state of the soul as existing independently of the body are next urged; and the book concludes with a long passage of sustained elevation of feeling, in which the folly and the weakness of fearing death are passionately insisted upon. The fourth book, which treats of the images which all objects cast off from themselves, and, in connexion with that subject, of the senses generally, and of the passion of love, is intimately connected with the preceding book. If there is no life after death, what is the origin of the universal belief in the existence of the souls of the departed? Images cast off from the surface of bodies, and borne incessantly through space without force or feeling, appearing to the living sometimes in sleep and sometimes in waking visions, have suggested the belief in the ghosts of the dead, and in many of the portents of ancient mythology. The rapid formation and motion of these images and their great number are explained by various analogies. Some apparent deceptions of the senses are next mentioned and explained. These deceptions are shown to be not in the senses, but in our minds not rightly interpreting their intimations. There is no error in the action of the senses. They are our 'prima fides'--the foundation of all knowledge and of all conduct-- Non modo enim ratio ruat omnis, vita quoque ipsa Concidat extemplo, nisi credere sensibus ausis[11]. Images that are too fine to act on the senses sometimes directly affect the soul itself. Discordant images unite together in the air, and present the appearance of Centaurs, Scyllas, and the like. In sleep, images of the dead-- Morte obita quorum tellus amplectitur ossa[12],-- appear, and give rise to the belief in the existence of ghosts. The mind sees in dreams the objects in which it is most interested, because, although all kinds of images are present, it can discern only those of which it is expectant. Several other questions are discussed in connexion with the doctrine of the 'simulacra.' The final cause of the senses and the appetites is denied, and, by implication, the argument from design founded on the belief in final causes. The use of everything is discovered through experience. We do not receive the sense of sight in order that we may see, but having got the sense of sight, we use it-- Nil ideo quoniam natumst in corpore ut uti Possemus, sed quod natumst id procreat usum[13]. There follows an account of sleep, and of the condition of the mind during that state; and the book concludes with a physical account of the passion of love, which is dependent on the action of the simulacra on the mind. Love is shown also to arise from natural causes, and not to be engendered by divine influence. The fatal consequences of yielding to the passion are then enforced with much poetical and satiric power. The object of the fifth book is to explain the formation of our system--of earth, sea, sky, sun, and moon,--the origin of life upon the earth, and the advance of human nature from a savage state to the arts and usages of civilisation. The purpose of these discussions is to show that all our system was produced and is maintained by natural agency, that it is neither itself divine nor created by divine power, and that, as it has come into existence, so it must one day perish. As the parts of our system,--earth, water, air, and heat,--are perishable, and constantly passing through processes of decay and renovation, the system must have had a beginning, and will have an end. There must at last be an end of the long war between the contending elements. The world came into existence as the result not of design, but of every variety of combination in the elemental atoms throughout infinite time. Originally all were confused together. Gradually those that had mutual affinities combined and separated themselves from the rest. The earthy particles sank to the centre. The elemental particles of the empyrean (aether ignifer) formed the 'moenia mundi.' The sun and moon were formed out of the particles that were neither heavy enough to combine with the earth, nor light enough to ascend to the highest heaven. Finally, the liquid particles separated from the earth and formed the sea. Highest above all is the empyrean, entirely separated from the storms of the lower air, and moving round with its stars by its own impetus. The earth is at rest in the centre of our system, supported by the air, as our body is by the vital principle. The movements of the stars and of the sun and moon through the heavens are next explained; then the origin of vegetable and animal life on the earth, and the beginning and progress of human society. First plants and trees, afterwards men and animals, were produced from the earth in the early and vigorous prime of the world. Many of the animals originally produced afterwards became extinct. Those only were capable of continuation which had either some faculty of self-preservation against others, or were useful to man, and so shared his protection. The existence of monsters such as Scylla, the Centaurs, the Chimaera, is shown to be impossible according to the natural laws of production. The earliest condition of man was one of savage vigour and power of endurance, but liable to danger and destruction from many causes. The first humanising influence is traced to domestic union and the affection inspired by children-- Et Venus inminuit viris puerique parentum Blanditiis facile ingenium fregere superbum[14]. The origin of language is next explained, then that of civil society, of religion, and of the arts,--the general conclusion being that all progress is the result of natural experience, not of divine guidance. The last source of superstition is our ignorance of the causes of natural phenomena-- Praesertim rebus in illis Quae supera caput aetheriis cernuntur in oris[15]. Hence the sixth book is devoted to the explanation of thunderstorms, tempests, volcanoes, earthquakes, and the like,--phenomena which are generally attributed to the direct agency of the gods. The whole work terminates with an account of the Plague at Athens, closely following that given by Thucydides. The first question which arises after a review of the whole argument is that suggested by the statement of Jerome, and brought into prominence since the publication of Lachmann's edition of Lucretius, viz. whether there is good reason for believing that the poem was left by the author in an unfinished state. In answering this question, it is to be observed, on the one hand, that there is no incompleteness in the fulfilment of the original plan of the work, unless from one or two hints[16] we conclude that the poet intended giving a fuller account of the blessed state of the Gods than that given at iii. 17-24. He announces at i. 54, etc., and again at i. 127, etc., the design of the poem as embracing the first principles of natural philosophy, and the application of these principles to certain special subjects, viz. the nature of soul and body, the origin of the belief in ghosts, the natural causes of creation, and the meaning of certain celestial phenomena. The practical purpose of the poem--the overthrow of superstition--limits the argument to these subjects of discussion. They are severally mentioned where the argument is resumed in Books iii, iv, v, and vi, as those matters which require a clear explanation from the poet. All the topics enunciated in the opening statement are discussed with the utmost fulness. The great strongholds of superstition are attacked and overthrown in regular succession. In the introduction to the sixth book, the lines (91-95) Tu mihi supremae praescribta ad candida calcis, etc. clearly show that the poet considered himself approaching the end of his task. But, on the other hand, an examination of the poem in detail leads to the conclusion that it did not receive its author's final touch. The continuity of the argument is occasionally broken in all the books except the first. In the fourth, fifth, and sixth, especially, these breaks are very frequent, and there are more frequent instances in them of repetition and careless workmanship. They extend also to a greater length than the earlier books, which would naturally be the case if they had not received the author's final revision. The poem throughout gives the impression of great fulness of matter-- Usque adeo largos haustus e fontibu' magnis Lingua meo suavis diti de pectore fundet;-- and in the composition of these later books, new suggestions seem to have been constantly occurring to the poet as new materials were added to his stores of knowledge: and the first draft of his argument has not been recast so as to incorporate and harmonise them with it. The passages containing these new materials appear to have been fitted into the place which they now occupy in the work, not always very judiciously, either by Cicero or some other editor. It was also part of the author's design to enunciate his deepest thoughts on the Gods, on Nature, and on human life in more highly finished digressions from the main argument. Such passages are, in general, introduced at the beginning and the end of the different books. They seem to bring out the more catholic interest which underlies the special subject of the poem. Some of these passages are highly finished, and were evidently fixed by the poet in the places which he designed them to occupy. Such are, especially, the introductions to the first, second, and third books, and the concluding passages of the second and third. But the repetition of a passage of the first book as the introduction to the fourth, the long break in the continuity of the introduction to the fifth, the unfinished style of that to the sixth, and the abrupt and episodical conclusion to the whole poem (when contrasted with its elaborately artistic introduction), show that the same cause which marred the symmetry of his argument deprived it of the finished execution of a work of art. Yet these books--especially the fifth--are as rich in poetical feeling and substance as the earlier ones. The eye and hand of the master are as powerful as in the first enthusiasm with which he dedicated himself to his task, but they are less certain in their action. Whether his powers became intermittent owing to the attacks of illness, or whether his habit was to work roughly in the first instance and to perfect his work by subsequent revision, which in the case of his latest labours was prevented by death, must remain uncertain. It is a noticeable result of the vastness of the tasks which Roman genius set before itself, that two such works as the didactic poem of Lucretius and the Aeneid of Virgil were left unfinished by their authors, and given to the world in a more or less imperfect condition by other hands. The poem, though incomplete in regard to the arrangement of its materials and artistic finish, presents a full and clear view of the philosophy accepted and expounded by Lucretius. What, then, is the intellectual interest and value of the work, considered as a great argument, in which the plan of Nature is explained, and the position of man in relation to that plan is determined? Is it true, as an illustrious modern critic[17] has said, that 'the greatest didactic poem in any language was written in defence of the silliest and meanest of all systems of natural and moral philosophy'? Is this work a mere maze of ingeniously woven error, enriched with a few brilliant colours which have not yet faded with the lapse of time? or is it a great monument of the ancient mind, marking indeed its limitations, but at the same time perpetuating the memory of its native strength and energy? Has all the meaning of this controversy between science in its infancy and the pagan mythology in its decrepitude passed away, as from the vantage-ground of nineteen centuries the blindness and the ignorance of both combatants are apparent? Or, may we not rather discern that amid all the confusion of this dim [Greek: nyktomachia] a great cause was at issue; that truths the most vital to human wellbeing were involved on both sides; and that some positions were then gained which are not now abandoned? In estimating the strength and the weakness of the system expounded by Lucretius, it is necessary to distinguish between the exposition of the principles of the atomic philosophy, contained in the first two books, and the explanation of natural phenomena contained in the remaining books. The first, notwithstanding some arbitrary and unverifiable assumptions, represents a real and important stage in the progress of enquiry; the second, although containing many striking observations and immediate inferences from the facts and processes of Nature, is, from the point of view of modern science, to be regarded mainly, as a curious page in the records of human error. Whatever may be said of the Epicurean additions to the system, it seems to be admitted that the original hypothesis of Democritus has been more pregnant in results, and has more affinity with the most advanced physical speculations of modern times, than the doctrines of all the other philosophers of antiquity. But even amid the mass of unwarranted assumptions and erroneous explanations contained in the later books, the topics discussed--such as the relation of the mind to the body, the mode by which sensible impressions are conveyed to the mind, the processes by which our globe assumed its present form, the origin of life, the evolution of humanity from its lowest to its higher stages of development, the origin of spiritual beliefs, of the humaner sentiments, of language, etc.--possess the interest of being kindred to those on which speculative activity is most employed in the present day. If the study of Lucretius forces upon our minds the arbitrary assumptions, the inadequate method, and the false conclusions of ancient science, it enables us to appreciate the disinterested greatness of its aims, and the enlightened curiosity which sought to solve the vastest problems. It might be said, generally, that the argument of Lucretius was an attempt to give a philosophical description of Nature before the advent of physical science. But, as a means of throwing light on the inadequacy of such speculations, it may be well to consider in detail some of those points where the argument most obviously fails in premises, method, and results. The ancient as well as the modern enquirer into the truth of things was confronted with the question of the origin of all our knowledge. Is knowledge obtained originally through the exercise of the reason or the senses, or through their combined and inseparable action? To this question Lucretius distinctly answers, that the senses are the foundation of all our knowledge.[18] They are our 'prima fides': the basis not only of all sound inference, but of all human conduct. The very conception of the meaning of true and false is derived from the senses:-- Invenies primis ab sensibus esse creatam Notitiam veri neque sensus posse refelli[19]. But besides the direct action of outward things on the senses, he admits the power of certain images to make themselves immediately present to the mind (iv. 722-822), and also a certain immediate apprehension or intuition of the mind (iniectus animi) into things beyond the cognisance of sense[20]. Thus there is no actual inconsistency with his principles in claiming the power of understanding the properties and configuration of the atoms, which are represented as lying below the reach of our senses-- Omnis enim longe nostris ab sensibus infra Primorum natura iacet. But of the mode of operation of this 'intuition of the mind' there is no criterion. The doctrine of the properties, shapes, motions, etc. of the atoms is a creation of the imagination, suggested by certain analogies from sensible things, but incapable of being verified by the senses, which he regards as the only sure foundations of knowledge. But even on the supposition that the existence and properties of the atoms had been satisfactorily established, no adequate explanation is offered of their relation to the facts of existence. The same difficulty is encountered at the outset of this as of all other ancient systems of ontology, viz. how to pass from the eternal and immutable forms of the atoms to the variety and transitory nature of sensible objects. This is the very difficulty which Lucretius himself urges against the system of Heraclitus,-- Nam cur tam variae res possint esse requiro, Ex uno si sunt igni puroque creatae. The order of Nature now subsisting is declared to be the result of the manifold combination of the atoms through infinite time and space, but the intermediate stages by which this process was effected are assumed rather than investigated. We seem to pass 'per saltum' from the chaos of lifeless elements to the perfect order and manifold life of our system. This wide chasm seems as little capable of being bridged by the help of the atoms of Democritus, as by the watery element of Thales or the fiery element of Heraclitus. But in Lucretius this difficulty is partially concealed, by a poetical element in his conception, really inconsistent with the mechanical materialism on which his philosophy professes to be based.--It is to be observed that while the Greek word [Greek: atoma] implies merely the notion of individual existences, the words used by Lucretius, 'semina,' 'genitalia corpora,' really indicate a creative capacity in these existences. In conceiving their power of carrying on and sustaining the order of Nature, his imagination is thus aided by the analogy of the growth of plants and living beings. A secret faculty in the atoms, distinct from their other properties, is assumed. Thus he says-- At primordia gignundis in rebus oportet Naturam clandestinam caecamque adhibere[21]. In his statement of the doctrine of the _Clinamen_, or slight declension in the motion of the atoms, so as 'to break the chain of fate,' he attributes to them a power analogous to volition in living beings. This doctrine is suggested by the necessity of explaining contingency in Nature and freedom in the movements of sentient beings. We are, as in all attempts to account for creation, forced back on the thought of an ultimate unexplained power in virtue of which things have been created and are maintained in being. The Lucretian hypothesis of the atoms, even if it were accepted as the most reasonable explanation of the original constitution of matter, is, by itself, altogether inadequate as a key to the secret of Nature. It cannot be shown either how these atoms succeeded in arranging themselves in order, or how from their negative properties all positive life has been produced. The explanation of physical phenomena given in the four last books, as to the nature of our bodies and souls,--as to the action of outward things on the senses,--the origin and existence of the sun and moon, the earth and the living beings upon it, etc., although professedly deduced from the principles established in the first two books, are really reached independently. They are either immediate inferences from the obvious intimations of sense, or they are the suggestions of analogy. The weakness as well as the strength of ancient science lay in its perception of analogies. The mind of Lucretius was both under the influence of earlier analogical conceptions, and also shows great boldness and originality in the logical and poetical apprehension of 'those same footsteps of Nature, treading on diverse subjects or matters.' But, in common with the earlier enquirers of Greece, he trusts too implicitly to their guidance through all his daring adventure. He seems to believe that the hidden properties of things are as open to discovery through this 'lux sublustris' of the imagination, as through the 'lucida tela' of the reason. To take one prominent instance of this influence, it is remarkable how, in his explanation of our mundane system, he is both consciously and unconsciously guided by the analogy of the human body. Even Lucretius, living in the very meridian of ancient science, cannot in imagination absolutely emancipate himself from the associations of mythology. He is indeed conscious of the inconsistency of attributing life and sense to the earth: yet not only does he speak poetically of Earth being the creative mother, Aether the fructifying father of all things, but his whole conception of the creation of the world is derived from a supposed likeness between the properties of our terrestrial and celestial systems, and those of living beings. Thus we read-- Undique quandoquidem per caulas aetheris omnis Et quasi per magni circum spiracula mundi Exitus introitusque elementis redditus extat[22]. Of the growth of plants and herbage it is said-- Ut pluma atque pili primum saetaeque creantur Quadripedum membris et corpore pennipotentum, Sic nova tum tellus herbas virgultaque primum Sustulit, inde loci mortalia saecla creavit[23]. From v. 535 to 563 the power of the air in supporting the earth 'in media mundi regione' is compared with the power which the delicate vital principle has in supporting the human body. Again, the gathering together of the waters of the sea is thus represented-- Tam magis expressus salsus de corpore sudor Augebat mare manando camposque natantis[24]. And finally, though it would be easy to multiply such quotations, the striking account, at the end of the second book, of the growth and the decay of our world is drawn directly from the obvious appearances of the growth and decay of the human body; e.g.-- Quoniam nec venae perpetiuntur Quod satis est neque quantum opus est natura ministrat[25]. As a necessary result of a system of natural philosophy based on assumptions, largely illustrated indeed, but not corroborated by the observation of phenomena, with no verification of experiment or ascertainment of special laws, there is throughout the poem the utmost hardihood of assertion and inference on many points, on which modern science clearly proves this system to have been as much in error as it was possible to be. It is strange to note how inadequate an idea Lucretius had of the vastness and complexity of the problem which he professed to solve. He has no real conception of the progressive advance of knowledge, and of the necessity of patiently building on humble foundations. The striking lines-- Namque alid ex alio clarescet nec tibi caeca Nox iter eripiet quin ultima naturai Pervideas: ita res accendent lumina rebus[26], look rather like an unconscious prophecy of the future progress of science than an account of the process of enquiry exhibited in the book. A few out of many erroneous assertions about physical facts, in regard to some of which the opinions of Lucretius are behind the science even of his own time, may be noticed. Thus, at i. 1025, the existence of the Antipodes is denied. Again, in Book iii. the mind is stated to be a material substance, seated in the centre of the breast, composed of very minute particles, the relative proportions of which determine the characters both of men and animals. Lucretius shows a close and subtle observation of facts that establish the interdependence of mind and body, but no suspicion of that interdependence being connected with the functions of the brain and nervous system. His whole account of the _mundus_, of the earth at rest in the centre, and of the rolling vault of heaven, with its sun and moon and stars--'trembling fires in the vault'--all no larger than they appear to our eyes, is given without any notion of the inadequacy of his data to bear out his conclusions. The science which satisfied Epicurus was on astronomical and meteorological questions behind that attained by the mathematicians of Alexandria: and thus some of the conclusions enunciated by Virgil in the Georgics are nearer the truth than those accepted by Lucretius. While enlarging on the variety and subtlety in the combinations of his imaginary atoms, he has no adequate idea of the variety and subtlety in the real forces of Nature. His observation of the outward and visible appearances of things is accurate and vivid: there is often great ingenuity as well as a true apprehension of logical conditions in his processes of reasoning both from ideas and from phenomena: yet most of his conclusions as to the facts of Nature, which are not immediately perceptible to the senses, are mere fanciful explanations, indicating, indeed, a lively curiosity, but no real understanding of the true conditions of the enquiry. The root of his error lies in his not feeling how little can be known of the processes and facts of Nature by ordinary observation, without the resources of experiment and of scientific method built upon experiment. The weak points of this philosophy, the mistaken aim and incomplete method of enquiry, the real ignorance of facts disguised under an appearance of systematic treatment, the unproductiveness of the results for any practical accession to man's power over Nature, are quite obvious to any modern reader, who, without any special study of physical science, cannot help being familiar with information which is now universally diffused, but which was beyond the reach of the most ardent enquirers and original thinkers of antiquity. But the amount of information possessed by different ages, or by different men, is no criterion of their relative intellectual power. The mental force of a strong and adventurous thinker may be recognised struggling even through these mists of error. The weakness of the system, interpreted by Lucretius, is the necessary weakness of the childhood of knowledge. But along with the weakness and the ignorance there are also the keen feeling, the clear eye, and the buoyant fancies of early years,--the germs and the promise of a strong maturity. The full light in which ancient poetry, history, and mental philosophy can still be read, makes us apt to forget that a great part even of the intellectual life of antiquity has left scarcely any record of itself. Of one aspect of this intellectual life Lucretius is the most complete exponent. The genius of Plato and Aristotle has been estimated, perhaps, as justly in modern as in ancient times. But the great intellectual life of such men as Democritus, Empedocles, or Anaxagoras, escapes our notice in the more familiar studies of classical literature. The work of Lucretius reminds us of the intensity of thought and feeling, the clearness and minuteness of observation, with which the earliest enquiries into Nature were carried on. In some respects the general ignorance of the times enhances our sense of the greatness of individual philosophers. Each new attempt to understand the world was an original act of creative power. The intellectual strength and enthusiasm displayed by the poet himself may be regarded as some measure of the strength of the masters, who filled his mind with affection and astonishment. The history of the physical science of the ancients cannot, indeed, be regarded as so interesting or important as that of their metaphysical philosophy. And this is so, not only on account of the comparative scantiness of their real acquisitions in the one as compared with the ideas and method which they have contributed to the other, and with the masterpieces which they have added to its literature; but still more on this account, that in physical knowledge new discovery supplants the place of previous error or ignorance, and can be understood without reference to what has been supplanted; whereas the power and meaning of philosophical ideas is unintelligible, apart from the knowledge of their origin and development. The history of physical science in ancient times affords satisfaction to a natural curiosity, but is not an indispensable branch of scientific study. The history of ancient mental philosophy, on the other hand,--the source not only of most of our metaphysical ideas and terms, but of many of the most familiar thoughts and words in daily use,--is the basis of all speculative study. Yet among the various kinds of interest which this poem has for different classes of modern readers this is not to be forgotten, that it enables a student of science to estimate the actual discoveries, and, still more, the prognostications of discovery attained by the irregular methods of early enquiry. The school of philosophy to which Lucretius belonged was distinguished above other schools for the attention which it gave to the facts of Nature. Though he himself makes no claim to original discovery, he yet shows a philosophical grasp of the whole system which he adopted, and a rigorous study of its details. He does not, like Virgil, merely reproduce some general results of ancient physics, to enhance the poetical conception of Nature: as he is not satisfied with those general results about human life and the origin of man, which amused a meditative poet and practical epicurean like Horace. He was a real student both of the plan of Nature and of man's relation to it. Out of the stores of his abundant information the modern reader may best learn not only the errors but also the happy guesses and pregnant suggestions of ancient science. To the general reader there is another aspect, in which it is interesting to compare these germs of physical knowledge with some tendencies of scientific enquiry in modern times. The questions, vitally affecting the position of man in the world, which are discussed or raised by Lucretius in the course of his argument, are parallel to certain questions which have risen into prominence in connexion with the increasing study of Nature. Most conspicuous among these is the relation of physical enquiry to religious belief. Expressions such as this, Impia te rationis inire elementa viamque Indugredi sceleris, show that scientific enquiry had to encounter the same prejudice in ancient as in modern times. The insufficiency and audacity of human reason were reprobated by the antagonists of Lucretius as they often are in the present day. Ancient religion denounced those who investigated the origin of sun, earth, and sky, as Immortalia mortali sermone notantes[27]. The views of Lucretius as to the natural origin of life, and the progressive advance of man from the rudest condition by the exercise of his senses and accumulated experience,--his denial of final causes universally, and specially in the human faculties,--his resolution of our knowledge into the intimations of sense,--his materialism and consequent denial of immortality,--and his utilitarianism in morals,--all present striking parallels to the opinions of one of the great schools of modern thought. At v. 875 there is a passage concerning the preservation and destruction of species, originally suggested by Empedocles,--which shows that the idea of the struggle for existence and of the survival of those species best fitted for the conditions of that struggle was familiar to ancient thinkers. It is there observed that those species alone have escaped destruction which possess some natural weapon of defence, or which are useful to man. Of others that could neither live by themselves nor were maintained by human protection, it is said-- Scilicet haec aliis praedae lucroque iacebant Indupedita suis fatalibus omnia vinclis, Donec ad interitum genus id natura redegit[28]. The attempt to trace the origin of all supernatural belief to the impressions made by dreams, the explanation given of the first manifestation of the humaner sentiments, of the beginning of language, and of the whole condition of 'primitive man,' are in conformity with the teaching of the most popular exponent of the doctrine of evolution in the present day. But altogether apart from the truth and falsehood, the right and wrong tendencies of his system of philosophy, our feeling of personal interest in the poet is strengthened by noting the power of reasoning, observation, and expression put forth by him through the whole course of his argument. The pervading characteristic of Lucretius is the 'vivida vis animi.' The freshness of feeling and vividness of apprehension denoted by the words, Mente vigenti Avia Pieridum peragro loca, are as remarkable in the processes of his intellect as of his imagination. The passionate intensity of his nature has left its impress on the enunciation of his physical as well as of his moral doctrines. He has a thoroughly logical grasp of his subject as a whole. He shows the capacity of unfolding it and marshalling all his arguments in symmetrical order, and of arranging in due subordination vast masses of details. Vigour in acquiring and tenacity in retaining the knowledge of facts are combined with a high organising faculty. He has also, beyond any other Roman writer, a power of analysing and comprehending abstract ideas, such as that of the infinite, of space and time, of causation and the like, and of keeping the consequences involved in these ideas present to his mind through long-sustained processes of reasoning. He alone among his countrymen possessed, if not the faculty of original speculation, the genuine philosophic impulse, and the powers of mind demanded for abstruse and systematic thinking. This vigour of understanding is displayed in many processes of deductive reasoning, in the power of seizing some general principle underlying diverse phenomena, in the use of analogies by which he illustrates the argument and advances from known to unknown causes and from things within the cognisance of our senses to those beyond their range, and in the clearness and variety of his observation. His system cannot be called either purely inductive or purely deductive, though it is more of the former than of the latter. He argues with great force both from a large and varied mass of facts to general laws and from general principles to facts involved in them. The best examples of his power of following abstract ideas into their consequences may be found in the first two books, where he establishes the existence of vacuum, the infinity of space and of the atoms, the limitations of the form of the atoms and the like. The reasoning at i. 298-328 where the existence of invisible bodies is established affords a good instance of his power of recognising a common principle involved in a great number and variety of phenomena. The vigour with which he reasons from known to unknown facts and causes may be judged most fairly by his arguments on the progress of society, where he is more on an equality with modern speculation. He discards, altogether, as might be expected, the fancies concerning a heroic or a golden age, and assumes as his data the facts of human nature as observed in his own day. The grounds from which he starts, his method of reasoning, and the nature of his conclusions remind a reader of the positive tendencies of Thucydides, as they are displayed in the introduction to his history. The importance of personal qualities, such as beauty, strength, and power of mind, in the earliest stage of civil society, the influence of accumulated wealth at a later period, the causes of the establishment and overthrow of tyrannies and of the rise of commonwealths in their room, are all set forth with a degree of strong sense and historical sagacity, such as no other Roman writer has shown in similar investigations. The inferiority even of Tacitus in his occasional digressions into the philosophy of history is very marked. On such topics, where the data were accessible to the natural faculties of observation and inference, and where conclusions were sought which, without aiming at definite certainty, should yet be true in the main, the reader of Lucretius has no sense of that wasted ingenuity which he often feels in following the investigations into some of the primary conditions of the atoms, the component elements of the soul, the process by which the world was formed, or the causes of electric or volcanic phenomena. Lucretius makes a copious, and often a very happy use, of analogies, both in the illustration of his philosophy, and in passages of the highest poetical power. Some of the most striking of the former kind have already been noticed as sources of error, or at least of disguising ignorance, in his reasoning, viz. those founded on the supposed parallel between the world and the human body; others again are employed with force and ingenuity in support of various positions in his argument. Among these may be mentioned his comparison of the effect of various combinations of the same letters in forming different words, with that of the various combinations of similar atoms in forming different objects in nature. So too the ceaseless motion of the atoms is brought visibly before the imagination by the analogy of the motes dancing in the sunbeam. There is something striking in the comparison of the human body immediately after death to wine 'cum Bacchi flos evanuit,' and again, in that of the relation of body and soul to the relation of frankincense and its odour-- E thuris glaebis evellere odorem Haud facile est quin intereat natura quoque eius[29]. But this faculty of his understanding is in general so united with the imaginative feeling through which he discerns the vital identity of the most diverse manifestations of some common principle, that it can best be illustrated in connexion with the poetical, as distinct from the logical, merits of the work. So also it is difficult to separate his faculty of clear, exact, and vivid observation from his poetical perception of the life and beauty of Nature. His powers of observation were, however, stimulated and directed by scientific as well as poetic interest in phenomena. From the wide scope of his philosophy he was led to examine the greatest variety of facts, physical as well as moral. His sense of the immensity of the universe led him to contemplate the largest and widest operations of Nature,--such as the movements of the heavenly bodies, the recurrence of the seasons, the forces of great storms, volcanoes, etc.; while, again, the theory of the invisible atoms drew his attention to the minutest processes of Nature, in so far as they can be perceived or inferred without the appliances of modern science. Thus, for instance, in a long passage beginning-- Denique fluctifrago suspensae in litore vestes[30] he shows by an accumulation of instances that there are many invisible bodies, the existence of which is inferred from visible effects. In other places he draws attention to the class of facts which have been the basis of the modern science of geology,--such as the mark of rivers slowly wearing away their banks,--of walls on the sea-shore mouldering from the long-continued effects of the exhalations from the sea,--of the fall of great rocks from the mountains under the wear and tear of ages. Again, the argument is frequently illustrated by observation of the habits of various animals. In these passages Lucretius shows the curiosity of a naturalist, as well as the sympathetic feeling and insight of a poet. How graphic, for instance, is his description of dogs following up the scent of their game-- Errant saepe canes itaque et vestigia quaerunt[31]. How happily their characteristics are struck off in the line-- At levisomna canum fido cum pectore corda[32]. The various cries and habits of birds are often observed and described, as-- Et validis cycni torrentibus ex Heliconis Cum liquidam tollunt lugubri voce querellam[33]; and again-- Parvus ut est cycni melior canor ille gruum quam Clamor in aetheriis dispersus nubibus austri[34]. The description of sea-birds, Mergique marinis Fluctibus in salso victum vitamque petentes[35], recalls the vivid and natural life of those that haunted the isle of Calypso-- [Greek: tanyglôssoi te korônai einaliai têsin te thalassia erga memêlen[36].] His lively personal observation and active interest in the casual objects presented to his eyes in the course of his walks are seen in such passages as-- Cum lubrica serpens Exuit in spinis vestem; nam saepe videmus Illorum spoliis vepres volitantibus auctas[37]. There is also much truth and liveliness of observation in his notices of psychological and physiological facts; as in those passages where he establishes the connexion between mind and body, and in his account of the senses. With what a graphic touch does he paint the outward effects of death[38], the decay of the faculties with age, and the madness that overtakes the mind-- Adde furorem animi proprium atque oblivia rerum, Adde quod in nigras lethargi mergitur undas[39]; the bodily waste, produced by long-continuous speaking-- Perpetuus sermo nigrai noctis ad umbram Aurorae perductus ab exoriente nitore[40]; the reflex action of the senses, produced by the nervous strain of witnessing games and spectacles for many days in succession; the insensibility to the pain of the severest wounds in the excitement of battle! In his account of the plague of Athens, in which he enters into much greater detail than Thucydides, he displays the minute observation of a physician, as well as the profound thought of a moralist. The 'vivida vis' of his understanding is apparent also in the clearness and consecutiveness of his philosophical style. His complaint of 'the poverty of his native tongue' is directed against the capacities of the Latin language for scientific, not for poetical expression-- Nunc et Anaxagorae scrutemur Homoeomerian Quam Grai memorant nec nostra dicere lingua Concedit nobis patrii sermonis egestas[41]. That language, which gives admirable expression to the dictates of common sense and to the dignified emotions which inspire the conduct of great affairs, is ill adapted both for the expression of abstract ideas and for maintaining a long process of connected argument. Lucretius has occasionally to meet the first difficulty by the adoption of Graecisms, and the second by some sacrifice of artistic elegance. Thus he uses _omne_ for [Greek: to pan] (II. 1108), _esse_, again, for [Greek: to einai], and the like. Something of a formal and technical character appears in the links by which his argument is kept together, as in the constantly recurring use of certain connecting particles, such as the 'etenim,' 'quippe ubi,' 'quod genus,' 'amplius hoc,' 'huc accedit,' and the like. Virgil has retained some of the most striking of these connecting formulae, such as 'contemplator item,' 'nonne vides,' etc.; but, as was natural in a poem setting forth precepts and not proofs, he uses them much more sparingly and with more careful selection. As used by Lucretius, they add to our sense of the vividness of the book, of the constant personal address of the author, and of his ardent polemical tone. They also keep the framework of the argument more compact and distinct: but they bring into greater prominence the artistic mistake of conducting an abstract discussion in verse. The very merits of the work considered as an argument,--its clearness, fullness, and consecutiveness,--detract from the pleasure which a work of art naturally produces. But the style cannot be too highly praised for its logical coherence and lucid illustration. The meaning of Lucretius can never be mistaken from any ambiguity in his language. There are difficulties arising from the uncertainty of the text, difficulties also from our unfamiliarity with his method and principles, or with the objects he describes, but none from confusion in his ideas or his reasoning, or from a vague or unreal use of words. II.--THE SPECULATIVE IDEAS IN LUCRETIUS. But it is in his grasp of speculative ideas, and in his application of them to interpret the living world, that the greatness of Lucretius as an imaginative thinker is most apparent. The substantial truth of all the ancient philosophies lay in the ideas which they attempted to express and embody, not in the symbols by which these ideas were successively represented. Lucretius has a place among the few adventurous thinkers of antiquity who attained to high eminences of contemplation, which were hidden from the mass of their contemporaries, and which, in the breadth of view afforded by them, are not far below the higher levels of our modern conceptions of Nature and human life. And there came to him, as to the earlier race of thinkers, that which comes so rarely to modern enquiry, the fresh and poetical sense of surprise and keen curiosity, as at the first discovery of a new country, or the first unfolding of some illimitable prospect. (1) In the philosophy of Lucretius the world is conceived as absolutely under the government of law. The starting-point of his system-- Nullam rem e nilo gigni divinitus unquam, is an inference from the recognition of this condition. There is no need to prove its truth: it is openly revealed in all the processes of Nature. This fact of universal order is indeed supposed to result from the eternal and immutable properties of the atoms and from the original limitation in their varieties: but the idea of law is prior to, and the condition of, all the principles enunciated in the first two books, in regard to the nature and properties of matter. In no ancient writer do we find the certainty and universality of law more emphatically and unmistakably expressed than in Lucretius. This is the final appeal in all controversy. The superiority of Epicurus is proclaimed on the ground of his having discovered the fixed and certain limitations of all existence-- Unde refert nobis victor quid possit oriri, Quid nequeat, finita potestas denique cuique Quanam sit ratione atque alte terminus haerens[42]. Following on his steps the poet himself professes to teach-- Quo quaeque creata Foedere sint, in eo quam sit durare necessum, Nec validas valeant aevi rescindere leges[43]. In another place he says-- Et quid quaeque queant per foedera naturai Quid porro nequeant, sancitum quandoquidem extat[44]. All knowledge and speculative confidence are declared to rest on this truth-- Certum ac dispositumst ubi quicquit crescat et insit[45]. Superstition, the great enemy of truth, is said to be the result of ignorance of 'what may be and what may not be.' This is the thought which underlies and gives cogency to the whole argument. The subject of the poem is 'maiestas cognita rerum,'--the revelation of the majesty and order of the universe. The doctrine proclaimed by Lucretius was, that creation was no result of a capricious or benevolent exercise of power, but of certain processes extending through infinite time, by means of which the atoms have at length been able to combine and work together in accordance with their ultimate conditions. The conception of these ultimate conditions and of their relations to one another involves some more vital agency than that of blind chance or an iron fatalism[46]. The 'foedera naturai' are opposed to the 'foedera fati.' The idea of law in Nature, as understood by Lucretius, is not, necessarily, inconsistent with that of a creative will determining the original conditions of the elemental substances. Though the ultimate principles of Lucretius are incompatible with a belief in the popular religions of antiquity, his mode of conceiving the operation of law in the universe is not irreconcileable with the conceptions of modern Theism. The idea of law not only supports the whole fabric of his physical philosophy, but moulds his convictions on human life and imparts to his poetry that contemplative elevation by which it is pervaded. It is from this ground that he makes his most powerful assault on the strongholds of superstition. Nature is thus declared to be free from the arbitrary and capricious agency of the gods:-- Libera continuo dominis privata superbis[47]. Man also is under the same law, and is made free by his knowledge and acceptance of this condition. A sense of security is thus gained for human life; a sense of elevation above its weakness and passions, and the courage to bear its inevitable evils[48]. This absolute reliance on law does not act upon his mind with the depressing influence of fatalism. Although the fortunes of life and the phases of individual character are said to be the results of the infinite combinations of blind atoms, yet man is made free by knowledge and the use of his reason. Notwithstanding the original constitution of his nature, arising out of influences over which there is no control, he still has it in his power to live a life worthy of the gods:-- Illud in his rebus videor firmare potesse, Usque adeo naturarum vestigia linqui Parvola, quae nequeat ratio depellere nobis Ut nil inpediat dignam dis degere vitam[49]. From these high places of his philosophy,--'the "templa serena" well-bulwarked by the learning of the wise'[50] he derives not only a sense of certainty in thought and security in life, but also his wide contemplative view, and his profound feeling of the majesty of the universe. The idea of universal law enables him to apprehend in all the processes of Nature a presence which awakens reverence and enforces obedience. This idea imparts unity of tone to the whole poem, informs its language, and seems to mould the very rhythm of its verse. (2) But a closer view brings another aspect of the world into light; viz. the interdependence of all things on one another. There is not only fixed order, but there is also infinite mobility in Nature. The sum of all things remains unchanged, though all individual existences decay and perish. So too the sum of force remains the same[51]. There is no rest anywhere; all things are continually changing and passing into one another; decay and renovation form the very life and being of all things. Nothing is ever lost. 'Nature repairs one thing from another, and allows of no birth except through the death of something else':-- Haud igitur penitus pereunt quaecumque videntur, Quando alid ex alio reficit natura nec ullam Rem gigni patitur nisi morte adiuta aliena[52]? As the 'ever-during peace' at the heart of all things is supposed to result from the eternal and immutable properties of the atoms, this 'endless agitation' arises out of their unceasing motion through infinite space. There are two kinds of motion,--the one tending to the renewal,--the other, to the destruction of things as they now exist. The maintenance of our whole system depends on the equilibrium of these opposing forces-- Sic aequo geritur certamine principiorum Ex infinito contractum tempore bellum[53]. There is thus seen to be not only absolute order, but also infinite change in the processes of Nature. Decay and renovation, death and life, support the existing creation in unceasing harmony. The imagination represents this process under the impressive symbol of an endless battle, in which now one side now the other gains some position, but neither, as yet, can become master of the field-- Nunc hinc nunc illic superant vitalia rerum, Et superantur item[54]. This symbol is the poetical form of the old philosophical distinction of [Greek: auxêsis] and [Greek: phthora]. It is another form of the [Greek: eris] and [Greek: philia] which to the imagination of Empedocles appeared to pervade the universe. The idea of a constant battle imparts to the infinite and all-pervading movement of Nature the interest and the life of human passion on the grandest and widest sphere of action. The greatness of the thought makes each particular object in Nature pregnant with a deeper meaning, associates trivial and ordinary phenomena with a sense of imaginative wonder, and throws an august solemnity around the familiar aspects of human life. The passage in which this principle is most powerfully announced at ii. 575, etc., swells into deeper and grander tones, as the real human pathos involved in this strife of elements is made manifest. This struggle of life and decay is no mere war of abstractions: it is the daily and hourly process of existence. Birth and death are the fulfilment of this law. 'The old order changeth, yielding place to new'-- Cedit enim rerum novitate extrusa vetustas[55]. 'New nations wax strong, while the old are waning away; the generations of living things are changed within a brief space, and, like the runners in a race, pass on the torch of life'-- Augescunt aliae gentes, aliae minuuntur, Inque brevi spatio mutantur saecla animantum Et quasi cursores vitai lampada tradunt[56]. Man also must resign himself to the universal law, and accept his life not as a thing to be possessed for ever, but only to be used for a time-- Sic alid ex alio numquam desistet oriri Vitaque mancipio nulli datur, omnibus usu[57]. Under this law of universal decay and restoration, we see the rains of heaven lost in the earth, but passing into new life in the fruits from which all living things are supported-- Hinc alitur porro nostrum genus atque ferarum, Hinc laetas urbes pueris florere videmus, Frondiferasque novis avibus canere undique silvas[58]. Or we see the waters of a river lost in the sea and returning through the earth to their original source, and again flowing in a fresh stream along the channel first formed for them-- Inde super terras fluit agmine dulci Qua via secta semel liquido pede detulit undas[59]. Under the same law the earth is seen to be the parent of all things and their tomb (v. 259); the sea, which loses its substance through evaporation and the subsidence of its waters, is found to be ever renewed by its native sources and the abundant tribute of rivers (v. 267; i. 231; vi. 608); the air is ever giving away and receiving back its substance; the sun ('liquidi fons luminis'), moon, and stars, are ever losing and ever renewing their light. The day on which the 'long-sustained mass and fabric of the world' will pass away, leaving only void space and the viewless atoms, is destined to come suddenly through the termination of this long balanced warfare:-- Denique tantopere inter se cum maxima mundi Pugnent membra, pio nequaquam concita bello, Nonne vides aliquam longi certaminis ollis Posse dari finem? vel cum sol et vapor omnis Omnibus epotis umoribus exsuperarint; Quod facere intendunt, neque adhuc conata patrantur[60]. (3) It is to be observed, also, how vividly Lucretius realises and how steadfastly he keeps before his mind the ideas of the eternity and infinity of the primordial atoms and of space. These conceptions support him in his antagonism to the popular religion, and deepen the feeling with which he contemplates human life and Nature. Our world of earth, sea, and sky is only one among infinite other systems. It stands to the universe in much the same proportion as any single man to the whole earth-- Et videas caelum summai totius unum Quam sit parvula pars et quam multesima constet Nec tota pars, homo terrai quota totius unus[61]. It was the glory of Epicurus that he first passed beyond the empyrean that bounds our world-- Atque omne immensum peragravit mente animoque[62]. The immensity of the universe is incompatible with the constant agency and interference of the gods,-- Quis regere immensi summam, quis habere profundi Indu manu validas potis est moderanter habenas[63]. This negative idea is, at least, a step in advance towards a higher conception of the attributes of Deity. The infinity and complexity of the universe protest against the limited and divided powers, as the natural feelings of human nature protest against the moral qualities attributed to the gods of the Pagan mythology. The power of these conceptions is also seen in the poet's deep sense of the littleness of human life. Such pathetic expressions of the shortness and triviality of each man's mortal span, as that,-- Degitur hoc aevi quodcumquest[64], are called forth by the ever-present thought of the Infinite and the Eternal. But this thought, if associated with a feeling of the pathos of human life does not lead Lucretius into cynicism or despair. It rather elevates him and fortifies him to suppress all personal complaint in the presence of ideas so stupendous. His imagination expands in contemplating the objects either of thought or of sight, which produce the impression of immensity,--such as the vast expanse of earth, sea and sky,--or of great duration,--such as the 'aeterni sidera mundi' or the 'validas aevi vires.' Thus, as much of the majesty of his poetry may be connected with his contemplative sense of law, much of its pervading life with his sense of the mobility of Nature, so the sublimity of many passages may be resolved into the influence of the ideas of immensity, both of time and space, on his imagination. (4) Another aspect of things vividly realised by Lucretius is that of their individuality. It was in the atomic philosophy, that the thought of 'the individual' first rose into prominence. The meaning of the word 'atom' is simply 'individual.' The sense of each separate existence is not merged in the conception of law, of change, or of the immensity of the universe. The atoms are not only infinite in number, they are also varied in kind and powerful in solid singleness,--'solida pollentia simplicitate.' From their variety and individuality the variety and individuality in Nature emerge. No two classes and no two single objects are exactly alike. Between any two of the birds that gladden the sea-shore, the river banks, or the woods, there is some difference in outward appearance-- Invenies tamen inter se differre figuris[65]. Each individual of a flock is different from every other, and by this difference only can the mother recognise her offspring. This sense of individuality intensifies the pathos of many passages in the poem. By regarding each being as having an existence of its own, the poet enters with sympathy into the feelings of all sentient existence,--of dumb animals as well as of human creatures. The freshness and distinctness of all his pictures from Nature are the result of an eye trained by his philosophy to see each thing not only as part of the universal life, but as existing in and for itself. (5) The thought, also, of the infinite subtlety of combination in the elements and forces of the world acts powerfully on his imagination. The individuality of things depends on the fact that no two are composed of exactly the same elements, combined in the same way. The infinity of the elements, the immensity of the spaces in which they meet, and the infinite possibilities in their modes of combination result in the endless variety of beauty and wonder which the world presents to the eye. The epithet 'daedala,' by which this subtlety is expressed is applied not only to Nature, but to the earth as the sphere in which the elements are most largely mixed, and the creative forces most powerfully active. The varied loveliness of the world,--the 'varii lepores,' by which the eye is gratified and relieved,--are the result of the variety in the elements and the infinite subtlety in their modes of combination. Their invisibility and inscrutable action enhance the imaginative sense of the power and beauty resulting from these causes. (6) The abstract properties of the atoms, discussed in the first two books, so far from being arbitrary assumptions, without any relation to actual existence, are thus found to be the conditions which explain the order, life, immensity, individuality, and subtlety manifested in the universe. These conceptions, which bridge the chasm between the particles of lifeless matter and the living world, unite in the more general conception of Nature. What then is involved in this conception--the dominant conception of the poem in its philosophical as well as its imaginative aspects? Something more than the subsidiary conceptions mentioned above. There is, in the first place, all that is involved in the unity of an organic whole. But to this whole the imagination of the poet seems, in some passages, to attach attributes scarcely reconcileable with the mechanical principles of his philosophy. In emancipating himself from the religious traditions of antiquity, Lucretius did not altogether escape from the power of an idea, so deeply rooted in the thought of past ages, as to seem to be an integral element of human consciousness. It is against the limitations which the ancient mythology imposed on the idea of Divine agency, rather than against the idea itself, as it is understood in modern times, that his philosophy protests. To Nature his imagination attributes not only life, but creative and regulative power. There would be more truth in calling this conception pantheistic than atheistic. But the sense of will, freedom, individual life, is so strong in Lucretius, that we think of the 'natura daedala rerum' rather as a personal power, with attributes in some respects analogous to those of man, than as a being in whose existence all other life is merged. Though this figurative attribution of personal qualities to great natural forces cannot be pressed as evidence of philosophical belief, yet as it shows, on the one hand, an unconscious survival of the state of mind which gave birth to mythology, so it seems to be the unconscious awakening of a spiritual conception of a creative and sustaining power in the universe. This new and more vital conception which supersedes the old mythological modes of thought is not altogether independent of them. Lucretius still interprets the world by analogies and illustrations which attach personal attributes to different phases and forces of Nature. Thus he speaks of Aether as the fructifying father, of Earth as the great mother of all living things. But the survival of the mythological conception of the universe, blended indeed with other modes of imaginative thought, appears most conspicuously in the famous invocation to the poem,-- Aeneadum genetrix, hominum divomque voluptas, Alma Venus. The mysterious power there addressed is identified with the Alma Venus of Italian worship,--the abstract conception of the life-giving impulse, the operations of which are most visible in the new birth of the early spring,--and with the Aphrodite of Greek art and poetry,--the concrete and passionate conception of the beauty and charm which most fascinate the senses. But if nothing more was meant in the opening lines of the poem than a fanciful appeal to one of the Deities of the popular belief, it might with justice be said that some of the finest poetry in Lucretius directly contradicted his sincerest convictions. But the language in which she is addressed clearly proves that the 'Alma Venus' of the invocation is not an independent capricious power, separate from the orderly action of Nature. She is emphatically addressed as a Power, present through all the world,-- Caeli subter labentia signa Quae mare navigerum quae terras frugiferentis Concelebras. She is not only omnipresent, but all-creative,-- Per te quoniam genus omne animantum Concipitur,-- and all-regulative-- Quae quoniam rerum naturam sola gubernas, etc. Thus under the name, and with some of the attributes of the Goddess of Mythology, the genial force of Nature,--'Natura Naturans' as distinct from the 'rerum summa,' or 'Natura Naturata,'--is apprehended as a living, all-pervading energy, the cause of all life, joy, beauty, and order in the world, the cause too of all grace and accomplishment in man. To this mysterious Power, from which all joy and loveliness are silently emanating, the poet, (remembering at the same time that the friend to whom he dedicates his poem claims especially to be under the protection of that Goddess with whom she is identified), prays for inspiration,-- Quo magis aeternum da dictis, diva, leporem[66]. Here, as in earlier invocations of the Muse, there is a recognition of the truth that the feeling, the imagery, and the words of the poet come to him in a way which he does not understand,-- [Greek: hêmeis de kleos oion akouomen, oude ti idmen,]-- and by the gift of a Power which he cannot command. Like Goethe, Lucretius seems to feel that his thoughts and feelings pass into form and musical expression under the influence of the same vital movement which in early spring fills the world with new life and beauty. But still true to his philosophy, and remembering the Empedoclean thought[67], which recurs with impressive solemnity in his argument, that this life-giving energy is inseparably united with a destructive energy, and seeing at the same time before his imagination the figures and colouring of some great masterpiece of Greek art, he embodies his conception in a passionately wrought picture of the loves of Aphrodite and Ares, and concludes with a prayer that the gracious Power whom he invokes would prevail on the fierce God of War to grant a time of peace to his country. If to regard this passage as merely an artistic ornament of the poem would be unjust to the sincerity of Lucretius as a thinker, to regard it merely as a piece of elaborate symbolism would be still more unjust to his genius as a poet. It is a truth both of thought and of imaginative feeling that there is a pervading and puissant energy in the world, manifesting itself most powerfully in animate and inanimate creation, when the deadness of winter gives place to the genial warmth of spring,-- Tibi rident aequora ponti Placatumque nitet diffuso lumine caelum;-- manifesting itself also in the human spirit in the form of genius, calling into life new feelings and fancies of the poet, and shaping them into forms of imperishable beauty. Whether consistently or inconsistently with the ultimate tenets of his philosophy, the poet, in this invocation, seems to recognise, behind these manifestations of unconscious energy, the presence of a conscious Being with which his own spirit can hold communion, and from which it draws inspiration. With similar inconsistency or consistency a modern physicist speaks of 'the impression of joy given in the unfolding of leaf and the spreading of plant as irresistibly suggesting the thought of a great Being conscious of this joy.' But this puissant and joy-giving energy, personified in the 'Alma Venus genetrix,' is only one of the aspects which the 'Natura daedala rerum' of Lucretius presents to man. She seems to stand to him rather in the position of a task-mistress than of a beneficent Being, ministering to his wants. The Gods receive all things from her bounty,-- Omnia suppeditat porro Natura,[68]-- and the lower animals who 'wage no foolish strife with her' have their wants also abundantly satisfied:-- Quando omnibus omnia large Tellus ipsa parit Naturaque daedala rerum[69]. But to man she is the cause of evil as well as of good; of shipwrecks, earthquakes, pestilence, and untimely death, as well as of all beauty and delight. Sometimes he seems to hear her speaking to him in the tones of stern reproof,-- Denique si vocem rerum Natura repente, etc.[70] Again he sees her rising up before him like the old Nemesis of Greek religion, and trampling with secret irony on the pride and pomp of human affairs,-- Usque adeo res humanas vis abdita quaedam Opterit et pulchros fascis saevasque secures Proculcare ac ludibrio sibi habere videtur[71]. It is this large conception of Nature which seems to bring the abstract doctrines of Lucretius into harmony with his poetical feelings and his human sensibilities. The poetry of the living world is thus breathed into the dry bones of the Atomic system of Democritus. The unity which the mind strains to grasp in contemplating the universe is thus made compatible with the perception of individual life in everything. The pathos and dignity of human life are enhanced by the recognition of our dependence on this great Power above and around us. The contemplation of this Power affects the imagination with a sense of awe, wonder, and majesty. But with this contemplative emotion a still deeper feeling seems to mingle. Throughout the poem there is heard a deep undertone of solemnity as from one awakening to the apprehension of a great invisible Power,--'a concealed omnipotence,'--in the world. As the imagination of Lucretius is immeasurably more poetical, so is his spirit immeasurably more reverential than that of Epicurus. If by the analysis of his understanding he seems to take all mystery and sanctity out of the universe, he restores them again by the synthesis of his imagination. If his work seems in some places to 'teach a truth he could not learn,' this is to be explained partly by the fact that he sometimes leaves the beaten road of Epicureanism for the higher and less defined tracts,--'avia loca,'--along which the mystic enthusiasm of Empedocles had borne him. But partly it may be explained by the fact that the poetic imagination, which was in him the predominant faculty, asserts its right to be heard after the logical understanding has said its last word. The imagination which recognises infinite life and order in the world unconsciously assumes the existence of a creative and governing Power, behind the visible framework of things. Even the germ of such a thought was more elevating than the popular idolatry and superstition. The recognition of the majesty of Nature enables Lucretius to contemplate life with a sense both of solemnity and security, while it imparts a more elevated feeling to his enjoyment of the beauty of the world. The belief which he taught and by which he lived is neither atheistic nor pantheistic; it is not definite enough to be theistic. It was like the twilight between the beliefs that were passing away, and that which rose on the world after his time,-- [Greek: êmos d' out' ar pô êôs, eti d' amphilykê nyx]. [Footnote 1: 'First, by reason of the greatness of my argument, and because I set the mind free from the close-drawn bonds of superstition; and next because, on so dark a theme, I compose such lucid verse, touching every point with the grace of poesy.'--i. 931-34.] [Footnote 2: Of Leucippus, with whose name the theory is also associated, very little is known.] [Footnote 3: 'This terror of the soul, therefore, and this darkness must be dispelled, not by the rays of the sun or the bright shafts of day, but by the outward aspect and harmonious plan of nature.'--i. 146-48.] [Footnote 4: i. 445-56.] [Footnote 5: 'The original atoms are, therefore, of solid singleness, composed of the smallest particles in close and compact union, not kept together by any meeting of these particles, but rather powerful by their eternal singleness, from which nature allows no loss by violence or decay, storing them as the seeds of all things.'--i. 609-14.] [Footnote 6: ii. 297-302.] [Footnote 7: ii. 549.] [Footnote 8: ii. 575-76.] [Footnote 9: 'If we are to suppose the existence of an eternal substance, at the basis of all things, on which the safety of the whole universe rests, lest you find creation resolved into nonentity.'--ii. 862-64.] [Footnote 10: 'So soon as the deep rest of death hath fallen upon a man, and the mind and the life have departed from him, there is no loss in his whole frame to be perceived, either in appearance or in weight. Death still presents everything that was before, except the vital sense and the warm heat.'--iii. 211-15.] [Footnote 11: 'For, not only would all reason come to nought, even life itself would immediately be overthrown, unless you dare to trust the senses.'--iv. 507-8.] [Footnote 12: i. 135.] [Footnote 13: 'Since nothing in our body has been produced in order that we might be able to put it to use, but what has been produced creates its own use.'--iv. 834-35.] [Footnote 14: 'And love impaired their strength, and children, by their coaxing ways, easily broke down the proud temper of their fathers.'--v. 1017-18.] [Footnote 15: vi. 60-1.] [Footnote 16: E.g. i. 54; v. 154.] [Footnote 17: Macaulay.] [Footnote 18: E.g. i. 694.] [Footnote 19: iv. 478-79.] [Footnote 20: In quae corpora si nullus tibi forte videtur Posse animi iniectus fieri, procul avius erras.--ii. 739-40.] [Footnote 21: 'But it is necessary that the atoms, in the act of creation, should exercise some secret, invisible faculty.'--i. 778-79.] [Footnote 22: 'Since on all sides, through all the pores of aether, and, as it were, all round through the breathing-places of the mighty world, a free exit and entrance is given to the atoms.'--vi. 492-94.] [Footnote 23: 'As feathers, and hair, and bristles are first formed on the limbs of beasts and the bodies of birds, so the young earth then first bore herbs and plants, afterwards gave birth to the generations of living things.'--v. 788-91.] [Footnote 24: 'So more and more, the sweat oozing from the salt body, increased the sea and the moving watery plains by its flow.'--v. 487-88.] [Footnote 25: 'Since neither its veins can support adequate nourishment, nor does Nature supply what is needful.'--ii. 1141-42.] [Footnote 26: 'For one thing will grow clear after another: nor shall the darkness of night make thee lose thy way, before thou seest, to the full, the furthest secrets of Nature: so shall all things throw light one on the other.'--i. 1115-17.] [Footnote 27: 'Dishonouring immortal things by mortal words.'--v. 121.] [Footnote 28: 'They, doubtless, became the prey and the gain of others, unable to break through the bonds of fate by which they were confined, until Nature caused that species to disappear.'--v. 875-77. Professor Wallace (Epicureanism, p. 114) in commenting on this passage adds, 'Of course in this there is no implication of the peculiarly Darwinian doctrine of descent, or development of kind from kind, with structure modified and complicated to meet changing circumstances.'] [Footnote 29: iii. 327-28.] [Footnote 30: i. 305.] [Footnote 31: iv. 705.] [Footnote 32: 'Dogs, lightly sleeping, with faithful heart.'--v. 864.] [Footnote 33: 'When from the strong torrents of Helicon the swans raise their liquid wailing with doleful voice.'--iv. 547-48.] [Footnote 34: 'As the low note of the swan is sweeter than the cry of the cranes, far-scattered among the south-wind's skiey clouds.'--iv. 181-82.] [Footnote 35: 'And gulls among the sea-waves, seeking their food and pastime in the brine.'--v. 1079-80.] [Footnote 36: Od. v. 66.] [Footnote 37: 'And likewise, when the lithe serpent casts its skin among the thorns; for often we notice the briers, with their light airy spoils hanging to them.'--iv. 60-2.] [Footnote 38: iii. 213-15.] [Footnote 39: 'Consider, too, the special madness of the mind, and forgetfulness of things; consider its sinking into the black waves of lethargy.'--iii. 828-29.] [Footnote 40: 'Unbroken speech prolonged from the first light of dawn till the shadows of the dark night.'--iv. 537-38.] [Footnote 41: 'Now, too, let us examine the "Homoeomeria" of Anaxagoras, as the Greeks call it, though the poverty of our native speech does not admit of its being named in our language.'--i. 830-33.] [Footnote 42: 'Whence returning victorious he brings back to us tidings of what may and what may not come into existence: on what principle, in fine, the power of each thing is determined and the deeply-fixed limit of its being.'--i. 75-77.] [Footnote 43: 'According to what condition all things have been created, what necessity there is that they abide by it, and how they may not annul the mighty laws of the ages.'--v. 56-58.] [Footnote 44: 'Since it is absolutely decreed, what each thing can and what it cannot do by the conditions of nature.'--i. 586.] [Footnote 45: 'It is fixed and ordered where each thing may grow and exist.'--iii. 787.] [Footnote 46: ii. 254.] [Footnote 47: ii. 1091.] [Footnote 48: vi. 32.] [Footnote 49: 'This, in these circumstances, I think I can establish, that such faint traces of our native elements are left beyond the powers of our reason to dispel, that nothing prevents us from leading a life worthy of the gods.'--iii. 319-22.] [Footnote 50: ii. 8.] [Footnote 51: ii. 297-99.] [Footnote 52: i. 262-64.] [Footnote 53: ii. 573-74.] [Footnote 54: ii. 575-76.] [Footnote 55: iii. 964.] [Footnote 56: ii. 77-79.] [Footnote 57: 'So one thing shall never cease being born from another, and life is given to no man as a possession, to all for use.'--iii. 970-71.] [Footnote 58: 'Hence, moreover, the race of man and the beasts of the forest are fed; hence we see cities glad with the flower of their children, and the leafy woods on all sides loud with the song of young birds.'--i. 254-56.] [Footnote 59: v. 271-72.] [Footnote 60: 'Finally, since the vast members of the world, engaged in no holy warfare, so mightily contend with one another, see'st thou not that some end may be assigned to their long conflict, either when the sun and every mode of heat, having drunk up all the moisture, shall have gained the day, which they are ever tending to do but do not yet accomplish?' etc.--v. 380-85.] [Footnote 61: 'And that you may see how very small a part one firmament is of the whole sum of things, how small a fraction it is, not even so much in proportion as a single man is to the whole earth.'--vi. 650-52.] [Footnote 62: 'And traversed the whole boundless region of space, in mind and spirit.'--i. 74.] [Footnote 63: 'Who can order the infinite mass? who can hold with a guiding hand the mighty reins of immensity?'--ii. 1095-96.] [Footnote 64: ii. 16.] [Footnote 65: ii. 348.] [Footnote 66: i. 28.] [Footnote 67: Lucretius, in other places where he introduces pictures or stories from the ancient mythology, as at ii. 600, etc., iii. 978, etc., iv. 584, etc., treats them as symbolising some facts of Nature or human life. Occasionally, as at v. 14, etc., he deals with them in the spirit of Euhemerism. He never uses them, as Virgil, Horace, and Ovid do, merely as materials for artistic representation.] [Footnote 68: iii. 23.] [Footnote 69: v. 233-4.] [Footnote 70: ii. 931, etc.] [Footnote 71: v. 1233-5.] CHAPTER XIII. THE RELIGIOUS ATTITUDE AND MORAL TEACHING OF LUCRETIUS. Lucretius does not enforce his moral teaching on the systematic plan on which his physical philosophy is discussed. His view of human life is sometimes presented as it arises in the regular course of the argument, at other times in highly finished digressions, interspersed throughout the work with the view apparently of breaking its severe monotony. These passages might be compared to the lyrical odes in a Greek drama. They afford relief to the strained attention, and suggest the close and permanent human interest involved in what is apparently special, abstract, and remote. There is no necessary connexion between the atomic theory of philosophy, and that view of the end and objects of life which Lucretius derived from Epicurus. Although the moral attitude of Epicurus was, in some respects, anticipated by Democritus, Epicureanism really started from independent sources, viz. from the later development of the ethical teaching of Socrates, and from the personal circumstances and disposition of Epicurus. By the ordinary Epicurean his philosophy was valued chiefly as affording a basis for the denial of the doctrines of Divine Providence and of the immortality of the soul. But there is a wide difference between ordinary Epicureanism and that solemn view of human life which was revealed to the world in the poem of Lucretius. The power which his speculative philosophy exercised over his mind was one cause of this difference. Although there is no necessary connexion between his philosophical convictions and his ethical doctrines, yet the elevation of feeling which he has imparted to the least elevated of all the moral systems of antiquity may be in part accounted for by the influence of ideas derived from the philosophy of Democritus. Epicureanism, in its original form, was the expression of a character as unlike as possible to that of Lucretius. It arose in a state of society and under circumstances widely different from the social and political condition of the last phase of the Roman Republic. It was a doctrine suited to the easy social life which succeeded to the great political career, the energetic ambition, and the creative genius which ennobled the great age of Athenian liberty. It was essentially the philosophy of the [Greek: rheia zôontes], who found in refined and regulated pleasure, in friendliness and sociability, a compensation for the loss of political existence, and of the sacred associations and ideal glories of their ancestral religion. Human life, stripped of its solemn meaning and high practical interest, was supposed to be understood and realised, and brought under the control of a comfortable and intelligible philosophy. Pleasure was the obvious end of existence; the highest aim of knowledge was to ascertain the conditions under which most enjoyment could be secured; the triumph of the will was to conform to these conditions. All violent emotion, all care and anxiety, whatever impaired the capacity of enjoyment or fostered artificial desire, was to be controlled or resisted, as inimical to the tranquillity of the soul. The philosophers of the garden taught and acted on the practical truth, that pleasure depended on the mind more than on external things; that a simple life tended more to happiness than luxury[1]; that excess of every kind was followed by reaction. They inculcated political quiescence as well as the abnegation of personal ambition. As death was 'the end of all,' life was to be temperately enjoyed while it lasted, and resigned when necessary, with cheerful composure. Such a philosophy would scarcely be thought capable of having given birth to any form of serious and elevated poetry. Its natural fruit was the refined, cheerful, and witty new comedy of Athens. Yet the genius of Lucretius and of Horace expressed these doctrines in tones of dignity and beauty, which have been denied to more ennobling truths. The philosophy of pleasure thus makes its appeal to the poetical susceptibility, as well as to the ordinary temperament of men. It might have been thought also that no philosophy would have been less attractive to the dignity of the nobler type, or to the coarser texture of the common type of Roman character. Yet among the Romans of the last age of the Republic, Epicureanism was a formidable rival to the more congenial system of Stoicism, and was professed by men of pure character and intellectual tastes as well as by men like the Piso Caesoninus, of whom both Cicero and Catullus have left so unflattering a portrait. These two systems, although antagonistic in their view and aim, yet had this common adaptation to the Roman character, that they held out a definite plan of life, and laid down precepts by which that life might be attained. The strength of will and singleness of aim, characteristic of the Romans, their love of rule and impatience of speculative suspense, inclined and enabled them to embrace the teaching of those schools whose tenets were most definite and most readily applicable to human conduct. To a Greek philosopher the interest of conforming his life to any system arose in a great measure from the freedom and exercise thereby afforded to his intellect. Thus Epicurus, in denying the power of luxury to give happiness, says,--'These are not the things which form the life of pleasure,'--'[Greek: alla nêphôn logismos kai tas aitias exereunôn pasês haireseôs kai phygês, kai tas doxas exelaunôn, aph' hôn pleistos tas psychas katalambanei thorybos][2].' To a Roman, on the other hand, such a scheme of life was recommended by the new power which was thus imparted to the will. Greek philosophy has sometimes been reproached as the cause of the corruption of Roman character and the decay of Roman religion. But it would be more true to say that, to the higher natures at least, philosophy supplied the place of the ancient principles of duty, which had long since decayed with the decay of patriotism and religion. The idea of regulating life by an ideal standard afforded a broader aim and a more humane and liberal sphere of action to that self-control and constancy of will, out of which, in combination with absolute devotion to the State, the ancient Roman virtue had been formed. But still it is true that the principles of Epicureanism were difficult to reconcile with some of the conditions, both good and bad, of Roman character. While fostering the humaner feelings and more social tastes, and so softening the primitive rudeness and austerity, these doctrines tended to discourage national and political spirit, by withdrawing the energies of the will from outward activity to the regulation of the inner life. The attitude both of Stoicism and Epicureanism was one of resistance on the part of the will to outward influences;--the one system striving to attain entire independence of circumstances, the other to regulate life in accordance with them, so as to secure the utmost positive enjoyment, and the utmost exemption from pain. The political passions of the last age of the Republic inclined men of thought and leisure to that philosophy which seemed best fitted to meet and satisfy-- 'The longing for confirmed tranquillity Inward and outward.' But while Epicureanism was a natural refuge from the passions of a revolutionary era, Stoicism was a fortress of inward strength to the few who, at the fall of the Republic, resisted the manifest tendency of things, and, in a later age, to those who strove to maintain the dignity of Roman citizens under the degradation of the early Empire. But the profession of Epicureanism, in the last age of the Republic, was not confined to men like Atticus and Lucretius who stood aloof from public life. The existence of Cassius, who acted and suffered for the same cause as the Stoic Cato, shows that political apathy, although theoretically required by this philosophy, was not essential to a Roman Epicurean. Lucretius, though animated by an ardent spirit of proselytism, does not desire that Memmius should forget his duties as a citizen and statesman. The denial of the Divine interference in human affairs and of the doctrine of a future state was the essential bond of agreement among the adherents of Epicureanism. The religious unsettlement of the age assumed in them a positive form. They were the Sadducees of Rome, who escaped from the perplexity as well as from the most elevating influences of life, by moulding their feelings and conduct on the firm conviction, that while man was master of his happiness in this world, he had nothing either to hope or fear after death. It seems a strange result of the moral confusion of that time to find the enthusiasm of Lucretius springing from this denial of what from the days of Plato have been regarded as the highest hopes of mankind. No writer of antiquity was more profoundly impressed by the serious import and mystery of life. Yet he appears as the unhesitating advocate of all the tenets of this philosophy, and denies the foundations of religious belief with a zeal more like religious earnestness than the spirit of any other writer of antiquity. Without conscious deviation from the teaching of his master, he reproduces the calm unimpassioned doctrines of Epicurus, in a new type,--earnest, austere, and ennobled; enforcing them not for the sake of ease or for the love of pleasure, but in the cause of truth and human dignity. Pleasure is indeed recognised by him as the universal law or condition of existence--'dux vitae dia voluptas,'--the great instrument of Nature through which all life is created and maintained. But the real object of his teaching is to obtain not active pleasure, but peace and a 'pure heart.' 'For life,' he says, 'may go on without corn or wine, but not without a pure heart-- At bene non poterat sine puro pectore vivi. All that Nature craves is that the body should be free from actual pain, and that the mind, undisturbed by fear and anxiety, should be open to the influence of natural enjoyment--' Nonne videre Nil aliud sibi naturam latrare, nisi ut, cui Corpore seiunctus dolor absit, mente fruatur Iucundo sensu cura semotu' metuque[3]? Although in different places he indicates a genuine appreciation of the charms of art,--in the form of music, paintings, statues, etc.,--yet he expresses or implies an independence of all the adventitious stimulants to enjoyment. The only needful pleasure is that which Nature herself bestows on a mind free from care, passion, violent emotion, restless discontent, and slothful apathy. Although no new principle or maxim of conduct appears in his teaching, the view of human life presented by Lucretius was really something new in the world. A strong and deep flood of serious thought and feeling was for the first time poured into the shallow channel of Epicureanism. The spirit in which Lucretius contemplated the world was different from that of any other man of antiquity; especially different from that of his master in philosophy. To the one human life was a pleasant sojourn, which should be temperately enjoyed and gracefully terminated at the appointed time: to the other it was the more sombre and tragic side of the august spectacle which all Nature presents to the contemplative mind. Moderation in enjoyment was the practical lesson of the one: fortitude and renunciation were the demands which the other made of all who would live worthily. This difference in the spirit, rather than the letter, of their philosophy is to be attributed in some degree to this, that Lucretius was a Roman of the antique type of Ennius, born with the passionate heart of a poet, and inheriting the resolute endurance of the great patrician families. Partly too, as was said before, the effect of the speculative philosophy which he embraced was to deepen and strengthen that mood of imaginative contemplation, which he shares, not with any of his countrymen, but with a few great thinkers of the world. It is his philosophical enthusiasm which distinguishes the teaching of Lucretius from the meditative and practical wisdom which has made Horace the favourite Epicurean teacher and companion of modern times. Partly too, as was said in a former chapter, this new aspect of Epicureanism in Lucretius may be attributed to the reaction of his nature from the confusion of the times in which he lived. It is not indeed possible to learn whether the passions of his age first drove him to Epicureanism, or whether the doctrines of that philosophy, adopted on speculative grounds, may not rather have led him to regard his age in the spirit of contemplative isolation, which he has described in the well-known passage-- Suave, mari magno turbantibus aequora ventis, etc. His philosophy may have been forced on him by personal experience, or the intimations of experience may have assumed their form and colour from the nature of his philosophy. But the memories of his youth and the experience of things witnessed in his manhood did undoubtedly colour all his thoughts and feelings on human life. Some of the forms of evil against which he contends had never been so prominently displayed before. Yet all these considerations afford only a partial explanation of the character of his practical philosophy. There were other Roman Epicureans, contemporary with him and later, and none are known to have been in any way like him. Although his nature was made of the strong Roman fibre; although his mind had been deeply imbued with the spirit of Greek philosophy; although his view of life was necessarily coloured by the action of his times; yet all these considerations go but a little way to explain his attitude of mind and the work which he accomplished in the world. Over all these considerations this predominates, that he was a man of great original and individual force, and one who in power and sincerity of thought and feeling rose higher than any other above the level of his age and country. The moral teaching of the poem was rather an active protest against various forms of evil than the proclamation of a positive good. The happiness which the philosophic life promised is described in vague outline, like the delineation given of the calm and passionless existence of the Gods. Epicureanism appears here in antagonism to the prejudice and ignorance, the weakness and the passions of human nature, rather than in its hold of any positive good. Hence it is that the tones of Lucretius might in many places be mistaken for those of a Stoic rather than an Epicurean. In their resistance to the common forms of evil these systems were at one. Perhaps, too, in the positive good at which he aimed, the spirit of Lucretius was more that of a Stoic than he imagined. His sense of human dignity was much more powerful than his regard for human enjoyment. Yet his philosophy enabled him, along with the strength of Stoicism, to cherish humaner sympathies. While his earnest temper, his scorn of weakness, his superiority to pleasure were in harmony with the militant rather than the quiescent attitude of each of these philosophies, his humanity and tenderness of feeling and the enjoyment which he derived from Nature and art were more in harmony with the better side of Epicureanism than with the formal teaching of the Porch. The evils of life, for the cure of which Lucretius considers his philosophy available, appeared to him to spring not out of man's relation to Nature, but out of the weakness of his reason and the corruption of his heart. The great service of Epicurus consisted not only in revealing the laws of Nature, but in laying his finger on the secret cause of man's unhappiness. Observing the insufficiency of all external goods to bestow peace and contentment, he saw that the evil lay in the vessel into which these blessings were poured:-- Intellegit ibi vitium vas efficere ipsum Omniaque illius vitio corrumpier intus, Quae conlata foris et commoda cumque venirent; Partim quod fluxum pertusumque esse videbat, Ut nulla posset ratione explerier umquam; Partim quod taetro quasi conspurcare sapore Omnia cernebat, quaecumque receperat, intus[4]. The evils which vitiate our happiness are the cowardice which dares not accept the blessings of life, the weakness which repines at what is inevitable, the restless desires which cannot enjoy the present and crave for what is beyond their reach, the apathy and insensibility to natural enjoyment, which are the necessary consequence of luxurious indulgence. Thus the aim of his moral teaching was to purify the heart from superstition, from the fear of death, from the passions of ambition and of love, from all artificial pleasures and desires. The greatest of these evils and the mainspring of all human misery is superstition. It is this which surrounds life with the gloom of death-- Omnia suffundens mortis nigrore[5]. Against the arbitrary and cruel power, supposed to be exercised by the Gods, Lucretius proclaimed internecine war. The fear of this power is denounced, not as a restraint on natural inclination, but as a base and intolerable burden, degrading life, confounding all genuine feeling, corrupting our ideas of what is holiest and most divine. The pathetic story of the sacrifice of Iphigenia is told to enforce the antagonism between the exactions of religious belief and the most sacred human affections. Every line of the poem is indirectly a protest against the religious errors of antiquity. At occasional intervals this protest is directly uttered, sometimes with indignant irony, at other times with the profoundest pathos. The first feeling breaks forth in the passage at vi. 380, etc., where he argues against the fancies which attribute thunder to the capricious anger of the Gods. 'Why is it,' he asks, 'that the bolts pass over the guilty and often strike the innocent? Why are they idly spent on desert places? Is this done by the Gods merely in the way of practice and exercise for their arms? Why is it that Jupiter never hurls his bolts in a clear sky? Does he descend into the clouds in order that his aim may be surer? Why does he cast his bolts into the sea? What charge has he against the waves and the waste of waters? Quid undas Arguit et liquidam molem camposque natantis[6]? Why is it that he often destroys and disfigures his own temples and images?' Elsewhere, however, he is moved by a feeling deeper than scorn,--a feeling of true reverence, springing from a high ideal of the attitude which it became man to maintain in presence of a superior nature. There is no passage in the poem in which he speaks more from the depths of his heart than in the lines-- O genus infelix humanum, talia divis Cum tribuit facta atque iras adiunxit acerbas! Quantos tum gemitus ipsi sibi, quantaque nobis Volnera, quas lacrimas peperere minoribu' nostris! Nec pietas ullast velatum saepe videri Vertier ad lapidem atque omnis accedere ad aras Nec procumbere humi prostratum et pandere palmas Ante deum delubra nec aras sanguine multo Spargere quadrupedum nec votis nectere vota, Sed mage pacata posse omnia mente tueri[7]. The terrors of the popular mythology are denounced as a violation of the majesty of the Gods, as well as the cause of infinite evil to ourselves,--not indeed because any thought or act of ours has the power to rouse the Divine anger, but from the effect that these feelings have on our own minds. 'No longer can we approach the temples of the Gods with a quiet heart, nor receive into our minds the intimations of the Divine nature in peace'-- Nec delubra deum placido cum pectore adibis, Nec de corpore quae sancto simulacra feruntur In mentes hominum divinae nuntia formae Suscipere haec animi tranquilla pace valebis[8]. This passage and others in the poem imply that Lucretius both believed in the existence of Gods, and conceived of them as revealing themselves through direct impressions to the mind of man, and filling it with solemn awe and peace. But the account which he gives of their eternal existence is vague and poetical, and might almost be regarded as a symbolical expression of what seemed to him most holy and divine in man. The highest aim of man is to 'lead a life worthy of the Gods': the essential attribute of the divine life is 'peace.' The Gods are said to consist of the finest and purest essence, to be exempt from death, decay, and wasting passions, to be supplied with all things by the liberal bounty of Nature, and to dwell for ever in untroubled serenity above the darkness and the storms of our world. Their abode in the spaces betwixt different worlds--(the 'intermundia' as they are called by Cicero),--is described in words almost literally translated from the description of the Heaven of the Odyssey-- Apparet divum numen sedesque quietae Quas neque concutiunt venti nec nubila nimbis Aspergunt neque nix acri concreta pruina Cana cadens violat semperque innubilus aether Integit, et large diffuso lumine rident[9]. They reveal themselves to man in dreams and waking visions by images of ampler size and more august aspect than that of our mortal condition. Fear and ignorance have assigned to these unchanging forms the functions of creating and governing the world, and out of this fear have arisen all over the earth temples and altars, along with the festivals and the solemn rites of superstition. But the Gods are neither the arbitrary tyrants nor the beneficent guardians of the world. Why should they have done anything for the benefit of man? How can he add to or detract from their eternal happiness? Shall we suppose them weary of their existence, and infected with a human passion for change?-- At, credo, in tenebris vita ac maerore iacebat, Donec diluxit rerum genitalis origo. Whence could they have obtained the idea of creation, whence gathered the secret powers of matter-- Si non ipsa dedit specimen natura creandi? Against the old argument from final causes he opposes that drawn from the imperfections of the world, such as the waste of Nature's resources on vast tracts of mountain and forest, on desolate marshes, rocks, and seas,--the enmity to man of other occupants of the earth,--the malign influences of climate and the seasons,--the feebleness of infancy,--the devastations of disease,--the untimeliness of early death[10]. While his belief in the Gods is thus expressed in vague outline and poetical symbolism, yet it is clear that as he recognised a secret, orderly, and omnipotent power in Nature, so also he recognised the ideal of a purer and serener life than that of earthly existence. These two elements in all true religion, a reverential acknowledgment of a universal power and order, and a sense of a diviner life with which man may have communion, were part of the being of Lucretius. His denial of supernatural beliefs extended not only to all the fables and false conceptions of ancient mythology, but to the doctrine of a Divine Providence recompensing men, here or hereafter, according to their actions. The intensity of his nature led him to identify all religion with the cruel or childish fables of the popular faith. The certainty with which he grasped the truth of the laws and order of Nature was incompatible with the only conception he could form of a Divine action on the world. His deep sense of human rights and deep sympathy with human feeling rebelled against a belief in Powers exercising a capricious tyranny over the world, and exacting human sacrifice as a propitiation of their offended majesty. His reverence for truth and his sense of the power and mystery of Nature led him to scorn the virtue attributed to an idolatrous and formal worship. This attitude of religious isolation, not more from his own time than from the subsequent course of thought, in a man of unusual sincerity and earnestness of feeling, is certainly among the most impressive phenomena of ancient literature. The spirit in which he denies the beliefs of the world is far from resembling the triumph of a cold philosophy over the religious associations of mankind. He is moved even to a kind of poetical sympathy with some of the ceremonies and symbols of Paganism. A sense of religious awe,--a sympathetic recognition of the power of religious emotion over the hearts of men,--is expressed, for instance, in the lines which describe the procession of Cybele through the great cities and nations of the world. While guarding himself against the pollution of a base idolatry, he yet acknowledges not only the power of religious associations to entwine themselves with human affections, but the intrinsic power of the truths symbolised in that worship; viz. the truth of the majesty of Nature, and of the duties arising from the elemental affections to parents and country. In regard to all his religious impressions his intensity of feeling and imagination seems to place him on a solitary height, nearly as far apart from the followers of his own school as from their adversaries[11]. The same strength of heart and mind characterises that passage of sustained and impassioned feeling, in which Lucretius encounters the thought of eternal death. The vast spiritual difference between the Roman poet and the Greek philosopher is apparent when we contrast the cold, unsympathetic language of the epistle to Menoeceus with the fervent and profoundly human tones of the third book of the poem of Lucretius. Epicurus escapes from the fear of death through a placid indifference of feeling, an easy contentment with the comforts of this life, a sense of relief in getting rid of 'the longing for immortality' ([Greek: ton tês athanasias pothon]). Lucretius, while realising the full pathos and solemnity of the thought of death, preaches submission to the inexorable decree of Nature with a stern consistency and a proud fortitude combating the suggestions of human weakness. The whole of the third book is devoted to this part of his subject, and the argument of the fourth is to a great extent supplementary to that of the third book. The physical doctrine enunciated and illustrated in the first half of the third book is the materiality of the soul and its indissoluble connexion with the body. The practical consequence of this doctrine, viz. that death is nothing to us, is there enforced in a long passage[12] of sustained power and solemnity of feeling. First, we are made to realise the entire unconsciousness in death throughout all eternity. 'As it was before we were born, so shall it be hereafter. As we felt no trouble in the past at the clash of conflict between Roman and Carthaginian, when all the world shook with alarm, so nothing can touch us or move us then-- Non si terra mari miscebitur et mare caelo[13]. It is but the trick of our fancy which suggests the thought of any kind of suffering after all consciousness has ceased-- Nec radicitus e vita se tollit et eicit Sed facit esse sui quiddam super inscius ipse[14]. Men feel that the sadness of death lies in the separation from wife, and children, and home; in the extinction which a single day has brought to all the blessings and the gains of a lifetime. But they forget that along with these blessings is extinguished all desire and longing for them. So, too, men "spice their fair banquets with the dust of death." They say, "our joy is but for a season; it will soon be past, nor ever again be recalled,"--as if forsooth any want or any desire can haunt that sleep from which there is no awaking-- Nec quisquam expergitus exstat, Frigida quem semel est vitai pausa secuta[15]. Nature herself might utter this reproof to all weak complaining: "Thou fool, if thy life hath given thee joy, and all its blessings have not been poured into a leaky vessel, why dost thou not leave the feast like a satisfied guest, and take thy rest contentedly? But if all has hitherto been to thee vanity and vexation of spirit, why seek to add to thy trouble? I can devise or frame no new pleasure for thee. "There is no new thing under the sun"--"eadem sunt omnia semper."' To the weak complaint of age, Nature would speak with sterner voice: 'Away hence with thy tears and thy complainings. It is because, unable to enjoy the present, thou art ever weakly longing for what is absent, that death has come on thee unsatisfied.' 'This would be, indeed, a just charge and reproof. For the old order is ever yielding place to new; and life is given to no man in possession, to all men for use. The time before we were born is a mirror to us of what the future shall be. Is there any gloom or horror there? Is there not a deeper rest than any sleep?' 'The terrors of the unseen world are but the hell which fools make for themselves out of their passions[16]. The torments of Tantalus, of Tityus, of Sisyphus, and the Danaides, are but symbols of the blind cowardice and superstition, of the craving passions, of the ever-foiled and ever-renewed ambition, of the thankless discontent with the natural joy and beauty of the world, which curse and degrade our mortal existence. The stories of Cerberus and the Furies, and of the tortures of the damned are creations of a guilty conscience, or the projections into futurity of the experiences of earthly punishment.' Other consolations are suggested by the thoughts of those who have gone before us. Echoing the stern irony of Achilles-- [Greek: alla, philos, thane kai su; tiê olophyreai houtôs? katthane kai Patroklos, hoper seo pollon ameinôn][17]-- he reminds us that better and greater men than we have died,--kings and soldiers, poets and philosophers, the mightiest equally with the humblest. In the spirit, and partly too in the words of Ennius, he enforces the thought that 'Scipio, the thunderbolt of war, the terror of Carthage, gave his bones to the earth as if he were the meanest slave.' 'Why, then, should one whose life is half a sleep, who is the prey of weak fears and restless discontent, complain that he too is subject to the common law? What is this wretched love of life, which makes us tremble at every danger? Death cannot be avoided; no new pleasure can be forged out by longer living. This evil of our lot is not inflicted by Nature, but by our own craving hearts, which cannot enjoy, and are yet ever thirsting for longer life[18].' The power of the whole of this passage depends partly on the vividness of feeling and conception with which the thought is realised, partly on the august and solemn associations with which it is surrounded. Such graphic touches as these-- Frigida quem semel est vitai pausa secuta[19];-- Cum summo gelidi cubat aequore saxi[20];-- Urgerive superne obtritum pondere terrae[21],-- and again, the life, truth, and tenderness of the picture presented in the lines-- Iam iam non domus accipiet te laeta, neque uxor Optima nec dulces occurrent oscula nati Praeripere et tacita pectus dulcedine tangent[22], bring home to the mind, in startling distinctness, the old familiar contrast between the 'cold obstruction' of the grave and 'the warm precincts of the cheerful day.' But the horror and pain of the thought of death are lost in a feeling of august resignation to the universal law. Though the fact is made present to our minds in its sternest reality, yet it is encompassed with the pomp and majesty of great associations. It suggests the thought of the most momentous crisis in history-- Ad confligendum venientibus undique Poenis[23], of the regal state of kings and mighty potentates-- Inde alii multi reges rerumque potentes Occiderunt, magnis qui gentibus imperitarunt[24], of the simpler and more impressive grandeur of the great men of old, such as the 'good Ancus,' the mighty Scipio, Homer, 'peerless among poets,' the sage Democritus, Epicurus, 'the sun among all the lesser luminaries.' Lastly, we are reminded of the universal law of Nature, that the death of the old is the condition of the life of the new-- Sic alid ex alio nunquam desistet oriri[25]. Even if the spirit of the poet cannot be said to rise buoyantly above the depressing and paralysing influence of this conviction, yet he draws a higher lesson from it than the maxim of 'Eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.' He understands the epicurean precept of 'carpe diem' in a sense more befitting to human dignity. The lesson which he teaches is the need of conquering all weakness, sloth, and irresolution in life. This life is all that we have through eternity; let it not be wasted in unsatisfied desires, insensibility to present and regrets for absent good, or restless disquiet for the future; let us understand ourselves and our position here, bear and enjoy whatever is allotted to us during our few years of existence. We are masters of ourselves and of our fortunes, so far at least as to rise clearly above the degradation of ignorance and misery. The practical use of the study of Nature, according to Lucretius, is, first, to inspire confidence in the room of an ignorant and superstitious fear of supernatural power; and, secondly, to show what man really needs, and so to clear the heart from all artificial desires and passions. All that is wanted for happiness in this world is a mind free from error, and a heart neither incapable of natural enjoyment (fluxum pertusumque) nor vitiated by false appetite[26]. Of the errors to which man is liable superstition and the fear of death are the most deeply seated. Of the artificial desires and passions, on the other hand, the most destructive are the love of power and of riches, and the sensual appetite for pleasure. In the opening lines of the second book the strife of ambition, the rivalries of rank and intellect in the warfare of politics are contrasted with the serene life of philosophy, as darkness, error, and danger with light, certainty, and peace-- Sed nil dulcius est, bene quam munita tenere Edita doctrina sapientum templa serena, Despicere unde queas alios passimque videre Errare atque viam palantis quaerere vitae, Certare ingenio, contendere nobilitate, Noctes atque dies niti praestante labore Ad summas emergere opes rerumque potiri[27]. Yet to be the master of armies and of navies, or to be clothed in gold and purple, gives not that exemption from the real terrors and anxieties of life which the power of reason only can bestow-- Quod si ridicula haec ludibriaque esse videmus, Re veraque metus hominum curaeque sequaces Nec metuunt sonitus armorum nec fera tela, Audacterque inter reges rerumque potentis Versantur neque fulgorem reverentur ab auro Nec clarum vestis splendorem purpureai, Quid dubitas quin omni' sit haec rationi' potestas? Omnis cum in tenebris praesertim vita laboret[28]. The desire of power and station leads to the shame and misery of baffled hopes, of which the toil of Sisyphus is the type, and also to the guilt which deluges the world in blood, and violates the most sacred ties of Nature[29]. While failure in the struggle is degradation, success is often only the prelude to the most sudden downfall. Weary with bloodshed, and with forcing their way up the hostile and narrow road of ambition[30], men reach the summit of their hopes only to be hurled down by envy as by a thunderbolt[31]. They are slaves to ambition, merely because they cannot distinguish the true from the false, because they cannot judge of things as they really are, apart from the estimate which the world puts upon them-- Quandoquidem sapiunt alieno ex ore petuntque Res ex auditis potius quam sensibus ipsis.[32] The love of riches and of luxurious living, which had begun to corrupt the Roman character in the age of Lucilius, had increased to gigantic dimensions in the last age of the Republic. By no aspect of his age was Lucretius more repelled than by this. No doctrine is enforced in the poem with more sincerity of conviction than that of the happiness and dignity of plain and natural living, the vanity of all the appliances of wealth, and their inability to give real enjoyment either to body or mind. In a well-known passage at the beginning of the second book he adapts an ideal description from Homer's account of the palace of Alcinous to the costly magnificence and splendour of Roman banquets, with which he contrasts the pleasure of gratifying simple tastes, in fine weather, among the beauties of Nature-- Praesertim cum tempestas adridet et anni Tempora conspergunt viridantis floribus herbas[33]. With fervid sincerity he announces the truth that 'to the man who would govern his life by reason plain living and a contented spirit are great riches'-- Quod siquis vera vitam ratione gubernet, Divitiae grandes homini sunt vivere parce Aequo animo[34]. Moderation, independence, and self-control are the virtues which Horace derives from his philosophy. He knew how to enjoy both the luxury of the city and the simple fare of the country. Lucretius is more alive to the dangers of pampering the body and enervating the mind. He is more active in his resistance to the common forms of indulgence: he shows more truly simple tastes, stronger capacity of natural enjoyment. He is vividly sensible of the apathy and _ennui_ produced by the luxury and inaction of his age. Others among the Roman poets, with more or less sincerity and consistency, appear to long for a return to more natural ways, and paint their ideals of the purity and simplicity of country life. But no writer of antiquity is less of an idealist than Lucretius: there is no writer, ancient or modern, whose words are more truthful and unvarnished. There is no romance or self-deception in what he longs for. There may be some anticipation of the spirit of Rousseau in Virgil, and still more in Tibullus, but none whatever in Lucretius. The privations and rude misery of savage life are painted in as sombre colours as the satiety and discontent of his own age. It would be difficult to name any writer, ancient or modern, by whom the lesson of 'plain living and high thinking' was more worthily inculcated. The passion of love, which, in its more violent phases, was seen to be a prominent motive in the comedy of Plautus, became a very powerful influence in actual life during the last years of the Republic and the early years of the Empire. Extreme license in the pursuit of pleasure was common among men and women of the highest rank: but, over and above this, the poetry of Catullus and of the elegiac poets of the Augustan age shows that in the case of young men of fashion and literary accomplishment (and these were often combined) intrigue and temporary _liaisons_ had become the absorbing interest and occupation of life. With these claims of passion and sentiment, apparently so alien to the ancient strength and dignity of the Roman character, Lucretius felt no sympathy. No writer has shown a profounder reverence for human affection. In his eyes the crowning guilt of superstition is the cruel violation of natural ties exacted by it: the chief bitterness of death is the thought of eternal separation from wife and children: the first civilising influence acting on the world is traced to the power of the blandishments of children over the savage pride of strength. The pathos of the famous passage, at Book ii. 350, attests his sympathy with the sorrow caused by the disruption of natural ties, even in the lower animals. Other casual expressions, as in that line of profound feeling-- Aeternumque daret matri sub pectore volnus[35];-- or such pictures, as that at iii. 469, of friends and relatives surrounding the bed of one who has sunk into a deep lethargy-- Ad vitam qui revocantes Circumstant lacrimis rorantes ora genasque[36],-- show how strong and real was his regard for the great elemental affections of human nature. But, on the other hand, he is austerely indifferent to the follies and the idealising fancies of lovers. With satirical and not fastidious realism he strips passion of all romance, and exhibits it as a bondage fatal alike to character and independence, to peace of mind and to self-respect. But it is the weakness, not the immorality of licentious passion which he condemns. And it would be altogether an anachronism to attribute to a writer of that age sentiments on this subject in harmony either with the austere virtue of the primitive Romans, or with the moral standard of modern times. It is not the indulgence of inclination, but its excess and perversion, by which the happiness and dignity of life are placed in another's power, which he condemns. In order to perceive the limitation of the view of the evils of human life and of their remedy presented by Lucretius, it is not necessary to contrast it with the higher aspects of moral and religious thought in modern times. It is clear that owing to some idiosyncrasy, the result perhaps of some accident of his early years, and fostered by seclusion in later years from the common ways of life, he greatly exaggerates the influence of the terrors of the ancient religion over the world. There is little trace, either in the literature[37] or in the sepulchral inscriptions of the Romans, of that 'fear of Acheron'-- Funditus humanam qui vitam turbat ab imo Omnia suffendens mortis nigrore neque ullam Esse voluptatem liquidam puramque reliquit. The answer of Cicero to the exaggerated pretensions of Epicureanism seems to express the common sense of his age, 'Where can you find an old woman fatuous enough to believe what you forsooth would have believed, if you had not studied physical science[38]?' The passionate protest of Lucretius seems more applicable to times of religious persecution, and to extreme forms of fanaticism in modern times, than to the tolerant spirit and the not unkindly superstition of the Greek and Roman world, as they are known in its literature. But if the experience of the modern world gives a still more startling significance to the words-- Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum,-- that experience also enables us better to understand the blindness of Lucretius to the purifying and consoling power which even ancient religion was capable of exercising. Though not insensible to the poetical charm of some of the old mythological fancies, and to the solemnising effect of impressive ceremonials, he can see only the baser influences of fear in man's whole attitude to a supernatural Power. His ordinary acuteness of mind seems to desert him in that passage[39] where he resolves the passions of ambition and avarice into the fear of death, and that again into the dread of eternal punishment. The limitation of his philosophy is also apparent in his want of sympathy with the active duties and pursuits of life. He can see only different modes of evil in the busy interests of the world. War, politics, commerce, appeared to him a mere struggle of personal passion with a view to personal aggrandisement. A life of peace, not of energetic action, was his ideal. In eternal peace he placed the supreme happiness of the Gods: a state of peaceful contemplation-- Sed mage pacata posse omnia mente tueri-- he regards as the only true religion for man: the 'mute and uncomplaining' peace of the grave reconciles him to the thought of everlasting death. The inadequacy of his philosophy may thus be traced partly to his vivid impressibility of imagination, which made him too exclusively sensible of the awe produced on man's spirit by the mystery of the universe, partly to his defective sympathy with the active interests and duties of life. Partly, too, the bent of his mind towards material observation and enquiry had some share in determining his convictions. In dwelling on the outward appearances of decay and death, he seems to have shut his eyes to those inward conditions of the human spirit which to Plato, Cicero, and Virgil appeared the witnesses of immortality. The inability to form the definite conception of a God without human limitations, as well as his strong sense of the imperfection of the world, forced upon him the absolute denial of any Divine providence over human affairs. Yet a modern reader, without accepting the conclusions of his philosophy, may sympathise with much of his spirit. In his firm faith in the laws which govern the universe, he will recognise a great position established, as essential to the progress of religious as of scientific thought. He will see, in the earnest intensity of his feeling and the sincerity of his expression, a spirit akin to the purer kinds of religious fervour in modern times. In no other writer, ancient or modern, will he find a profounder sense of human dignity, of the supreme claims of affection, of the superiority of a natural to a conventional life. From the direct exhortation and the indirect teaching of Lucretius, he may learn such lessons as these,--that it is man's first business to know and obey the laws of his being,--that the sphere of his happiest activity is to be found in contemplation rather than in action,--that his well-being consists in valuing rightly the real blessings of life rather than in following the illusions of fancy or of custom,--in reverencing the sanctity of family life,--and in cherishing a kindly sympathy with all living things. If there was nothing especially new in the views which he enunciated, the power of realising the common conditions of life, the passionate effort not only to rise himself above human weakness, but to redeem the whole race of man from the curse of ignorance, and the force of imaginative sympathy with which he executed this part of his task were, perhaps, something altogether new in the world. The same 'vivida vis' with which he observes natural phenomena characterises his insight into human character and passion. He penetrates below the surface of life with the searching insight of a great satirist, and sees more clearly into the hearts of men, and has a more subtle perception of the secret springs of their unhappiness, than any of his countrymen. The aim of his satire is not to make men seem objects of ridicule or scorn, but to restore them to the dignity which they had forfeited through weakness and ignorance. The observation of Horace is wider and more varied, but it ranges much more over the surface of life. He has neither the same sense of the mystery of our being, nor the same sympathy with the common conditions of mankind. The power of truthful moral painting which Lucretius exercises is seen in that passage in which he reveals the secret of the 'amari aliquit,' 'amid the very flowers of love,'-- Aut cum conscius ipse animus se forte remordet Desidiose agere aetatem lustrisque perire, Aut quod in ambiguo verbum iaculata reliquit Quod cupido adfixum cordi vivescit ut ignis, Aut nimium iactare oculos aliumve tueri Quod putat in voltuque videt vestigia risus[40]: and in that in which he describes the satiety and restlessness which is the avenging nemesis of an opulent and luxurious society,-- Exit saepe foras magnis ex aedibus ille, Esse domi quem pertaesumst, subitoque revertit, Quippe foris nilo melius qui sentiat esse. Currit agens mannos ad villam praecipitanter, Auxilium tectis quasi ferre ardentibus instans; Oscitat extemplo, tetigit cum limina villae, Aut abit in somnum gravis atque oblivia quaerit, Aut etiam properans urbem petit atque revisit[41]. There is always poetry and pathos in the satire of Lucretius. There is no trace in him of the malice or the love of detraction which is seldom wholly absent from satiric writing. The futility of human effort is the burden of his complaint[42]: and this (as has been pointed out by M. Martha) is the explanation of the pathetic recurrence of the word 'nequicquam' in so many passages of his poem. His scorn and indignation are shown only in exposing the impostures which men mistake for truths. There is thus infinite compassion for the common lot of man blended with the irony of the passage in which he represents the aged husbandman complaining of the general decay of piety as the cause of the failure of the earth to respond to his labours. His direct and realistic power of expression enhances his power as a moral painter and teacher. Though the writings of Horace supply many more quotations applicable to various situations in life, and expressed in equally apposite language, yet such lines as these in the older poet seem to come from the heart of one ever 'sounding a deeper and more perilous way' over the sea of human life, than suited the more worldly wisdom of Horace,-- Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum[43].-- Cur non ut plenus vitae conviva recedis[44]?-- Vitaque mancipio nulli datur omnibus usu[45].-- Surgit amari aliquit quod in ipsis floribus augat[46].-- Nam verae voces tum demum pectore ab imo Eiciuntur et eripitur persona, manet res[47].-- Divitiae grandes homini sunt vivere parce Aequo animo[48]. Many other lines and expressions of similar force will occur to every reader familiar with Lucretius. As his ordinary style brings the outward aspects of the world vividly before the mind, so the language in which his moral teaching is enforced, or the result of his moral observation is expressed, stamps powerfully on the mind important and permanent truths of human nature. His thoughts are uttered sometimes with the impressive dignity of Roman oratory, sometimes with the nervous energy, not without flashes of the vigorous wit, of Roman satire. There are occasionally to be heard also higher and deeper tones than those familiar to classical poetry. His burning zeal and indignation against idolatry, and the scorn with which he exposes the impotence of false gods-- Cur etiam loca sola petunt frustraque laborant? An tum bracchia consuescunt firmantque lacertos[49]?-- show some affinity of spirit to the prophets of another race and an earlier time. The 'grandeur of desolation' uttered in the reproof of Nature,-- Nam tibi praeterea quod machiner inveniamque, Quod placeat, nil est: eadem sunt omnia semper[50],-- recalls the old words of the Preacher--'The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done, is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.' [Footnote 1: Cf. Juv. xiv. 319:-- Quantum Epicure tibi parvis suffecit in hortis.] [Footnote 2: 'But the sober exercise of reason, investigating the causes why we choose or avoid anything, and banishing those opinions which cause the greatest trouble in the soul.'] [Footnote 3: ii. 16-19.] [Footnote 4: 'Thereupon he perceived that the vessel itself caused the evil, and that all external gains and blessings whatsoever were vitiated within through its fault, partly because he saw that it was so unsound and leaky that it could never be filled in any way, partly because he discerned that it tainted inwardly everything which it had received as it were with a nauseous flavour.'--vi. 17-23.] [Footnote 5: iii. 39.] [Footnote 6: vi. 404-5.] [Footnote 7: 'O miserable race of man when they imputed to the Gods such acts as these, and ascribed to them also angry passions. What sorrow did they then prepare for themselves, what deep wounds for us, what tears for our descendants. For there is no holiness in being often seen, turning round with head veiled, in presence of a stone, and in drawing nigh to every altar; nor in lying prostrate in the dust, and uplifting the hands before the temples of the Gods; nor in sprinkling altars with the blood of beasts, and in ever fastening up new votive offerings, but rather in being able to look at all things with a mind at peace.'--v. 1194-1203.] [Footnote 8: vi. 75-78.] [Footnote 9: 'The holy presence of the Gods is revealed, and their peaceful dwelling-places, which neither the winds beat upon, nor the clouds bedew with rain; nor does snow, gathered in flakes by keen frost, and falling white, invade them; ever the cloudless ether enfolds them, and they are radiant with far-spread light.'--iii. 18-22.] [Footnote 10: v. 145-225.] [Footnote 11: The feelings with which Lucretius contemplates the solemn procession of Cybele may be illustrated by the following passage, quoted by Mr. Morley in his Life of Diderot, vol. ii. p. 65: 'Absurd rigorists do not know the effect of external ceremonies on the people: they can never have seen the enthusiasm of the multitude at the procession of the Fête Dieu, an enthusiasm that sometimes even gains me. I have never seen that long file of priests in their vestments, those young acolytes clad in their white robes, with broad blue sashes engirdling their waists, and casting flowers on the ground before the Holy Sacrament, the crowd, as it goes before and follows after them, hushed in religious silence, and so many with their faces bent reverently to the ground: I have never heard the grave and pathetic chant, as it is led by the priests and fervently responded to by an infinity of voices of men, of women, of girls, of little children, without my inmost heart being stirred, and tears coming into my eyes. There is in it something, I know not what, that is grand, solemn, sombre, and mournful.'] [Footnote 12: From 830 till the end.] [Footnote 13: iii. 842.] [Footnote 14: iii. 877-8.] [Footnote 15: iii. 929-30.] [Footnote 16: Hic Acherusia fit stultorum denique vita.] [Footnote 17: Iliad xxi. 106-7.] [Footnote 18: iii. 830-1094.] [Footnote 19: iii. 930.] [Footnote 20: iii. 892.] [Footnote 21: iii. 893.] [Footnote 22: 'Soon shall thy home receive thee no more with glad welcome, nor thy true wife, nor thy dear children run to snatch the first kiss, touching thy heart with silent gladness.'--iii. 894-96.] [Footnote 23: iii. 833.] [Footnote 24: iii. 1027-8.] [Footnote 25: iii. 970.] [Footnote 26: Compare the metaphorical expressions at vi. 20-4.] [Footnote 27: 'But there is no greater joy than to hold high aloft the tranquil abodes, well bulwarked by the learning of the wise, whence thou mayest look down on other men, and see them wandering every way, and lost in error, seeking the road of life; mayest mark the strife of genius, the rivalries of rank, the struggle night and day with surpassing effort to reach the highest place, and be master of the State.'--ii. 48-54.] [Footnote 28: 'But if we see that all this is but folly and a mockery, and, in real truth, the fears of men and their dogging cares dread not the clash of arms nor the fierce weapons of warfare, and boldly mix with kings and potentates, nor fear the splendour of gold or the bright glare of purple robes, canst thou doubt that it is the force of reason on which all this depends, especially since all our life is in darkness and tribulation?'--ii. 48-55.] [Footnote 29: iii. 70.] [Footnote 30: v. 1131.] [Footnote 31: v. 1125.] [Footnote 32: 'Since they take their wisdom from the lips of others, and pursue their object in accordance rather with what they hear than with what they really feel.'--v. 1133-4.] [Footnote 33: ii. 33.] [Footnote 34: v. 1117-19.] [Footnote 35: ii. 638.] [Footnote 36: iii. 468-9.] [Footnote 37: A passage in the Captivi of Plautus (995-7), shows that these terrors did appeal to the imagination in ancient times, and thus might powerfully affect the happiness of persons of specially impressible natures, although they do not seem to have often interfered with the actual enjoyment of life,-- Vidi ego multa saepe picta quae Acherunti fierent Cruciamenta: verum enimvero nulla adaequest Acheruns Atque ubi ego fui in lapicidinis. Professor Wallace in his 'Epicureanism' (p. 109) writes, 'Whatever may have been the case in earlier ages of Greece, there is no doubt that in the age of Epicurus, the doctrine of a judgment to come, and of a hell where sinners were punished for their crimes, made a large part of the vulgar creed.... Orphic and other religious sects had enhanced the terrors of the world below,' etc. Cicero, however, is a better witness than Lucretius of the actual state of opinion among his educated contemporaries. The exaggerated sense entertained by Lucretius of the influence of such terrors among the class for whom his poem was written is a confirmation of his having acted on the maxim [Greek: lathe biôsas].'] [Footnote 38: Tusc. Disp. i. 21.] [Footnote 39: iii. 59, etc.] [Footnote 40: 'Either when his mind is stung with the consciousness that he is wasting his life in sloth, and ruining himself in wantonness; or because from the shafts of her wit she has left in him some word of double meaning, which seizes on his passionate heart and burns there like a fire; or because he fancies that she casts about her eyes too much or gazes at another, and marks the traces of a smile on her countenance.'--iv. 1135-40.] [Footnote 41: 'Oft-times, weary of home, the lord of some spacious mansion issues forth abroad, and suddenly returns, feeling that it is no better with him abroad. Driving his horses, he speeds in hot haste to his country house, as if his house were on fire and he was hurrying to bring assistance. Straightway he begins to yawn, so soon as he has reached his threshold, or sinks heavily into sleep and seeks forgetfulness, or even with all haste returns to the city.'--iii. 1060-67.] [Footnote 42: E.g. v. 1430-34:-- Ergo hominum genus incassum frustraque laborat Semper et in curis consumit inanibus aevom, Nimirum quia non cognovit quae sit habendi Finis et omnino quoad crescat vera voluptas.] [Footnote 43: i. 101.] [Footnote 44: iii. 938.] [Footnote 45: iii. 971.] [Footnote 46: iv. 1134.] [Footnote 47: iii. 57-8.] [Footnote 48: v. 1116.] [Footnote 49: vi. 396-7.] [Footnote 50: iii. 944-5.] CHAPTER XIV. THE LITERARY ART AND GENIUS OF LUCRETIUS. It remains to consider the poem of Lucretius as a work of literary art and genius. Much indeed of what may be said on the subject of his genius has necessarily been anticipated in the chapters devoted to the consideration of his personal characteristics, his speculative philosophy, and his moral teaching. The 'multa lumina ingenii' are most conspicuous in those passages of his poem which best illustrate the range and distinctness of his observation, the grandeur and truth of his philosophical conceptions, the passionate sympathy with which he strove to elevate and purify human life. But, at the same time, the most manifest defects of the poem, considered as a work of art, spring from the same source as its greatness considered as a work of genius, viz. the diversity and conflicting aims of the faculties employed on its production. Although, perhaps, from a Roman point of view, the practical purpose which reduces the mass of miscellaneous details to unity, and the success with which he encounters the difficulties both of matter and language, might entitle the poem to be regarded as a work 'multae artis,' yet, when tested by the canons either of Greek or of modern taste, it fails in the most essential conditions of art,--the choice of subject and the form of construction. The title of the poem is indeed taken from a Greek model, the poem of Empedocles, '[Greek: peri physeôs]': and the form of a personal address to Memmius, in which Lucretius has embodied his teaching, was suggested by the personal address of the older poet to the 'son of Anchytus.' But although Aristotle acknowledges the poetical genius of Empedocles by applying to him the epithet [Greek: Homêrikos], he denies to his composition the title of a poem. The work of Empedocles and the kindred works of Xenophanes and Parmenides are inspired not by the passion of art but by the enthusiasm of discovery. They are to be regarded rather as philosophical rhapsodies than as purely didactic poems, like either the 'Works and Days' of Hesiod or the writings of the Alexandrine School. They were written in hexameter verse partly because that was the most familiar vehicle of expression in the first half of the fifth century B.C., and partly because it was the vehicle most suited to the imaginative conceptions of Nature which arose out of the old mythologies. But in the time of Lucretius a prose vehicle was more suited than any form of verse for the communication of knowledge in a systematic form. The conception of Nature was no longer mystical or purely imaginative as it had been in the age of Empedocles. Thus the task which Lucretius had to perform was both vaster and more complex than that of the early [Greek: physiologoi]. He had to combine in one whole the prosaic results of later scientific observation and analysis with the imaginative fancies of the dawn of ancient enquiry. He professes to make both conducive to the practical purpose of emancipating and elevating human life; but a great part of his argument is as remote from all human interest as it is from the ascertained truths of science. All life and Nature were to his spirit full of imaginative wonder, but they were believed also to be susceptible of a rationalistic explanation. And the greater part of the work is devoted to give this explanation. This large infusion of a prosaic content necessarily detracts from the artistic excellence and the sustained interest of the poem. Lucretius speaks of the difficulty which he had to encounter in gaining the ear of his countrymen, in the lines,-- Quoniam haec ratio plerumque videtur Tristior esse quibus non est tractata, retroque Volgus abhorret ab hac[1]. And the unattractiveness of much of his theme is not diminished when the real discoveries of science have shown how illusory are his processes of investigation, and how false are many of his conclusions. He has made his poetry ancillary to his science, instead of compelling, as Virgil, Dante, and Milton have done, a subject, susceptible of purely artistic treatment, to assimilate the stores of his knowledge. His theme--'maiestas cognita rerum,'--is too vast and complex to be brought within the compass and proportions of a single work of art. The processes of minute observation and reasoning employed in establishing his conclusions are alien from the movement of the imagination. The connecting links of the argument are suggestive of the labour of the workman, not of the finished perfection of the work. And while some of the ideas of science may be so applied to the interpretation of the outward world, as to act on the imaginative emotions with greater power than any mere description of the forms and colours of external things, yet the pleasure with which processes of investigation are pursued is quite distinct from the pleasure derived from poetic intuition into the secret life of Nature and man. If it be the condition of a great poem to produce the purest and noblest pleasure by its whole conception and execution, the poem of Lucretius fails to satisfy this condition. It is in spite of its design and proportions,--in spite of the fact that long parts of the work neither interest the feelings nor satisfy the reason, that the poem still speaks with impressive power to the modern world. And while the whole conception of the work, as regards both matter and method of treatment, necessarily involves a large interfusion of prosaic materials with the finer product of his genius, it must be added that there is considerable inequality of execution even in its more inspired passages. A few consecutive passages show indeed the finest sense of harmony, and are finished in a style not much inferior to that of Virgil. Such, for instance, are the opening lines:-- Aeneadum genetrix, hominum divomque voluptas, etc.;-- and again the lines in the introduction to Book iii.:-- Apparet divum numen sedesque quietae, etc. But long passages seem rather to revert to the roughness of Ennius than to approach the smooth and varied cadences of Virgil. Though the imaginative effect of single expressions is generally more forcible than in any Latin poet, yet the composition of long paragraphs is apt to overflow into prosaic detail, or to display the qualities of logical consecutiveness or close adherence to fact rather than those of skilled accomplishment and conformity with the principles of beauty. In common with the older race of Roman poets he exhibits that straining after verbal effects by means of alliteration, assonances, asyndeta, etc., which marks the ruder stages of literary development. The Latin language, although beginning to feel the quickening of a new life, had not yet been formed into its more exquisite modulations, nor learned the power of suggesting delicate shades of meaning and the new strength derivable from the reserved use of its resources. All these causes,--the vast and miscellaneous range, and the abstruse character of his subject, the dryness and futility of much of the argument, the frequent subordination of poetry to science, the inadequacy of the Latin language as a vehicle of thought and its imperfect development as an organ of poetry,--prevented the poem from ever obtaining great popularity in ancient times, and have denied to it in modern times anything like the large influence which has been enjoyed in different ages and countries by Virgil, Horace, and Ovid. Even the more ardent admirers of the poem are tempted to pass from one to another of the higher ranges and more commanding summits, which swell gradually or rise abruptly out of the general level over which he leads them, rather than to follow him through all the windings of his argument. Yet it is only after the poem has been mastered in its details that we realise its full effect on the imagination. It is only then that we understand the complete greatness of the man, as a thinker, a teacher, and a poet. The most familiar beauties reveal a deeper meaning when they are seen to be not mere resting places in the toilsome march of his argument, but rather commanding positions, successively reached, from which the widest contemplative views of the realms of Nature and human life are laid open to us. As we follow closely in his footsteps, through all his processes of observation, analysis, and reasoning, we feel, that he too, like the older Greeks, is borne along by a strong enthusiasm,--the philosophical [Greek: erôs] of Plato,--different from, but akin to, the impulses of poetry. That marvellous intensity of feeling in conjunction with the operations of the intellect, which the Greeks regarded as a kind of divine possession, and which Lucretius, by the use of such phrases as 'divinitus invenientes', ascribes to the earliest enquirers, animates all his interpretation of the facts and laws of Nature. The speculative passion imparts life to the argumentative processes which are addressed to the understanding, while it adds a fresher glory or more impressive solemnity to those aspects of the subject by which the imagination is most powerfully moved. Again, although his rhythm, even at its best, falls far short of the intricate harmony and variety of Virgil, and, in its more level passages, scarcely aims at pleasing the ear at all, yet there is a kind of grandeur and dignity even in its monotony, varied, as that is, by deeper and more majestic tones whenever his spirit is stirred by impulses of awe, wonder, and delight. There is always a sense of life and onward movement in the flow of his verse. Often there is a kind of cumulative force revealing a more powerful emotion of heart and imagination as his thoughts and images press on one another in close and ordered sequence. Thus, for instance, the effect of the lines describing the religious impressions produced on the early inhabitants of the world by the grand and awful aspects of Nature, depends, not on any harmonious variation of sounds, but on the swelling and culminating power with which the whole passage breaks on the ear,-- In caeloque deum sedes et templa locarunt, Per caelum volvi quia nox et luna videtur, Luna dies et nox et noctis signa severa Noctivagaeque faces caeli flammaeque volantes, Nubila sol imbres nix venti fulmina grando Et rapidi fremitus et murmura magna minarum[2]. In many passages it may be noticed how much is added to the rhythmical effect by the force or weight of the concluding line, as at iii. 870-893, by the rugged grandeur of the line,-- Urgerive superne obtritum pondere terrae,-- at ii. 569-580, by the sad and solemn movement of the close, Ploratus mortis comites et funeris atri,-- and at i. 101, by the line of cardinal significance, which ends a passage of most finished power and beauty,-- Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum. The music of Lucretius is altogether his own. As he was the first among his countrymen who contemplated in a reverential spirit the majesty of Nature and the more solemn meaning of life, so he was the first to call out the full rhythmical majesty and deep organ-tones of the Latin language, to embody in sound the spiritual emotions stirred by that contemplation. The poetical style of Lucretius is, like his rhythm, a true and powerful symbol of his genius. Though his diction is much less studied than that of Virgil, yet his large use of alliterations, assonances, asyndeta[3], etc., shows that he consciously aimed at producing certain effects by recognised rhetorical means. The attraction which the artifices of rhetoric had for his mind is as noticeable in his style as a similar attraction is in the speeches of Thucydides. But neither Lucretius nor Thucydides can be called the slave of rhetorical forms. In both writers recourse is had to them for the legitimate purpose of emphasising thought, not for that of disguising its insufficiency. The use of such phrases, for instance, as 'sed casta inceste,' 'immortalia mortali sermone notantes,' 'mors immortalis,' etc., is no mere play of words, but rather the tersest phrase in which an impressive antithesis of thought can be presented. The mannerisms of his style, if they show that he was not altogether emancipated from archaic rudeness, afford evidence also of the prolific fertility of his genius. The amplitude and unchecked volume of his diction flow out of the mental conditions, described in the lines,-- Usque adeo largos haustus e fontibu' magnis Lingua meo suavis diti de pectore fundet. And he had not only the 'suavis lingua diti de pectore'; he had also the 'daedala lingua,'--the formative energy which shapes words into new forms and combinations. The frequent [Greek: hapax legomena] in his poem and his abundant use of compound words, such as _fluctifragus_, _montivagus_, _altitonans_, etc., most of which fell into disuse in the Augustan age, were products of the same creative force which enabled Plautus and Ennius to add largely to the resources of the Latin tongue. In him, more than in any Latin poet before or after him, we meet with phrases too full of imaginative life to be in perfect keeping with the more sober tones and tamer spirit of the national literature. Thus his language never became trite and hackneyed, and, as we read him, no medium of after-associations is interposed between his mind and our own. But it is not in individual phrases, however fresh and powerful, but in continuous passages, that the power of his style is best seen. The processes of his mind are characterised by continuity, consistency, and a kind of gathering intensity of movement. The periods of Virgil delight us by their intricate harmony; those of Lucretius impress us by their continuous and hurrying impetus. The long drawn out charm of the one is indicative of the deep love which induced him to linger over every detail of his subject: the force and grandeur of the other are the outward signs of the inward wonder and enthusiasm by which his spirit was borne rapidly along. Virgil's movement displays the majesty of grace and serenity; that of Lucretius the majesty of power, and largeness of mind. Thus although the poetical style of Lucretius shows the traces of labour and premeditation, and of occasional imitation both of foreign and native models, it is more than that of any other Latin poet, the immediate creation of his own genius. The 'ingenuei fontis,' by which his imagination was so abundantly fed, found many spontaneous outlets, and were not checked in their speed or stained in their purity by the artificial channels in which he sometimes forced them to flow. If the loving labour, so prodigally bestowed upon the task of finding words and rhythm[4] adequate to his great theme, explains some peculiarities of his diction, the qualities which have made the work immortal are due to his noble singleness of heart and sincerity of nature, and to the openness and sensibility with which his imagination received impressions, the penetrative force with which it saw into the heart of things, and the creative energy with which it shaped what it received and discerned into vivid pictures and symbols. He has, in the first place, the freshness of feeling, the living sense of the wonder of the world, which is a great charm in the older poets of all great literatures,--in Homer, Dante, Chaucer;--and this sense he communicates by words used in their simplest and directest meaning. The life which animates and gladdens the familiar face of earth, sea, and sky,--of river, wood, field, and hill-side,--is vividly and immediately reproduced in such lines as these:-- Caeli subter labentia signa Quae mare navigerum quae terras frugiferentis Concelebras[5]. Denique per maria ac montis fluviosque rapacis Frondiferasque domos avium camposque virentis[6]. Frondiferasque novis avibus canere undique silvas[7]. Nam saepe in colli tondentes pabula laeta Lanigerae reptant pecudes quo quamque vocantes Invitant herbae gemmantes rore recenti[8]. Nec tenerae salices atque herbae rore vigentis Fluminaque illa queunt summis labentia ripis[9]. So, too, he makes us realise, with a quickening and expanding emotion, which seems to bring us nearer to the core of Nature, the majesty of the sea breaking on a great expanse of shore,--the solemn stillness of midnight,--the invisible agency by which the clouds form the pageantry of the sky,--the active noiseless energy by which rivers wear away their banks,--by the use of words that seem exactly equivalent to the thing which they describe,-- Quam fluitans circum magnis anfractibus aequor Ionium glaucis aspargit virus ab undis[10]. Severa silentia noctis Undique cum constent[11]. Ut nubes facile interdum concrescere in alto Cernimus et mundi speciem violare serenam Aera mulcentes motu[12]. Pars etiam glebarum ad diluviem revocatur Imbribus et ripas radentia flumina rodunt[13]. The changing face of Nature is to his spirit so full of power and wonder, that it needs no poetical adornment, but is left to tell its own tale in the plainest language. If words are a true index of feeling, it would be difficult to name any poet by whom the living presence and full being of Nature were more immediately apprehended, nor has any one caught with more fidelity the intimations of her hidden life, as they betray themselves in her outward features and motions. With similar fidelity and directness of language he communicates to his reader the spell of awe and wonder by which his own spirit is possessed in presence of the impressive facts of human life. No subtlety of reflexion nor grandeur of illustrative imagery could enhance the effect of the thought of the dead produced by the austere plainness of the words,-- Morte obita quorum tellus amplectitur ossa, and, Ossa dedit terrae proinde ac famul infimus esset. By no pomp of description could a deeper sense of religious solemnity be created than by the lines describing the silent influence of the procession of Cybele on the minds of her devotees,-- Ergo cum primum magnas invecta per urbis Munificat tacita mortalis muta salute[14]. The undying pain of a great sorrow,--the paralysis of all human effort in the face of new and terrible agencies of death,--the blessedness and pathos of the purest human affections,--the ecstatic delight derived from the revelation of great truths--imprint themselves permanently on the imagination through the august simplicity of the phrases, Aeternumque daret matri sub pectore volnus[15],-- tacito mussabat medicina timore[16],-- tacita pectus dulcedine tangent[17]-- His ibi me rebus quaedam divina voluptas Percipit adque horror[18].-- His language has the further power of producing a vague sense of sublimity, where the cause of the feeling is too vast or undefined to be distinctly conceived or visibly presented to the mind. The very sound of his words seems sometimes to be a kind of echo of the voices by which Nature produces a strange awe upon the imagination. Such, for instance, are these lines and phrases-- Altitonans Volturnus et auster fulmine pollens[19]. Nec fulmina nec minitanti Murmure compressit caelum[20]. Murmura magna minarum[21], etc. The sublimity of vagueness and vastness is present in the language of these lines-- Impendent atrae formidinis ora superne[22]. Sustentata ruet moles et machina mundi[23]. Aut cecidisse urbis magno vexamine mundi[24]. Non si terra mari miscebitur et mare caelo[25]. While no other ancient poet brings before the mind more forcibly and immediately the living presence of the outward world and the solemn meaning of familiar things, there is none whose language seems to respond so sensitively to the vague suggestions of an invisible and awful Power omnipresent in the universe. The creative power of imagination which gives new life to words and thoughts is also present in many vivid and picturesque expressions, either scattered through the main argument, or shining in brilliant combinations in the more elaborate parts of the work. By this more imaginative use of language, the poet can illustrate his ideas by subtle analogies, or embody them in visible symbols, or endow the objects he describes with the personal attributes of will and energy. Thus, for instance, the penetrating subtlety of the mind in exploring the secrets of Nature becomes a visible force in the curious felicity of the expression (i. 408), 'caecasque latebras insinuare omnis.' The freedom and boundless range of the imagination is suggested with picturesque effect in the familiar expression-- Avia Pieridum peragro loca nullius ante Trita solo[26]; while the calm serenity of the contemplative mind is symbolised in such figurative expressions as 'sapientum templa serena'; 'humanum in pectus templaque mentis'; and the stormy tumult of the passions and the perilous errors of life become vividly present to the imagination by means of the analogies pictured in the lines-- Volvere curarum tristis in pectore fluctus[27], and Errare atque viam palantis quaerere vitae[28]. What life and energy again are imparted to external things and abstract conceptions by such expressions as these:--'flammai flore coorto'; 'avido complexu quem tenet aether'; 'caeli tegit impetus ingens'; 'circum tremere aethera signis'; 'semina quae magnum iaculando contulit omne'; 'vagos imbris tempestatesque volantes'; 'concussaeque cadunt urbes dubiaeque minantur'; 'simulacraque fessa fatisci'; 'sol lumine conserit arva'; 'lucida tela diei'; 'placidi pellacia ponti'; 'vivant labentes aetheris ignes'; 'leti sub dentibus ipsis'; 'leti praeclusa est ianua caelo,' etc. A similar power of imagination is shown in his more elaborate use of analogies, in his symbolical representation of ideas, and in his power of painting scenes from Nature and from human life. Few great poets have been more sparing in the use of mere poetical ornament. The grandest imagery which he strikes out, and the finest pictures which he paints are immediately suggested by his subject. The earnestness of his speculative and practical purpose restrains all exuberance of fancy. Thus his imaginative analogies are more often latent in single expressions than drawn out at length. But the few which he has elaborated, 'stand out with the solidity of the finest sculpture[29],' to embody some deep or powerful thought for all time. They are suggested not by outward resemblance, but by an identity which the imagination discerns in the innermost meaning of the objects compared with one another. The strong emotion attending on the presence of some great thought calls up before the inward eye some scene or action, which, if actually witnessed, would produce a similar effect upon the mind. Thus the thought of the chaotic confusion which the universe would present, on the supposition that the original atoms were limited in number, calls up the image of the most impressive and awful devastation, wrought by Nature upon the works of man. Sed quasi naufragiis magnis multisque coortis Disiectare solet magnum mare transtra guberna Antemnas proram malos tonsasque natantis, Per terrarum omnis oras fluitantia aplustra Ut videantur et indicium mortalibus edant, Infidi maris insidias virisque dolumque Ut vitare velint, neve ullo tempore credant, Subdola cum ridet placidi pellacia ponti, Sic tibi si finita semel primordia quaedam Constitues, aevom debebunt sparsa per omnem Disiectare aestus diversi materiari, Numquam in concilium ut possint compulsa coire Nec remorari in concilio nec crescere adaucta[30]. It is through the penetrating intuition of his imagination into the deepest meaning of the two phenomena, and his sensibility to the pathos and the strangeness involved in each of them, that he sees the birth of every child into the world under the well-known image of the shipwrecked sailor--'saevis proiectus ab undis.' Other analogies, suggested rather than elaborately drawn out, express an inward or spiritual, not an outward or bodily resemblance. Or rather the thing illustrated is a thought or a mental act, the illustration a scene or action, visible to the eye, suggestive of the same power in Nature, and calculated to rouse the same emotions in the mind. Thus he compares the life transmitted in succession through the nations of the world to the torch passed on by the runners in the torch-race; or he illustrates his calm contemplation of the struggles of life from the heights of his Epicurean philosophy, by the vision of the dangers of the sea, as seen from some commanding position on the land. Although few of his descriptions from Nature are capable of being transferred to canvas, yet he shows in his treatment of mythological subjects, and in his personification of great natural phenomena, that purely pictorial faculty, in virtue of which Catullus and Ovid have inspired the imagination and directed the hand of some of the great painters of modern times. Such, for instance, is the representation of the sacrifice of Iphigenia, suggested indeed, in some of its features, by an earlier poet, but executed with original power. Such too are the pictures of Venus and Mars in the invocation to the poem, and that of Pan-- Pinea semiferi capitis velamina quassans[31]. By this power of vision he presents that superstition against which all the weight of his argument is directed, not as an abstraction, but as a real palpably existing Power of evil-- Quae caput a caeli regionibus ostendebat Horribili super aspectu mortalibus instans[32]. So, too, in his vivid account of the orderly procession of the seasons, he invests the freshness and the beauty of spring with the charm of personal and human attributes in the lines-- It ver et Venus, et veris praenuntius ante Pennatus graditur zephyrus, vestigia propter Flora quibus mater praespargens ante viai Cuncta coloribus egregiis et odoribus opplet[33]. But it is in describing actual scenes and actual aspects of human life that Lucretius chiefly employs his power of poetical conception and expression. He looks upon the world with an eye which discerns beneath the outward appearances of things the presence of Nature in her attributes both of majesty and of genial all-penetrating life,--as at once the 'Magna mater' and the 'alma mater' of all living things[34]. She appears to his imagination not as an abstraction, or a vast aggregate of forces and laws, but as a living Power, whose processes are on an infinitely grander scale, but are yet analogous to the active and moral energies of man. He shows the same sympathy with this life of Nature, the same vivid sense of wonder and delight in her familiar aspects, the same imaginative perception of her secret agency, which led the early Greek mind to people the world with the living forms of the old mythology, and which have been felt anew by the great poets of the present century. All natural life is thus endowed with a poetical interest, as being a new manifestation of the creative energy, which is the fountain of all beauty and delight in the world. The minutest phenomena and the most gigantic forces, the changes of decay and renovation in all outward things, the growth of plants and trees, the habits of beasts rioting in a wild liberty over the mountains,-- Quod in magnis bacchatur montibu' passim[35],-- or tended by the care and ministering to the wants of man; the life and enjoyment of the birds that gladden the early morning with their song by woods and river-banks, or that seek their food and pastime among the sea-waves;--these, and numberless other phenomena, are all contemplated and described by an eye quickened by the poetical sense of manifold and inexhaustible energy in the world. It is not so much the beauty of form and colour, as the appearance of force and life which he reproduces. He has not, like Catullus, the pure delight of an artist in painting outward scenes. He does not express, like Virgil, the charm of old associations attaching to famous places. It is the association of great laws, not of great memories, which moves him in contemplating the outward world. Neither has he invested any particular place with the attraction which Horace has given to his Sabine home, and Catullus to Sirmio. But no ancient or modern poet has expressed more happily the natural enjoyment of beholding the changing life and familiar face of the world. No other writer makes us feel with more reality the quickening of the spirit, produced by the sunrise or the advent of spring, by living in fine weather or looking on fair and peaceful landscapes. The freshness of the feeling with which outward scenes inspire him is one of the great charms of the poem, especially as a relief to the pervading gravity of his thought. More than any poet, except Wordsworth, he seems to derive a pure and healthy joy from the common sights and sounds of animate and inanimate Nature. No distempered fancies or regrets, no vague longings for some unattainable rapture, coloured the natural aspect which the world presented to his eyes and mind. In the descriptions of Lucretius, as in those of Homer, there is always some active movement and change represented as passing before the eye. What power and energy there are, for instance, in that of a river-flood,--(like one of equal force and truth in Burns's 'Brigs of Ayr,')-- Nec validi possunt pontes venientis aquai Vim subitam tolerare: ita magno turbidus imbri Molibus incurrit validis cum viribus amnis[36]. How naturally is the pure and sparkling life of brooks and springs brought before the mind in the passage at v. 269[37], already quoted,--and again, in these lines-- Denique nota vagi silvestria templa tenebant Nympharum, quibus e scibant umori' fluenta Lubrica proluvie larga lavere umida saxa, Umida saxa, super viridi stillantia musco, Et partim plano scatere atque erumpere campo[38]. In this representation of the sea-shore-- Concharumque genus parili ratione videmus Pingere telluris gremium, qua mollibus undis Litoris incurvi bibulam pavit aequor harenam[39],-- there is the same suggestion of quiet ceaseless movement, as in a line of the Odyssey representing the same phase of Nature-- [Greek: laïngas poti cherson apoplynespe thalassa.] There is the same sense of active life in all his pictures of the early morning; as, for instance,-- Primum aurora novo cum spargit lumine terras Et variae volucres nemora avia pervolitantes Aera per tenerum liquidis loca vocibus opplent, Quam subito soleat sol ortus tempore tali Convestire sua perfundens omnia luce, Omnibus in promptu manifestumque esse videmus[40]. And again,-- Aurea cum primum gemmantis rore per herbas Matutina rubent radiati lumina solis Exhalantque lacus nebulam fluviique perennes, Ipsaque ut interdum tellus fumare videtur; Omnia quae sursum cum conciliantur, in alto Corpore concreto subtexunt nubila caelum[41]. Two other passages (at iv. 136 and vi. 190), in which the movements and shifting pageantry of the clouds are described, may be compared with a more elaborate passage in the Excursion, in which Wordsworth has represented a similar spectacle[42] wrought by 'earthly Nature,'-- 'Upon the dark materials of the storm.' Nowhere does he present pictures of pure repose. The philosophical idea of ceaseless motion and change animates to his eye every aspect of the world. Every separate description in the poem possesses the charm of freshness and faithfulness, and of relevance to the great ideas of his philosophy. His living enjoyment in the outward world, and his sympathy with all existence, both fed and were fed by his trust in speculative ideas. The poetical descriptions which adorn and illustrate his argument are like the sublime and beautiful scenes which refresh and reward the adventurous discoverer of distant lands. Some passages, illustrative of philosophical principles, blend the movements of animal and human life with descriptions of natural scenery. The lines at ii. 352-366, describing the cow searching for her calf, which has been sacrificed at the altar, combine many characteristics of the poetical style of Lucretius. There is the literal--almost too minute faithfulness of reproduction--as in the line-- Noscit humi pedibus vestigia pressa bisulcis[43];-- the active life of the whole representation, too full of movement for a picture, yet flashing the objects on the inward eye with graphic pictorial power; the ever fresh charm of some familiar scene, called up by the lines already referred to,-- Nec tenerae salices atque herbae rore vigentes Fluminaque illa queunt summis labentia ripis; the pathos and respect for every mode of natural feeling denoted in such expressions as 'desiderio perfixa iuvenci'; and, lastly, the power of investing the most common things with the majesty of the laws which they express and illustrate. This passage is adduced as a proof and illustration of the varieties in form of the primordial atoms. In a passage, immediately preceding, the perpetual motion of the atoms, going on beneath an appearance of absolute rest, is illustrated by two pictures, one taken from the jubilant life of the animal creation-- Nam saepe in colli tondentes pabula laeta[44], etc.; the other taken from the pomp of human affairs, and the gay pageantry of armies-- Praeterea magnae legiones cum loca cursu Camporum complent belli simulacra cientes, Fulgor ibi ad caelum se tollit totaque circum Aere renidescit tellus supterque virum vi Excitur pedibus sonitus clamoreque montes Icti reiectant voces ad sidera mundi Et circumvolitant equites mediosque repente Tramittunt valido quatientes impete campos[45]. The truth and fulness of life in this passage are immediately perceived, but the element of sublimity is added by the thought in the two lines with which the passage concludes, which reduces the whole of this moving and sounding pageant to stillness and silence-- Et tamen est quidam locus altis montibus unde Stare videntur et in campis consistere fulgor[46]. As Lucretius was the first poet who revealed the majesty and wonder of the Natural world, so he restored the sense of awe and mystery, felt by the earlier Greek poets, to the contemplation of human life. In dealing with the problem of human destiny, he has sounded deeper than any of the other ancient poets of Italy: but others have sympathised with a greater variety of the moods of life, and have allowed its lights and shadows to play more easily over their poetry. The thought both of the dignity and the littleness of our mortal state is ever present to the mind of Lucretius. His imagination is involuntarily moved by the pomp and grandeur of affairs, while his strong sense of reality keeps ever before him the conviction of the vanity of outward state, the weariness of luxurious living, and the miseries of ambition. Thus his imaginative recognition of the pomp and circumstance of war brings out by the force of contrast his deeper conviction of the littleness and impotence of man in the presence of the great forces of Nature-- Summa etiam cum vis violenti per mare venti Induperatorem classis super aequora verrit Cum validis pariter legionibus atque elephantis, Non divom pacem votis adit ac prece quaesit Ventorum pavidus paces animasque secundas, etc.[47] If his reason acknowledges only inward strength as the attribute of human dignity, yet his imagination feels the outward spell that swayed the Roman genius, through the symbols of power and authority, through great spectacles, and in impressive ceremonials. But it is with more heart-felt sympathy, and with not less imaginative emotion, that he recognises the deep wonder and the infinite pathos of human life. There is perhaps no passage in any poet which reveals more truthfully that union of feelings in meditating on the strangeness and sadness of our mortal destiny than the well-known passage describing the birth of every infant into the world-- Tum porro puer, ut saevis proiectus ab undis Navita, nudus humi iacet, infans, indigus omni Vitali auxilio, cum primum in luminis oras Nixibus ex alvo matris natura profudit, Vagituque locum lugubri complet, ut aecumst Cui tantum in vita restet transire malorum[48]. With what truth and _naiveté_ is the complaint of the husbandman over his ineffectual labour and scanty returns echoed!-- Iamque caput quassans grandis suspirat arator Crebrius incassum manuum cecidisse labores, Et cum tempora temporibus praesentia confert Praeteritis, laudat fortunas saepe parentis Et crepat, anticum genus ut pietate repletum Perfacile angustis tolerarit finibus aevom, Cum minor esset agri multo modus ante viritim[49]. His feeling is profoundly solemn, as well as infinitely tender. Above all the tumult of life, he hears incessantly the funeral dirge over some one departed, and the infant wail of a newcomer into the troubles of the world, mixtos vagitibus aegris Ploratus mortis comites et funeris atri[50]. His tone can, indeed, be stern and indignant, as well as tender and melancholy: it is never morbid or effeminate. His tenderness is that of a thoroughly masculine nature. Some signs of the same mood may be discovered in the fragments of Ennius; but the feeling of Lucretius springs from a more sympathetic heart and a more contemplative imagination. His imagination, which depicts so forcibly the intimations of experience, is able to hear him beyond the known and familiar regions of life. As it enables him to pass-- extra flammantia moenia mundi-- and to behold the dawn of creation, and even the blank desolation which will follow on the overthrow of our system, so it has enabled him to realise with vivid feeling the primeval condition of man upon the world. Yet even in these daring enterprises of his fancy he adheres strictly to the conclusions of his philosophical system, and shows that sincerity and truthful adherence to fact are as inseparable from the operations of his creative faculty as of his understanding and moral nature. His excellences are so different from those of Virgil that the question need not be entertained, whether the rank of the greatest of Roman poets is or is not to be awarded to him. If each nation must be considered the best judge of its own poets, it will be admitted that Lucretius would have found few Roman voices to support his claim to the first or even the second place. The strongest support which he could have received would have been Virgil's willing acknowledgment of the powerful spell which the genius of his predecessor had exercised over him. Both the artistic defects and the profound feeling and imaginative originality of his work were calculated to alienate both popular favour and critical opinion in the Rome of the Empire. The poem has a much deeper significance for modern than it had for ancient times. Lucretius stands alone as the great contemplative poet of antiquity. He has proclaimed with more power than any other the majesty of Nature's laws, and has interpreted with a truer and deeper insight the meaning of her manifold life. Few, if any among his countrymen, felt so strongly the mystery of man's being, or have indicated so passionate a sympathy with the real sorrows of life, and so ardent a desire to raise man to his proper dignity, and to support him in bearing his inevitable burden. If he has, in large measure, the antique simplicity and grandeur of character, he has much also in common with the spirit and genius of modern times. He contemplates human life with a profound feeling, like that of Pascal, and with a speculative elevation like that of Spinoza. The loftier tones of his poetry and the sustained effort of mind which bears him through his long argument remind us of Milton. His sympathy with Nature, at once fresh and large, is more in harmony with the feeling of the great poets of the present century than with the general sentiment of ancient poetry. In the union of poetical feeling with scientific passion he has anticipated the most elevated mode of the study of Nature, of which the world has as yet seen only a few great examples. His powers of observation, thought, feeling, and imagination, are characterised by a remarkable vitality and sincerity. His strong intellectual and poetical faculty is united with some of the rarest moral qualities,--fortitude, seriousness of spirit, love of truth, manly tenderness of heart. And if it seems that his great powers of heart, understanding, and genius led him to accept and to teach a philosophy, paralysing to the highest human hope and energy, it is to be remembered that he lived at a time when the truest minds may well have despaired of the Divine government of the world, and must have honestly felt that it was well to be rid, at any cost, of the burden of Pagan superstition. [Footnote 1: i. 943-45.] [Footnote 2: 'And they placed the dwelling-places and mansions of the gods in the heavens, because it is through the heavens that the night and the moon are seen to sweep--the moon, the day, and night, and the stern constellations of night, the torches of heaven wandering through the night, and flying meteors, the clouds, the sun, the rains, the snow, the winds, lightning, hail, the rapid rattle, the threatening peals and murmurs of the thunder.'--v. 1188-93.] [Footnote 3: Cf. Munro, Introduction, ii. pp. 311, etc.] [Footnote 4: Cf. Quaerentem dictis quibus et quo carmine demum Clara tuae possim praepandere lumina menti Res quibus occultas penitus convisere possis. i. 143-5.] [Footnote 5: i. 2-4.] [Footnote 6: i. 17-18.] [Footnote 7: i. 256.] [Footnote 8: ii. 317-19.] [Footnote 9: ii. 362-63.] [Footnote 10: i. 718-19.] [Footnote 11: iv. 460-61.] [Footnote 12: iv. 136-38.] [Footnote 13: v. 255-56.] [Footnote 14: ii. 624-25.] [Footnote 15: ii. 639.] [Footnote 16: vi. 1179.] [Footnote 17: iii. 896.] [Footnote 18: iii. 28-30.] [Footnote 19: v. 745.] [Footnote 20: i. 68-9.] [Footnote 21: v. 1193.] [Footnote 22: vi. 254.] [Footnote 23: v. 96.] [Footnote 24: v. 340.] [Footnote 25: iii. 842.] [Footnote 26: i. 926-27.] [Footnote 27: vi. 34.] [Footnote 28: ii. 10.] [Footnote 29: Prévost Paradol, _Nouveaux Essais de Politique et de Littérature_.] [Footnote 30: 'But as when there have been at the same time many and mighty shipwrecks, the mighty sea is wont to drive in all directions the rowers' benches, rudders, sailyards, prows, masts, and floating oars, so that along all the coasts of land there may be seen the tossing flag-posts of ships, to warn mortals that they shun the wiles, and force, and craft of the faithless sea, nor ever trust the treacherous alluring smile of the calm ocean; so if once you will suppose any finite number of elements, you will find that the many surging forces of matter must disperse and drive them apart through all time, so that they never can meet and gather into union, nor stay in union and wax in increase.'--ii. 552-64.] [Footnote 31: iv. 587.] [Footnote 32: i. 64-5.] [Footnote 33: 'Then comes forth the Spring and Venus, and the harbinger of Spring steps on before them, the winged Zephyr; and near their footsteps, Mother Flora, scattering her treasures before her, fills all the way with glorious colours and fragrance.'--v. 737-40.] [Footnote 34: Cp. 'Keats has, above all, a sense of what is pleasurable and open in the life of Nature; for him she is the _Alma Parens_: his expression has, therefore, more than Guérin's, something genial, outward, and sensuous. Guérin has above all a sense of what there is adorable and secret in the life of Nature; for him she is the _Magna Parens_; his expression has, therefore, more than Keats', something mystic, inward, and profound.' _Essays in Criticism_, by M. Arnold, p. 130. _Third Edition._] [Footnote 35: v. 842.] [Footnote 36: 'Nor can the strong bridges endure the sudden force of the rushing water: in such wise, swollen by heavy rain, the stream with mighty force dashes upon the piers.'--i. 285-87.] [Footnote 37: 'Percolatur enim virus,' etc.] [Footnote 38: 'Finally, in their wandering they made their dwelling in the familiar woodland grottoes of the nymphs, from which they marked the rills of water laving the dripping rocks, made slippery with their abundant flow,--dripping rocks, with drops oozing out above the green moss,--and gushing forth and forcing their way over the level plain.'--v. 944-52.] [Footnote 39: 'And in like manner we see shells paint the lap of the earth, where with its soft waves the sea beats on the porous sand of the winding shore.'--ii. 374-76.] [Footnote 40: 'When the dawn first sheds its new light over the earth, and birds of every kind, flying over the pathless woods through the delicate air, fill all the land with their clear notes, the suddenness with which the risen sun then clothes and steeps the world in his light, is clear and evident to all men.'--ii. 144-49.] [Footnote 41: 'Just as when first the morning beams of the bright sun glow all golden through the grass gemmed with dew, and a mist arises from meres and flowing streams; and as even the earth itself is sometimes seen to steam; then all these vapours gather together above, and taking shape, as clouds on high, weave a canopy beneath the sky.'--v. 460-66.] [Footnote 42: Excursion, Book ii:-- 'The appearance, instantaneously disclosed,' etc.] [Footnote 43: ii. 356.] [Footnote 44: ii. 317.] [Footnote 45: 'Besides when mighty legions fill the plains with their rapid movement, raising the pageantry of warfare, the splendour rises up to heaven, and all the land around is bright with the glitter of brass, and beneath from the mighty host of men the sound of their tramp arises, and the mountains, struck by their shouting, re-echo their voices to the stars of heaven, and the horsemen hurry to and fro on either flank, and suddenly charge across the plains, shaking them with their impetuous onset.'--ii. 323-30.] [Footnote 46: 'And yet there is some place in the lofty mountains whence they appear to be all still, and to rest as a bright gleam upon the plains.'--ii. 331-32.] [Footnote 47: 'When, too, the utmost force of a violent gale is sweeping the admiral of some fleet over the seas, along with his mighty legions and elephants, does he not court the protection of the Gods with vows, and in his terror pray for a calm to the storm, and for favouring gales?'--v. 1226-30.] [Footnote 48: 'Moreover, the babe, like a sailor cast ashore by the cruel waves, lies naked on the ground, speechless, in need of every aid to life, when first nature has cast him forth by great throes from his mother's womb; and he fills the air with his piteous wail, as befits one whose doom it is to pass through so much misery in life.'--v. 222-27.] [Footnote 49: 'And now, shaking his head, the aged peasant laments, with a sigh, that the toil of his hands has often come to naught; and, as he compares the present with the past time, he extols the fortune of his father, and harps on this theme, how the good old race, full of piety, bore the burden of their life very easily within narrow bounds, when the portion of land for each man was far less than now.'--ii. 1164-70.] [Footnote 50: ii. 569-70.] CHAPTER XV. CATULLUS. Lucretius and Catullus were regarded by their contemporaries as the greatest poets of the last age of the Republic[1]. They alone represent the poetry of that time to the modern world. Although born into the same social rank, and acted upon by the dissolving influences, the intellectual stimulus, and the political agitation of the same time, no poets could be named of a more distinct type of genius and character. The first has left behind him only the record of his impersonal contemplation. His life was passed more in communion with Nature than in contact with the world: his experiences of happiness or sorrow entered into his art solely as affording materials for his abstract thought. The second has stamped upon his pages the lasting impression of the deepest joy and pain of his life, as well as of the lightest cares and fancies that occupied the passing hour. Intensely social in his temper and tastes, he lived habitually the life of the great city and the provincial town, observing and sharing in all their pleasures, distractions, and animosities, and only escaping, from time to time, for a brief interval to his country houses on the Lago di Garda and in the neighbourhood of Tivoli. He seems to have had no other aim in life than that of passionately enjoying his youth in the pleasures of love, in friendly intercourse with men of his own rank and age, in the practice of his art, and the study of the older poets, by whom that art was nourished. All his poems, with the exception of three or four works of creative fancy and one or two translations, have for their subject some personal incident, feeling, or character. Nearly all have some immediate relation to himself, and give expression to his love or hatred, his admiration or scorn, his happiness or misery. There is nearly as little in them of reflexion on human life as of meditative communion with Nature; but, as individual men and women excited in him intense affection or passion, so certain beautiful places and beautiful objects in Nature charmed his fancy and sank into his heart. He shows himself, spiritually and intellectually, the child of his age in his ardent vitality, in the license of his life and satire, in the fierceness of his antipathies; and also in his eager reception of the spirit of Greek art, his delight in the poets of Greece and the tales of the Greek mythology, in his striving after form and grace in composition, and in the enthusiasm with which he anticipates the joy of travelling among 'the famous cities of Asia.' In all our thoughts of him he is present to our imagination as the 'young Catullus'-- hedera iuvenalia vinctus Tempora. More than any great ancient, and than any great modern poet, with the exception, perhaps, of Keats, he affords the measure of what youth can do, and what it fails to do, in poetry. Although the exact age at which he died is disputed, yet the evidence of his poems shows that he did not outlive the boyish heart. In character he was even younger than in actual age. Nearly all his work was done between the years 61 and 54 B.C.; and most of it, apparently, with little effort. Born with the keenest capacities of pleasure and of pain, he never learned to regulate them: nor were they, seemingly, united with such enduring vital power as to carry him past the perilous stage of his career, so as to enable him with maturer power and more concentrated industry to employ his genius and accomplishment on works of larger scope, more capable of withstanding the shocks and chances of time, than the small volume which, by a fortunate accident, has preserved the flower and bloom of his life, and the record of all the 'sweet and bitter' which he experienced at the hands of that Power-- Quae dulcem curis miscet amaritiem. The ultimate preservation of his poems depended on a single copy, which, after being lost to the world for four centuries, was re-discovered in Verona, the poet's birthplace, during the fourteenth century. As that copy was again lost, the text has to be determined from the conflicting testimony of later copies, only two of which are considered by the latest critics to be of independent value. There is thus much more uncertainty, and much greater latitude for conjecture, as to the actual words of Catullus, than in the case of almost any other Roman poet. As lines not found in this volume are attributed to him by ancient authors, and as he appears to allude to the composition of love poems in his first youth[2] which must have been written before the earliest of the Lesbia-poems, it may be inferred that we do not possess all that he wrote. It has been generally assumed that the dedicatory lines to Cornelius Nepos, with which the volume opens, were prefixed by the poet to the collected edition of his poems which we now possess; but Mr. Ellis, following Bruner, has shown that that poem may more probably have been prefixed to a smaller and earlier collection. The lines-- Namque tu solebas Meas esse aliquid putare nugas, etc.-- imply that earlier poems of Catullus were well known for some time before the writing of this dedication; and allusions in more than one of the poems[3] prove that the poems of an earlier date must have been in circulation before those in which these allusions occur were written. In the time of Martial, a small volume, probably chiefly consisting of the Lesbia-poems, was known as the 'Passer Catulli[4].' It may be inferred that, as he wrote his poems from his earliest youth till his death, he gave them to the world at various stages of his career. He may have combined in these libelli some of the elegiac epigrams with his iambics and phalaecians, just as Martial, who regarded him as his master, did afterwards. Even some of the longer poems, such as the Janua or the Epithalamia, may have formed part of these collections. The attention which he attracted from men eminent in social rank and literature,--such as Hortensius, Manlius Torquatus, Memmius, etc.,--shows that his genius was soon recognised: and his eager craving for sympathy and appreciation would naturally prompt him to bring his various writings immediately before the eyes of his contemporaries. It seems likely, therefore, that this final collection from several shorter collections already in circulation was made some time after the poet's death[5]; that some poems were omitted which were not thought worthy of preservation, and, possibly, that some may have then been added which had not previously been given to the world. It would be difficult to believe that poems expressive of the most passionate love and the bitterest scorn of the same person could have appeared for the first time in the same collection. This collection consists of about 116 poems[6], written in various metres, and varying in length from epigrams of only two lines to an 'epyllion' which extends to 408 lines. The poems numbered from i to lx, are short lyrical or satiric pieces, written in the phalaecian, glyconic, or iambic metres, and devoted almost entirely to subjects of personal interest. The middle of the volume is occupied by the longer poems--numbered lxi to lxviii^b--of a more purely artistic and mostly an impersonal character, written in the glyconic, galliambic, hexameter, and elegiac metres. The latter part of the volume is entirely occupied by epigrammatic or other short pieces in elegiac metre, varying in length from two to twenty-six lines. Many of the epigrams refer to the persons who are the subject of the short lyric and iambic pieces. There is no attempt to arrange the poems in anything like chronological order. Thus, among the first twelve poems, ii, iii, v, vii, ix, xii, are probably to be assigned to the years 61 and 60 B.C., while iv, x, xi, certainly belong to the last three years of the poet's life. It is difficult to imagine on what principle the juxtaposition of certain poems was determined. Probably, in some cases, it may have been on the mere mechanical one of filling up the pages symmetrically by poems of suitable length. Sometimes we find poems of the same character, or referring to the same person, grouped together, and yet varied by the insertion of one or two pieces related to the larger group by contrast rather than similarity of tone. Thus the passionate exaltation of the earlier Lesbia-poems is first relieved by a poem (iv) written in another metre, and appealing to a much calmer class of feelings, and next varied by one (vi) written in the same metre, and suggested by a friend's amour, which in its meanness and obscurity serves as a foil to the glory and brightness of the good fortune enjoyed by the poet. Yet this clue does not carry us far in determining the principle, if indeed there was any principle, on which either the short lyrical poems or the elegiac epigrams were arranged. These various poems were written under the influence of every mood to which he was liable; and, like other passionate lyrical poets, he was susceptible of the most opposite moods. The most trivial incident might give rise to them equally with the greatest joy or the greatest sorrow of his life. As he felt a strong need to express, and had a happy facility in expressing his purest and brightest feelings, so he felt no shame in indulging, and knew no restraint in expressing, his coarsest propensities and bitterest resentments: and he evidently regarded his worst moods no less than his best as legitimate material for his art. Thus pieces more coarse than almost anything in literature are interspersed among others of the sunniest brightness and purity. The feelings with which we linger over the exquisite beauty of the 'Sirmio,' and are stirred by the noble inspiration of the 'Hymn to Diana,' receive a rude shock from the two intervening poems, characterised by a want of reticence and reserve not often paralleled in the literature or the speech of civilised nations. In a poet of modern times a similar collocation might be supposed indicative of a cynical bitterness of spirit--of a mind mocking its own purest impulses. But Catullus is too genuine and sincere a man, too natural in his enjoyments, and too healthy in all his moods, to be taken as an example of this distempered type of genius. It seems more likely, as is conjectured by recent commentators[7], that the present collection was made (perhaps at Verona) in a comparatively late age, when the knowledge of the circumstances of Catullus and the intelligent appreciation of his poems was lost. These poems, whether good or bad, serious or trivial, are all written with such transparent sincerity that they bring the poet before us almost as if he were our contemporary. They make him known to us in many different moods,--in joy and grief, in the ecstasy and the despair of love, in the frank outpouring of affection and the enjoyment of social intercourse, in the bitterness of his scorn and animosity, in the license of his coarser indulgences. They enable us to start with him on his travels; to enjoy with him the beauty of his home on the Italian lakes; to pass with him from the life of letters and idle pleasure and the brilliant intellectual society of Rome to the more homely but not more virtuous ways and the more commonplace people of his native province; to join with him in ridiculing some affectation of an acquaintance, or to feel the contagion of his admiration for genius or wit in man, grace in woman, or beauty in Nature. In the glimpses of him which we get in the familiar round of his daily life, we seem to catch the very turn of his conversation[8], to hear his laugh at some absurd incident[9], to see his face brighten as he welcomes a friend from a distant land[10], to mark the quick ebullition of anger at some slight or rudeness[11], or to be witnesses of his passionate tears as something recalls to him the memory of his lost happiness, or makes him feel his present desolation[12]. His impressible nature realises with extraordinary vividness of pleasure and pain experiences which by most people are scarcely noticed. To be rightly appreciated, his poems must be read with immediate reference to the circumstances and situations which gave rise to them. We must take them up with our feelings attuned to the mood in which they were written. Hence, before attempting to criticise them, we must try, by the help of internal and any available external evidence, to determine the successive stages of his personal and literary career, and so to get some idea of the social relations and the state of feeling of which they were the expression. There is some uncertainty as to the exact date of his birth and death. The statement of Jerome is that he was born at Verona in the year 87 B.C., and that he died at Rome, at the age of thirty, in the year 57 B.C. But this last date is contradicted by allusions in the poems to events and circumstances, such as the expeditions of Caesar across the Rhine and into Britain, the second Consulship of Pompey, the preparations for the Eastern expedition of Crassus, which belong to a later date. The latest incident which Catullus mentions is the speech of his friend Calvus, delivered in August 54 B.C. against Vatinius[13]. A line in the poem, immediately preceding that containing the allusion to the speech of Calvus,-- Per consulatum perierat Vatinius,-- was, till the appearance of Schwabe's 'Quaestiones Catullianae,' accepted as a proof that Catullus had actually witnessed the Consulship of Vatinius in 47 B.C. But it has been satisfactorily shown that that line refers to the boasts in which Vatinius used to indulge after the conference at Luca, or after his own election to the Praetorship, and not to their actual fulfilment at a later time. There is thus no evidence that Catullus survived the year 54 B.C.; and some expressions in some of his later poems, as, for instance,-- Malest Cornifici tuo Catullo,-- and-- Quid est Catulle? quid moraris emori? are thought to indicate the anticipation of approaching death. But if 54 B.C. is to be accepted as the year of his death, one of Jerome's two other statements, viz. that he was born in the year 87 B.C. and that he died at the age of thirty, must be wrong. Most critics and commentators hold that the first date is right, and that the mistake lies in the words 'xxx. aetatis anno.' Mr. Munro, with more probability, believes the error to lie in the 87 B.C., and that Jerome, 'as so often happens with him, has blundered somewhat in transferring to his complicated era the Consulships by which Suetonius would have dated.' He argues further, that the phrase 'iuvenalia tempora,' in the passage quoted above from Ovid and written by him at the age of twenty-five, is more applicable to one who died at the age of thirty than of thirty-three. A further argument for believing that the 'xxx. aetatis anno' is right, and the date 87 B.C. consequently wrong, is that the age at which a person died was more easily ascertained than the date at which he was born, owing to the common practice of recording the former in sepulchral inscriptions. It is easy to see how a mistake might have occurred in substituting the first of the four successive Consulships of Cinna (87 B.C.) for the last in 84 B.C.; but it is not so obvious how the substitution of xxx. for xxxiii. could have taken place. The only ground for assuming that the date of 87 B.C. is more likely to be right, is that thereby the disparity of age between Catullus and his mistress Clodia, who must have been born in 95 or 94 B.C., is somewhat lessened. But when we remember that she was actually twelve years older than M. Caelius Rufus, who succeeded Catullus as her lover, and that Cicero in his defence of Caelius speaks of her as supporting from her own means the extravagance of her youthful ('adulescentis') lovers[14], there is no more difficulty in supposing that she was ten than that she was seven years older than Catullus. Moreover, the brotherly friendship in which Catullus lived with Calvus, and his earlier intimate relations with Caelius and Gellius, who were all born in or about the year 82 B.C., seem to indicate that he was nearer to them in age than he would have been if born in 87 B.C. Between the age of twenty and thirty a difference of five years is not frequent among very intimate associates, who live together on a footing of perfect freedom. Again, the expression of the feelings both of love and friendship in the earlier poems of Catullus--written about the year 61 or 60 B.C.--seems more like that of a youth of twenty-three or four, than of twenty-six or seven, especially when we remember that, by his own confession, he had entered at a precociously early age on his career both of pleasure and of poetry. The date 84 B.C. accordingly seems to fit the recorded facts of his life and the peculiar character of his poetry better than that of 87 B.C.; and there seems to be more opening for a mistake in assigning the particular date of the poet's birth and death, than in recording the number of years which he lived[15]. It seems, therefore, most probable that he was born in the year 84 B.C., and that he died at the age of thirty, either late in 54 B.C. or early in 53 B.C. The much less important, but still more disputed question as to his 'praenomen,' appears now to be conclusively settled, in accordance with the evidence of Jerome and Apuleius, in favour of Gaius, and against Quintus. In the large number of places in which he speaks of himself, he invariably calls himself 'Catullus'; and in the best MSS. his book is called 'Catulli Veronensis liber.' His Gentile name Valerius is confirmed by Suetonius in his life of Julius Caesar; and the evidence of inscriptions shows that that name was not uncommon in the district near Verona. How it happened that this Roman patrician name had spread into Cisalpine Gaul we do not know; but that the family of Catullus was one of high consideration in his native district, and maintained relations with the great families of Rome, is indicated by the intimate footing on which Julius Caesar lived with his father, and also by the fact that the poet was received as a friend into the best houses of Rome,--such as that of Hortensius, Manlius Torquatus, Metellus Celer,--shortly after his arrival there. It is quite possible that the last of these, who was Proconsul in Cisalpine Gaul in 62 B.C., and to whom Cicero writes when governor of that province, may have lived on the same footing as Julius Caesar did with Catullus' father at Verona, and that, in that way, Catullus obtained his first introduction to his wife Clodia, the Lesbia of the poems. Although some humorous complaints of money difficulties--the natural consequences of his fashionable pleasures--occur in his poems[16], yet from the fact of his possessing, in his father's lifetime, a country house on lake Benacus and a farm on the borders of the Sabine and the Tiburtine territories, and of his having bought and manned a yacht in which he made the voyage from Bithynia to the mouth of the Po, it may be inferred that he belonged to a wealthy senatorian or equestrian family. One or two expressions, such as 'se atque suos omnes,' and again, 'te cum tota gente, Catulle, tua[17],' seem to speak of a large connexion of kinsmen: but we only know of one other member of his own family, his brother, whose early death in the Troad is mentioned with very genuine feeling in several of his poems. The statement of Jerome that he was born at Verona is confirmed by Ovid and Martial, and by the poet himself. He speaks of the 'Transpadani' as his own people ('ut meos quoque attingam'); he addresses Brixia (the modern Brescia), as-- Veronae mater amata meae; he speaks of one of his fellow-townsmen, as-- Quendam municipem meum. Besides spending his early youth there, we find him, on three different occasions, retiring thither from Rome, and making a considerable stay there; first, at the time of his brother's death, apparently at the very height of his _liaison_ with Clodia; next, immediately after his return from Bithynia; and again in the winter of 55-54 B.C., when it is probable that his interview and reconciliation with Julius Caesar took place. We find him inviting his friend, the poet Caecilius, to come and visit him from the newly established colony of Como. He had his friends and confidants among the youth of Verona, and he records his intrigues both with the married women and courtesans of the place[18]. He took a lively interest in the humorous scandals of the Province, and he has made them the subjects of several of his poems,--e.g. xvii and lxvii. Although his life was too full of social excitement and human interests to make him dwell much on natural beauty, yet the pure feeling expressed in the Sirmio-- Salve, o venusta Sirmio, atque ero gaude; Gaudete vosque o vividae[19] lacus undae-- shows that he derived keen enjoyment from the familiar loveliness of that 'ocellus' of 'all isles and capes': and in the illustrative imagery of his more artistic poems we seem to find traces of the impression made unconsciously on his imagination by the mountain scenery of Northern Italy[20]. His native district afforded scope for the culture, which was the serious charm of his life, as well as for the pleasures which formed a large part of it. It was in the youth of Catullus that the power of Greek studies was first felt by the impressionable race, half-Italian, half-Celtic, of Cisalpine Gaul, which still remained outside of Italy, and is called by him 'Provincia.' Among the men of letters belonging to the last age of the Republic,--Cato, the grammarian and poet, the great teacher of the poets of the new generation[21], described in lines quoted by Suetonius as Latina Siren Qui solus legit ac facit poetas,-- Cornelius Nepos, the friend who early recognised the genius of Catullus and to whom one of his 'libelli' was dedicated in the lines now prefixed to the collection,--Quintilius Varus, probably the Varus of poems x and xxii, and the friend whose death Horace laments in an Ode to Virgil, and whose candour as a critic he commends in the Ars Poetica,--Furius Bibaculus, Cornificius, and Caecilius, most of whom were among the intimate friends of Catullus, came from, or resided in, the North of Italy[22]. In the poem already mentioned he speaks of the mistress of Caecilius as being-- Sapphica puella Musa doctior,-- an indication that, not only in Rome but even in the northern province, the finest literary taste and culture was shared by women. Catullus shows in the earlier stage of his poetic career his familiarity both with the 'Muse of Sappho,' and with the more laboured art of Callimachus. His special literary butt, 'Volusius,' whose poems are ridiculed under the title of 'Annales Volusi,' was also his 'Conterraneus,' being a native of the ancient 'Padua,' a town at the mouth of the Po[23]. The strength of the impulse first given to literary study in this age is marked also by the eminent names from the North of Italy, which belong to the next generation, those of Virgil, Cornelius Gallus, Aemilius Macer, Livy, etc. There is no proof that Catullus left his native district in order to complete his education, though it is not improbable that he may have done so and come under the instruction of the 'Latina Siren,' with whom he was later on terms of familiar intimacy (lvi); nor have we any sure sign of his presence at Rome before the year 61 B.C.[24] He tells us that he began his career both as an amatory poet and as a man of pleasure in his earliest youth,-- Tempore quo primum vestis mihi tradita pura'st, Iucundum cum aetas florida ver ageret, Multa satis lusi: non est dea nescia nostri, Quae dulcem curis miscet amaritiem[25]. One or two of the poems which we still possess may have been written before Catullus settled in Rome, and before his genius was fully awakened by his passion for Lesbia: but the great majority belong to a later date; and if he did write many love poems before leaving Verona, 'in the pleasant spring-time of his life,' nearly all, if not all, of them were omitted from the final collection. Even the 'Aufilena poems,' which are based on an intrigue carried on at Verona, are shown, by the lines in c:-- Cui faveam potius? Caeli, tibi, nam tua nobis Per facta exhibita'st unica amicitia, Cum vesana meas torreret flamma medullas, to be subsequent to the _liaison_ with Clodia. This last line can only refer to the one all-absorbing passion of the poet's life. His own relations to Aufilena, in whose affections he seems to have tried to supplant his friend Quintius, were subsequent to the composition of that poem. It is possible, as Westphal suggests, that the Veronese bride, 'viridissimo nupta flore puella' of the 17th poem, in whom Catullus evidently took a lively interest, may have been this Aufilena, at an earlier stage of her career. The event which first revealed the full power of his genius, and which brought the greatest happiness and the greatest misery into his life, was his passion for 'Lesbia.' After the elaborate discussions of the question by Schwabe, Munro, Ellis and others, it can no longer be doubted that the lady addressed under that name was the notorious Clodia; the [Greek: boôpis] who appears so prominently in the second book of Cicero's Letters to Atticus, and the 'Medea Palatina' whose crimes, fascination, and profligacy stand out so distinctly in the defence of Caelius. We learn first from Ovid that 'Lesbia' was a feigned name; and the application of that name is easily intelligible from the admiration which Catullus felt, and which his mistress probably shared, for the 'Lesbian poetess,' whose passionate words he addressed to his mistress when he was first dazzled by her exceeding charm and beauty. Apuleius tells us further that the real name of 'Lesbia' was Clodia; and the truth of his statement is confirmed by his mention in the same place of other Roman ladies, who were celebrated by their poet-lovers,--Ticidas, Tibullus, and Propertius,--under disguised names. The statement made there that the real name of the Cynthia of Propertius was Hostia, is confirmed by the line in one of his elegies, Splendidaque a docto fama refulget avo[26]. The fact that this Clodia was the sister of P. Clodius Pulcher is also indicated in the 79th poem of Catullus, Lesbius est pulcher: quidni? quem Lesbia malit Quam te cum tota gente, Catulle, tua. The play on the word _pulcher_ might be illustrated by many parallel allusions in Cicero's Letters to Atticus. The gratitude expressed by Catullus to Allius[27], a man of rank and position, for having made arrangements to enable him to meet his mistress in secret, clearly shows that she could not have belonged to the class of _libertinae_, in whose case no such precautions could have been necessary: and the language of Catullus in the first period of his _liaison_-- Ille mi par esse deo videtur; and again, Quo mea se molli candida diva pedem Intulit, is like the rapture of a lover acknowledging the gracious condescension of a superior, as well as the delight of passion returned. Of the two kinds of lovers, those who 'allow themselves to be loved' and are flattered by this tribute to their superiority, and those who are carried out of themselves by their idealising admiration of the object of their love, Catullus, in his earlier and happier time, unquestionably belonged to the latter. Such a feeling, on the part of a young provincial poet, although primarily inspired by charms of person and manner, would naturally be enhanced by the thought that the lady whom he loved belonged to one of the oldest and highest patrician houses, and was the wife of one of the greatest nobles of Rome, who was either actual Consul, or Consul designate, at the time when she first returned the poet's passion. The subsequent course of their _liaison_ affords further corroboration of her identity with the famous Clodia. The rival against whom the poet's anger is most fierce and bitter, is addressed by him as Rufus[28],--the cognomen of M. Caelius, who became the lover of Clodia in the latter part of the year 59, and was defended by Cicero in a prosecution instigated by her in the early part of 56 B.C. The speech of Cicero amply confirms the charges of Catullus as to the multiplicity of her later lovers. As, therefore, there seems no reason to doubt, and the strongest reason to accept the statement of Apuleius that the real name of Lesbia was Clodia; as the Lesbia of Catullus was, like her, evidently a lady of rank and of great accomplishment[29]; as there was no other Clodia of the family of Clodius Pulcher at Rome, except the wife of Metellus Celer, to whom the statements made in the poems of Catullus could apply; and as these statements closely agree with all that Cicero says of her,--there is no reasonable ground for doubting their identity. If it is urged, on the other side, that a lady of the rank and station of Clodia cannot have sunk so low, as some of the later poems of Catullus imply, it may be said that all that Catullus in his jealous wrath imputed to her need not have been true, and also that other Roman ladies of as high rank and position, both in the last age of the Republic and in the early Empire, did sink as low[30]. That the intrigue was carried on and had even reached its second stage--that of the 'amantium irae'--in the life-time of Metellus, appears from the 83rd poem, Lesbia mi praesente viro mala plurima dicit, etc. Metellus was governor of the Province of Gallia Cisalpina in 62 B.C., and he must have returned to Rome early in 61 to stand for the Consulship. Catullus may have become known to Clodia in his absence, and the earliest poem addressed to her, the translation from Sappho, which is expressive of passionate and even distant admiration rather than of secure possession, may belong to the time of her husband's absence. But in the 68th poem, which recalls most vividly the early days of their love, when they met in secret at the house provided by Allius, the lines, in which the poet excuses her faithlessness to himself-- Sed furtiva dedit mira munuscula nocte, Ipsius ex ipso dempta viri gremio[31]-- clearly imply that these meetings occurred after the return of Metellus to Rome. The earlier love poems to Lesbia--those on her pet sparrow, the 'Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus,' and the 'Quaeris quot mihi basiationes,'--in all of which the feeling expressed is one at once of passionate admiration and of perfect security,--belong probably to the year 60, or to the latter part of the year 61 B.C. To this period may, in all probability, be assigned some of the poet's brightest and happiest efforts,--the Epithalamium in honour of the marriage of Manlius and Vinia Aurunculeia[32], and the poems ix, xii, xiii, commemorative of his friendship with Veranius and Fabullus. The words in the last of these-- Nam unguentum dabo, quod meae puellae Donarunt Veneres Cupidinesque-- seem to admit of no other explanation than that they were written in the heyday of his passion. The lines in the poem, welcoming Veranius,-- Visam te incolumem audiamque Hiberum Narrantem loca, facta, nationes-- seem to speak of some adventures encountered in Spain: and from the fact that three years later the two friends, who are always coupled together as inseparable by Catullus, went together on the staff of Calpurnius Piso, the father-in-law of Caesar, to his Province of Macedonia, it seems a not unwarranted conjecture[33] that they were similarly engaged at this earlier time, and had gone to Spain in the train of Julius Caesar, and had returned with him to Rome in the middle of the year 60 B.C.[34] The twelfth poem, which is interesting as a testimony to the honour and good taste of Asinius Pollio, then a boy of sixteen, was written somewhat earlier, while Veranius and Fabullus were still in Spain. The first hint of any rift in the loves of Catullus and Clodia is contained in the 68th poem, written in the form of a letter to Manlius[35]-- Quare, quod scribis Veronae turpe Catullo, etc. Catullus had retired to Verona on hearing of the death of his brother, and he was for a time so overwhelmed with grief as to become indifferent both to poetry and love. He is as sincere and unreserved in the expression of his grief as of his former happiness, and as completely absorbed by it. He writes to Hortensius, enclosing, in fulfilment of an old promise, a translation of the 'Coma Berenices' of Callimachus, but at the same time expressing his loss of all interest in poetry owing to his recent affliction,-- Etsi me adsiduo confectum cura dolore Sevocat a doctis, Ortale, virginibus, etc. In his letter to Manlius, in which he excuses himself on the same ground for not sending any poetry of his own, and for not complying with his request to send him some volumes of Greek poetry, on the ground that his collection of books was at Rome, he notices, with a feeling almost of hopeless indifference, a hint conveyed to him by Manlius, of his mistress' faithlessness[36]. In the poem written somewhat later to Allius,-- Non possum reticere deae qua me Allius in re, etc.-- in which his grief is still fresh but more subdued, and in which the full tide of his old passion, as well as his old delight in his art, returns to him, he speaks lightly of her occasional infidelities,-- Quae tamen etsi uno non est contenta Catullo Rara verecundae furta feremus erae. If he can no longer be her only lover, he still hopes to be the most favoured. But he soon finds even this privilege denied to him. His love-poetry henceforth assumes a different sound. For a time, indeed, his reproaches are uttered in a tone of sadness not unmixed with tenderness. Afterwards, even though his passion from time to time revives with its old vehemence, and he again becomes the slave of Lesbia's caprice, his tone becomes angry, hard, and scornful. Finally, the evidence of her shameless life and innumerable infidelities with Caelius, Gellius, Egnatius, and 'three hundred others,' enables him utterly to renounce her. The earlier of the poems, both of anger and reconciliation, may probably have been written in the life-time of Metellus, i.e. in 60 or in the beginning of 59 B.C. But later in that year Metellus died, suspected of being poisoned by his wife, who, on the ground of that suspicion, was named by Caelius Rufus, after his passion had merged in a hatred equal to that of Catullus, by the terrible _oxymoron_ of 'Clytemnestra quadrantaria.' Her widowhood gained for her absolute license in the indulgence of her propensities, and the first use she made of her liberty was to receive Caelius Rufus into her house on the Palatine. What her ultimate fate was we do not know, but the language of Cicero, Caelius, and Catullus show that she could inspire as deadly hatred as passionate admiration, and that the 'Juno-like' charm of her beauty, the grace and fascination of her presence, the intellectual accomplishment which made poets and orators for a time her slaves, did not save her from sinking into the lowest degradation. The poems representing the second and third stage--that in which passion and scorn strive with one another--of the relations to 'Lesbia,' and containing the savage attacks on his rivals, belong to the years 59 and 58 B.C.: nor do there appear to be any other poems of importance referable to this latter date. One or two poems, in which his final renunciation is made with much scornful emphasis, belong to a later date after his return from Bithynia. He went there early in the year 57 B.C., on the staff of the Propraetor Memmius, and remained till the spring of the following year. The immediate motive for this step may have been his wish to escape from his fatal entanglement, but the chances of bettering his fortunes, the congenial society of his friend the poet Helvius Cinna and other members of the staff, and the attraction of visiting the famous seats of the old Greek civilization, were also powerful inducements to a man who combined a strong social and pleasure-loving nature with the enthusiasm of a poet and a scholar. His severance from his recent associations and from the animosities they engendered was favourable to his happiness and his poetry. He did not indeed improve his fortunes, owing, as he says, to the poverty of the province and the meanness of his chief. He detested Memmius, and has recorded his detestation in the hearty terms of abuse of which he was a master; and he expresses his joy in quitting, in the following spring, the dull monotony of the Phrygian plains and the hot climate of Nicaea. But he had great enjoyment in his association with his comrades on the Praetor's staff-- O dulces comitum valete coetus.-- He was attracted to one of them, Helvius Cinna, by warm admiration for his poetic accomplishment, as well as by friendship[37]; and the time spent by them together was probably lightened by the practice of their art, and the study of the Alexandrine poets. Although the fame of Cinna did not become so great as that of Catullus or Calvus, he seems to have been regarded by the poets of that school in the light of a master[38]; and it is probably owing to the example of his Zmyrna, so highly lauded in the 95th poem of Catullus, that Catullus composed his Epithalamium of Peleus and Thetis, Calvus composed his Io, and Cornificius his Glaucus. A still more remarkable poem of Catullus, the Attis, the subject of which, so remote not only from Roman but even Greek life, is identified with the Phrygian highlands and the seats of the worship of Cybele, probably owes its inspiration as well as its local colouring to the poet's sojourn in this district. It is not unlikely that it was during the leisure of the time spent in Bithynia that these poems were commenced, as it was during his retirement to Verona after his brother's death that his longer Elegiac poems were written. The mention of the 'Catagraphi Thyni' in a later poem is suggestive of the interest which he took in the novel aspects of Eastern life opened up to him in the province. But it is in the poems which are written in the year 56 B.C., that we chiefly note the happy effect of the poet's absence from Rome, and of his emancipation from his passion. Some of these poems,--more especially xlvi, ci, xxxi, and iv,--are among the happiest and purest products of his genius. They bring him before us eagerly preparing to start on his journey 'among the famous cities of Asia,'--making his pious pilgrimage to his brother's tomb in the Troad,--greeting his beloved Sirmio and the bright waters of the Lago di Garda on his first return home, and recalling sometime later to his guests by the shores of the lake the memories of the places visited, and of the gallant bearing of his pinnace, 'through so many wild seas,' on his homeward voyage. Some of the poems written from Verona--those referring to his intrigue or perhaps his disappointment with Aufilena, and the invitation to Caecilius (xxxv), were probably composed about this time, before his return to Rome. The 'Aufilena' poems belong certainly to a time later than his passion for Lesbia; and during a still later visit to Verona--probably that during which he met and was reconciled to Julius Caesar--Catullus is found engaged in love-affairs in which Mamurra was his rival. As the invitation to Caecilius was written after the foundation of Como (B.C. 59), it could not have been sent by Catullus during his earlier sojourns at Verona: and 'the ideas' which he wished to interchange with the poet who was then engaged in writing a poem on Cybele--'Dindymi domina,'--to which Catullus pointedly refers, may well have been those suggested by his Eastern sojourn, and embodied in the Attis. But soon afterwards we find him back in Rome, and the lively and most natural comedy, dramatically put before us in x-- Varus me meus ad suos amores Visum duxerat e foro otiosum-- bears the freshest impress of his recent Bithynian experiences. Poems xxviii and xlviii, inspired by his hatred of Memmius and his sympathy with the treatment, like to that which he had himself experienced, which his friends Veranius and Fabullus had met with at the hands of their chief Piso, probably belong to a later time, after the return of Piso from his province in 55 B.C. Some critics have found the motive of the famous lines addressed to Cicero-- Disertissime Romuli nepotum Quot sunt quotque fuere, Marce Tulli-- in the speech delivered in the early part of 56 B.C., in defence of Caelius, of which, from the prominence given in it to the vices of Clodia, Catullus must have heard soon after his return to Rome. But the words of the poem hardly justify this inference. Catullus was not interested in the vindication of Caelius, who had proved false to him as a friend, and supplanted him as a rival. And he was himself so perfect a master of vituperation that he did not need to thank Cicero for his having done that office for him in regard to Clodia. Yet the reference to Cicero's eloquence, and to his supremacy in the law courts--, Tanto pessimus omnium poeta Quanta tu optimus omnium patronus-- seems to point to some exercise of Cicero's special talent as an advocate, for which Catullus was grateful. The great orator and the great poet, who speaks so modestly of himself in the contrast he draws between them, may have been brought together in many ways. They had common friends and acquaintances--Hortensius, Manlius Torquatus, Sestius, Licinius Calvus, Memmius, etc.; and they heartily hated the same persons, Clodia, Vatinius, Piso, and others. The intimate associates of Catullus shared the political views and sympathies which the orator had professed at least up to the year 55 B.C. Cicero, too, was naturally attracted to young men of promise and genius,--if they did not belong too prominently to the 'grex Catilinae';--and, like Dr. Johnson in his relations to Beauclerk and Boswell, he may have valued their society more for their intellectual vivacity than their moral virtues[39]. The poems written in the last two years of the poet's life do not indicate any emancipation from the coarser passions and the fierce animosities of the period immediately preceding the Bithynian journey. To this later time may be assigned the famous lampoons on Julius Caesar and Mamurra, the poems referring to some of his Veronese amours, those addressed to Juventius, and the reckless, half-bantering, half-savage assaults on 'Furius and Aurelius,' who were both the butts of his wit and the sharers of his least reputable pleasures. They seem to have been needy men, though of some social standing[40], probably of the class of 'Scurrae,' who preyed on his purse and made loud professions of devotion to him, while they abused his confidence and his character behind his back. Some of the poems of his last years, however, are indicative of a more genial frame of mind and of happier relations with the world. It was at this time that he enjoyed the intimate friendship of Licinius Calvus[41], to whom he was united by similarity of taste and of genius, as well as by sympathy in their personal and political dislikes. Four poems--one certainly among the very last written by Catullus--are inspired by this friendship, and all clearly prove that at least this source of happiness was unalloyed by any taint of bitterness. Two other poems, the final repudiation of Lesbia, and the bright picture of the loves of Acme and Septimius, which, by their allusions to the invasion of Britain and to the excitement preceding the Parthian expedition of Crassus and the Egyptian expedition of Gabinius, show unmistakeably that they belong to the last year of his life, afford conclusive evidence that neither the exhausting passions, the rancorous feuds, nor the deeper sorrows of his life had in any way impaired the vigour of his imagination or his sense of beauty. Perhaps the latest verses addressed by Catullus to any of his friends are those lines of tender complaint to Cornificius, in which he begs of him some little word of consolation-- Maestius lacrimis Simonideis. The lines-- Malest, me hercule, et est laboriose, Et magis magis in dies et horas-- might well have been drawn from him by the rapid advance of his fatal illness, and the phrase 'lacrimis Simonideis' is suggestive of the anticipation of death rather than of the misery of unfortunate love[42]. The length as well as the diction, rhythm, and structure of the 64th poem-- Peliaco quondam prognatae, etc.-- shows that it was a work of much greater labour and thought than any of those which sprang spontaneously out of the passion or sentiment of the moment. Probably in the composition of this, which he must have regarded as the most serious and ambitious effort of his Muse, Catullus may have acted on the principle which he commends so warmly in his lines on the Zmyrna of Cinna-- Zmyrna mei Cinnae nonam post denique messem Quam coepta'st nonamque edita post hiemem,-- and have kept it by him for years, elaborating the unfamiliar poetic diction in which it is expressed, and enlarging its original plan by the insertion of the long Ariadne episode. It is the only poem of Catullus which produces the impression of the slow and reflective processes of art as distinct from the rapidly shaping power of immediate inspiration. From this circumstance alone we should regard it as a work on which his maturest faculty was employed. But it has been shown[43] that throughout the poem, and more especially in the episode of Ariadne, there are clear indications that Catullus had read and imitated the poem of Lucretius, which appeared about the end of 55 or the beginning of 54 B.C. We may therefore conclude that in the year 54 B.C.--the last of his life--Catullus was still engaged either in the original composition of his longest poem, or in giving to it the finishing touches. The concluding lines of the poem-- Sed postquam tellus scelere est imbuta nefando, etc.-- which are written in a more serious spirit, and with a graver judgment on human life than anything else he has left, perhaps indicate the path which his maturer genius might have struck out for itself, if he had ever risen from the careless freedom of early youth to the reflective habits and steady labour of riper years. But although longer life might have brought to Catullus a still higher rank among the poets of the world, the chief charm of the poems actually written by him arises from the strength and depth of his personal feelings, and the force, freshness, and grace with which he has expressed them. Other Roman poets have produced works of more elaborate composition, and have shown themselves greater interpreters of Nature and of human life: none have expressed so directly and truthfully the great elemental affections, or have uttered with such vital sincerity the happiness or the pain of the passing hour. He presents his own simple experience and emotions, uncoloured by idealising fancy or reflexion, and the world accepts this as among the truest of all records of human feeling. The 'spirat adhuc amor' is especially true of all the poems inspired by his love for Lesbia. It is by the union of the utmost fire of passion with a heart capable of the utmost constancy of feeling that he transcends all other poets of love. We pass with him through every stage of his passion, from the first rapture of admiration and the first happiness of possession to the biting words or scorn in which he announces to Lesbia his final renunciation of her. We witness the whole 'pageant of his bleeding heart,' from the fresh pain of the wound on first fully realising her unworthiness, through the various stages of superficial reconcilement,--the 'amoris integratio' following on the 'amantium irae[44],'--on to the state of torture described by him in the words 'Odi et amo[45],' till at last he obtains his emancipation by the growth of a savage rancour and loathing in the place of the passionate love which had tried so long to sustain itself 'like a wild flower at the edge of the meadow[46].' Among the many poems, written through nearly the whole of his poetical career, and called forth by this, the most vital experience of his life, those of most charm and power are the two on the 'Sparrow of Lesbia' (ii and iii) written in tones of playful tenderness, not without some touch of the luxury of melancholy which accompanies and enhances passion;--the two, v and vii, Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus, and Quaeris, quot mihi basiationes, etc.,-- written in the very height of his short-lived happiness, in the wildest tumult and most reckless abandonment of passion, when the immediate joy is felt as the only thing of any moment in life; the 8th poem-- Miser, Catulle, desinas ineptire-- in which he recalls the bright days of the past-- Fulsere quondam candidi tibi soles,-- and steels his heart against useless regret:--and another poem written in a different metre, in the same mood, and apparently after the wounds, which had been partially healed, had broken out afresh,-- Si qua recordanti benefacta priora voluptas, etc.[47]; in which he prays for a deliverance from his passion as from a foul disease, or a kind of madness;--and lastly, the final renunciation (xi),-- Furi et Aureli comites Catullo,-- in which scornful irony is combined with an imaginative power and creative force of expression which he has only equalled or surpassed in one or two other of his greatest works,--such as the 'Attis' and the Epithalamium of Manlius. Other tales of love told by poets have been more beautiful in their course, or more pathetic in their issue; none have been told with more truthful realism, or more desperate intensity of feeling. The fame of Catullus, as alone among ancient poets of love rivalling the traditional glory of Sappho, does not rest only on those poems which record the varying vicissitudes of his own experience. His longer and more artistic poems are all concerned with some phase of this passion, either in its more beautiful and pathetic aspects, or in its perversion and corruption. Thus he not only selects from Greek legends the story of the desertion of Ariadne, of the brief union of Protesilaus and Laodamia, of the glory and blessedness of Peleus and Thetis, but he makes the tragic deed of Attis, instigated by the fanatical hatred of love,--'Veneris nimio odio,'--the subject of his art. Others of his poems are inspired by sympathy with the happiness of his friends in the enjoyment of their love, and with their sorrow when that love is interrupted by death. The most charming of all his longer poems is the Epithalamium which celebrates the union of Manlius with his bride. No truer picture of the passionate devotion of lovers has ever been painted than that presented in the few playful and tender but burning lines of the 'Acme and Septimius.' His own experience did not teach him the lessons of cynicism. At the close as at the beginning of his career, he finds in the union of passion with truth and constancy the most real source of happiness. The elegiac lines in which he comforts his friend Calvus for the loss of Quintilia bear witness to the strength and delicacy of his friendship, and, along with others of his poems, make us feel that the life of pleasure in that age was not only brightened by genius and culture, but also elevated by pure affection and sympathy,-- Si quicquam mutis gratum acceptumque sepulchris Accidere a nostro Calve dolore potest, Quo desiderio veteres renovamus amores Atque olim missas flemus amicitias Certe non tanto mors immatura dolori est Quintiliae, quantum gaudet amore tuo[48]. The most attractive feature in the character of Catullus is the warmth of his affection. No ancient poet has left so pleasant a record of the genial intercourse of friends, or has given such proof of his own dependence on human attachment and of his readiness to meet all the claims which others have on such attachment. In his gayest hours and his greatest sorrow, amid his pleasures and his studies, he shows his thoughtful consideration for others, his grateful recollection of past kindness, and his own extreme need of sympathy. Perhaps he expects too much from friendship, and, in addressing his comrades, is too ready to assume that whatever gives momentary pleasure or pain to 'their own Catullus' must be of equal importance to them. No poet makes such use of terms of endearment and affectionate diminutives in writing both to and of his friends, and of himself in his relation to them. But if he expected much from the sympathy of his associates, he possessed in no ordinary measure the capacity of feeling with and of heartily loving and admiring them. He often expresses honest and delicate appreciation of the works, or of the wit, taste, and genius of his friends. The dedication of his volume to Cornelius Nepos, the lines addressed to Cicero, the invitation to Caecilius-- Poetae tenero, meo sodali Velim Caecilio papyre dicas,-- the poem in which he recalls to Licinius Calvus a day passed together in witty talk and the interchange of verses over their wine, the contrast which he draws between the doom of speedy oblivion which he pronounces on the 'Annals of Volusius,' and the immortality which he confidently anticipates for the 'Zmyrna' of Cinna,--all show that, though fastidious in his judgments, he was without a single touch of literary jealousy, and that he felt a generous pride in the fame and accomplishments of men of established reputation as well as of his own younger compeers. Nor was his affection limited by literary sympathy. Of none of his associates does he write more heartily than of Veranius and Fabullus, young men, apparently enjoying their youth, and trying to better their fortunes by serving on the staff of some Praetor or Proconsul in his province. The language of affection could not be uttered with more cordiality, simplicity, and grace than in the poem of ten or eleven lines welcoming Veranius on his return from Spain,-- Venistine domum ad tuos Penates Fratresque unanimos anumque matrem? Venisti. O mihi nuntii beati. There is not a word in the poem wasted; not one that does not come straight and strong from the heart. The 'Invitation to Fabullus' is in a lighter strain, and is written with the freedom and humour which he could use to add a charm to his friendly intercourse[49], and a sting to his less congenial relations. Yet through the playful banter of this poem his delicate and kindly nature betrays itself in the words 'venuste noster,' and in those lines of true feeling,-- Sed contra accipies meros amores Seu quid suavius elegantiusve. His affection for both comes out incidentally in his remonstrance with Marrucinus Asinius[50] for having filched after dinner, 'in ioco atque vino,' one of his napkins, which he valued as memorials of the friends who had sent them to him, and which he endows with some share of the love he felt for them,-- Haec amem necessest Ut Veraniolum meum et Fabullum. The lampoons on Piso and his favourites, Porcius and Socration, show that those who wronged his friends could rouse in him as generous indignation as those who wronged himself. Other poems express the pain and disappointment of a very sensitive nature, which expects more active and disinterested sympathy from others than ordinary men care either to give or to receive. Of this sort are his complaint to Cornificius[51],-- Malest, Cornifici, tuo Catullo-- and the affectionate reproach which he addresses to Alphenus (xxx):-- Certe tute iubebas animam tradere, inique, me Inducens in amorem, quasi tuta omnia mi forent. Inde nunc retrahis te ac tua dicta omnia factaque Ventos irrita ferre ac nebulas aerias sinis. These, and other poems, show that Catullus was quick to feel any coldness or neglect on the part of his friends, and exceedingly dependent for his happiness on their sympathy. But the tone of these poems is quite different from the resentment which he feels and expresses against those from whom he had experienced malice or treachery. It does great injustice to his noblest qualities, to think of him as one who wantonly attacked or lightly turned against his friends. No instance of such levity of feeling can be adduced from his writings. It has been conclusively shown[52] that in the third line of the 95th poem there can be no reference to Hortensius, who, under the name of Hortalus, is addressed by Catullus in his 65th poem with courteous consideration: and if 'Furius and Aurelius' are to be regarded, on the strength of the opening lines of the 11th poem, as having ever ranked among his devoted friends, then the poem, instead of being a magnificent outburst of scornful irony, becomes a mere specimen of bathos. Nothing, on the other hand, can be more in keeping with the feeling of contemptuous tolerance which Catullus expresses in his other poems relating to them, than the pointed contrast between their hollow professions of enthusiasm and the degrading office which he assigns to them,-- Pauca nuntiate meae puellae Non bona dicta. Catullus could pass from friendship or love to a state of permanent enmity and hatred, when he believed that those in whom he had trusted had acted falsely and heartlessly towards him: and then he did not spare them. But the duties of loyal friendship and affection are to him a kind of religion. Perfidy and falsehood are regarded by him not only as the worst offences against honour in man, but as sins against the Gods. He lays claim to a good conscience and to the character of piety, on the ground that he had neither failed in acts of kindness nor violated his word or his oath in any of his human dealings:-- Si qua recordanti benefacta priora voluptas Est homini, cum se cogitat esse pium, Nec sanctam violasse fidem, nec foedere in ullo Divum ad fallendos numine abusum homines, etc.[53] That he possessed no ordinary share of 'piety,' in the Roman sense of the word, appears from the poems which express his grief for his brother's death. He died in the Troad; and we have seen how, some years after the event, Catullus turned aside from his pleasant voyage among the Isles of Greece and coasts of Asia, to visit his tomb and to offer upon it the customary funeral gifts. His words in reference to this great sorrow, in all the poems in which he speaks of it, are full of deep and simple human feeling. He does not venture to comfort himself with the hope which he suggests to Calvus, in the lines on the death of Quintilia, of a conscious existence after death; but he resolves that his love shall still endure even after the eternal separation from its object. Yet while yielding to the first shock of this affliction, so as to become for the time indifferent to the passion which had swayed his life, and to the delight which he had taken in the works of ancient poets and the exercise of his art, he does not allow himself to forget what was due to living friends. It is characteristic of his frank affectionate nature, that, while dead to his old interests in life and literature, he finds his chief comfort in unburthening his heart to his friends and in writing to them words of delicate consideration. He cannot bear that, even in a trifling matter, Hortalus should find him forgetful of a promise: and he longs to lighten the sorrow of his friend Manlius, who had written to him in some sudden affliction,--probably the loss of the bride in whose honour Catullus had, a short time previously, composed his great Nuptial Ode. Though all other feelings were dead, and neither love could distract nor poetry heal his grief, his heart was alive to the memory of former kindness[54], to the natural craving for sympathy, and to the duty of thinking of others. Another, and less admirable, side of the nature of Catullus is reflected in his short satirical poems. These have nothing in common with the ethical and reflective satire of Lucilius and Horace: and although the objects of some of them are the most prominent personages in the State, yet their motive cannot, in any case, be called purely political. They are like the lampoons of Archilochus and the early Greek Iambic writers, purely personal in their object. They are either the virulent expression of his antipathies, jealousies, and rancours, or they are inspired by his lively sense of the ridiculous and by his extreme fastidiousness of taste. The most famous, most incisive, and least justifiable of these lampoons are the attacks on Julius Caesar, especially that contained in the 29th poem,-- Quis hoc potest videre, quis potest pati, Nisi impudicus et vorax et alco, etc.-- and in the less vigorous but much more offensive 57th poem. Catullus in these poems expresses the animosity which the 'boni' generally entertained towards the chiefs of the popular party: and his intimacy at this time with Calvus, who was a member of the Senatorian party, and who lampooned Caesar and Pompey in the same spirit, may have given some political edge to his Satire. He was moved also by a feeling of disgust towards the habits and manners of some of Caesar's instruments and creatures,--such as Vatinius, Libo, Mamurra, etc. But the chief motive both of the 29th and the 57th,--the two poems which Suetonius regarded as attaching an 'everlasting stigma' to the name of Caesar--is the jealousy of Mamurra,--the object also of many separate satires,--who, through the favour of the Proconsul and the fortune which he thereby acquired, was a successful rival of Catullus in his provincial love affairs. The indignation of Cicero was roused against the riches of Mamurra on political grounds[55]: that of Catullus on the ground that they gave their possessor an unfair advantage in the race of pleasure:-- Et ille nunc superbus et superfluens Perambulabit omnium cubilia, etc. Suetonius tells the story, confirmed by the lines in a later poem of Catullus-- Irascere iterum meis iambis Inmerentibus, unice imperator,-- that Caesar, while staying at his father's house at Verona, accepted the poet's apology for his libellous verses, and admitted him the same day to his dinner-table. Had he attached the meaning to the imputations contained in them, which Suetonius did two hundred years afterwards, even his magnanimous clemency could not well have tolerated them. But, as Cicero tells us in his defence of Caelius, such charges were in those days regarded as a mere 'façon de parler,' which if made coarsely were regarded as 'rudeness' ('petulantia'), if done wittily, as 'polite banter' ('urbanitas'). Caesar must have looked upon the imputations of the 57th poem as a mere angry ebullition of boyish petulance: and he showed the same disregard for imputations made by Calvus, which, though as unfounded, were not so absolutely incredible and unmeaning. His clemency to Catullus met with a return similar to that which it met with at a later time from other recipients of his generosity. Catullus, though the 'truest friend,' was certainly not the 'noblest foe.' The coarseness of his attack may be partly palliated by the manners of the age: but the spirit in which he returns to the attack in the 54th poem leaves a more serious stain on his character. He was too completely in the wrong to be able frankly to forgive Caesar for his gracious and magnanimous treatment. Many of his personal satires are directed against the licentiousness of the men and women with whom he quarrelled. Notwithstanding the evidence of his own frequent confessions, he lays a claim to purity of life in the phrase, 'si vitam puriter egi[56],' and in his strange apology for the freedom of his verses,-- Nam castum esse decet pium poetam Ipsum, versiculos nihil necesse est[57]. He is absolutely unrestrained both in regard to the imputations which he makes, and to the choice of the language in which he conveys them; and in these imputations he spares neither rank nor sex. It is one of the strangest paradoxes to find a poet like Catullus, endowed with the purest sense of beauty, and yet capable of turning all his vigorous force of expression to the vilest uses. He is coarser in his language than any of the older poets, and than any of those of the Augustan age. In the time of the former the traditional severity of the old Roman life,--'tetrica ac tristis disciplina Sabinorum,'--had not altogether lost its influence. In the Augustan age, if there was as much immorality as in the age preceding it, there was more outward decorum. The licentiousness of that age expresses itself in tones of refinement; it associates itself with sentimentalism in literature; it was reduced to system and carried out as the serious business of life. The coarseness of Catullus is symptomatic rather of more recklessness than of greater corruption in society. Impurity is less destructive to human nature when it vents itself in bantering or virulent abuse, than when it clings to the imagination, associates itself with the sense of beauty, and expresses itself in the language of passion. Though, in his nobler poetry, Catullus is ardent and impassioned, he is much more free from this taint than Ovid or Propertius. The errors of his life did not deaden his sensibility, harden his heart, or corrupt his imagination. It is only in his careless moods, when he looks on life in the spirit of a humorist, or in moods of bitterness when his antipathies are roused, or in fits of savage indignation against some violation of natural feeling or some prosperous villainy, that he disregards the restraints imposed by the better instincts of men on the use of language. Many of his Satires, however, are written in a more genial vein, and are not much disfigured by coarseness or indelicacy of expression. As he especially valued good taste and courtesy, wit, and liveliness of mind in his associates, so he is intolerant of all mean and sordid ways of living, of all stupidity, affectation, and pedantry. The pieces in which these characteristics are exposed are marked by keen observation, a lively sense of absurdity, and sometimes by a boisterous spirit of fun. They are expressed with vigour and directness; but they want the subtle irony which pervades the Satires, Epistles, and Odes of Horace. Among the best of his lighter satires is the poem numbered xvii:-- O Colonia, quae cupis ponte ludere magno,-- which has some touches of graceful poetry as well as of humorous extravagance. It is directed against the dulness and stolid indifference of one of his fellow-townsmen, who, being married to a young and beautiful girl,-- Quoi cum sit viridissimo nupta flore puella (Et puella tenellulo delicatior haedo, Asservanda nigerrimis diligentius uvis),-- was utterly careless of her, and insensible to the perils to which she was exposed. To rouse him from his sloth and stupor, Catullus asks to have him thrown head over heels-- Munus hoc mihi maximi da, Colonia, risus-- from a rickety old bridge into the deepest and dirtiest part of the quagmire over which it was built. In another piece Catullus laughs at the affectation of one of his rivals, Egnatius,--a black-bearded fop from the Celtiberian wilds,--who had a trick of perpetually smiling in order to show the whiteness of his teeth;--a trick which did not desert him at a criminal trial, during the most pathetic part of the speech for the defence, or when he stood beside a weeping mother at the funeral pyre of her only son. In another of his elegiac pieces he gives expression to the relief felt on the departure for the East of a bore who afflicted the ears of the polite world by a superfluous use of his aspirates-- Chommoda dicebat, si quando commoda vellet Dicere, et insidias Arrius hinsidias, etc.[58] Just as the ears of men had recovered from this infliction-- Subito affertur nuntius horribilis, Ionios fluctus, postquam illuc Arrius isset, Iam non Ionios esse, sed Hionios. Like fastidious and irritable poets of other times (Horace, Pope, Byron, etc.), Catullus waged internecine war against pedants, literary pretenders, and poetasters. He remonstrates in a vein of humorous exaggeration with his friend Licinius Calvus, for palming off on him as a gift on the Saturnalia (corresponding to our Christmas presents) a collection of the works of these 'miscreants' ('impiorum'), originally sent to him by some pedantic grammarian, in acknowledgment of his services as an advocate-- Dii magni, horribilem ac sacrum libellum. In the 36th poem he represents Lesbia as offering a holocaust to Venus of the work of 'the worst of all poets,' 'The Annals of Volusius,' in quittance of a vow on her reconcilement with Catullus. In another (xxii), addressed to Varus, probably the fastidious critic whom Horace quotes in the 'Ars Poetica[59],' he exposes the absurdity of one of their friends, who, though in other respects a man of sense, wit, and agreeable manners, entertained the delusion that he was a poet, and was never so happy as when he had surrounded himself with the newest and finest literary materials, and was plying his uncongenial occupation. In another he records the nemesis, in the form of a severe cough, which overtook him for allowing himself to be seduced by the hopes of a good dinner to read (or perhaps listen to the reading of) a speech of Cicero's friend and client Sestius,-- Plenam veneni et pestilentiae. About one half of the shorter poems, and more than half of the epigrams, are to be classed among his personal lampoons or light satiric pieces. Many of these show Catullus to us on that side of his character, which it is least pleasant or profitable to dwell on. He could not indeed write anything which did not bear the stamp of the vital force and sincerity of his nature: but even his vigour of expression does not compensate for the survival in literature of the feelings and relations which are most ignoble in actual life. Yet some of these satiric pieces have an interest which amply justifies their preservation. The greatest of all his lampoons, the 29th, has an historical as well as a literary value. Tacitus, as well as Suetonius, refers to it. It is not only a masterpiece of terse invective, but, like the 11th, it is a powerful specimen of imaginative irony. The momentous events of a most momentous era--the Eastern conquests of Pompey, the first Spanish campaign of Caesar, the subjugation of Gaul, the invasion of Britain, the revolutionary measures of 'father-in-law and son-in-law,'--are all made to look as if they had had no other object or result than that of pampering the appetites of a worthless favourite. Other lampoons, such as those against Memmius and Piso, have also an historical interest. They testify to the republican freedom of speech, the open expression of which was soon to be silenced for ever. They enable us to understand how strong a social and political weapon the power of epigram was in ancient Rome,--a power which continued to be exercised, though no longer with republican freedom, under the Empire. The pen of the poet was employed in the warfare of parties as fiercely as the tongue of the orator; and although Catullus did not spare partisans of the Senate, such as Memmius, yet all his associations and tastes combined to turn his hostility chiefly against the popular leaders and their tools. The more genial satiric pieces, again, are chiefly interesting as throwing light on the social and literary life of Rome and the provincial towns of Italy. They give us an idea of the lighter talk, the criticism, and merriment of the younger men in the world of letters and fashion during the last age of the Republic. If they are not master-pieces of humour, they are full of gaiety, animal spirits, shrewd observation, and not very unkindly comment on men and manners. Besides the poems which show Catullus in various relations of love, affection, animosity, and humorous criticism, there are still a few of the shorter pieces which have a personal interest. He had the purest capacity of enjoying simple pleasures; and some of his most delightful poems are vivid records of happy experiences procured to him by this youthful freshness of feeling. Three of these are especially beautiful,--the dedication of his yacht to Castor and Pollux,--the lines written immediately before quitting Bithynia,-- Iam ver egelidos refert tepores,-- and the famous lines on Sirmio. They all belong to the same period of his life, and all show how happy and serene his spirit became, when it was untroubled by the passions and rancours of city life. The lines on his yacht-- Phaselus ille quem videtis, hospites,-- express with much vivacity the feelings of affectionate pride which a strong and kindly nature lavishes not only on living friends, but on inanimate objects, associated with the memory of past happiness and adventure. His fancy endows it with a kind of life from the earliest time when, under the form of a clump of trees, it 'rustled its leaves' on Cytorus, till it obtained its rest in a peaceful age on the fair waters of Benacus. The 46th poem is inspired by the new sense of life which comes to early youth with the first approach of spring, and by the eager flutter of anticipation-- Iam mens praetrepidans avet vagari, Iam laeti studio pedes vigescunt-- with which a cultivated mind forecasts the pleasure of travelling among famous and beautiful scenes. But perhaps the most perfect of his smaller pieces is that in which the love of home and of Nature, the sense of rest and security after toil and danger, the glee of a boy and the strong happiness of a man unite to form the charm of the lines on Sirmio, of which it is as impossible to analyse the secret as it is to reproduce in another tongue the language in which it is expressed. Catullus is one of the great poets of the world, not so much through gifts of imagination--though with these he was well endowed--as through his singleness of nature, his vivid impressibility, and his keen perception. He received the gifts of the passing hour so happily, that, to produce pure and lasting poetry, it was enough for him to utter in natural words something of the fulness of his heart. His interests, though limited in range, were all genuine and human. His poems inspired by personal feeling seem to come from him without any effort. He says, on every occasion, exactly what he wanted to say, in clear, forcible, direct language. There are, indeed, even in his simplest poems, a few strokes of imaginative expression, as, for instance,-- Aut quam sidera multa, cum tacet nox, Furtivos hominum vident amores[60],-- and this, written with the feeling and with the application which Burns makes of the same image,-- Velut prati Ultimi flos, praetereunte postquam Tactus aratro est[61];-- and these two touches of tenderness and beauty, which appear in a poem otherwise characterised by a tone of careless drollery,-- Nec sapit pueri instar Bimuli, tremula patris dormientis in ulna,-- and-- Et puella tenellulo delicatior haedo, Adservanda nigerrimis diligentius uvis[62]. But the great charm of the style in these shorter poems is its simple directness, and its popular idiomatic ring. It largely employs, especially in the poems which express his coarser feelings, common, often archaic and provincial words, forms, and idioms. There is nothing, apparently, studied about it, no ornament or involution, no otiose epithets, no subtle allusiveness. Yet in the poems expressive of his finer feelings it shows the happiest selection, not only of the most appropriate, but of the most exquisite words. To no style, in prose or verse, in any language, could the words 'simplex munditiis' be with more propriety applied. It has all the ease of refined and vigorous conversation, combined with the grace of consummate art. Though this perfection of expression could not have been attained without study and labour, yet it bears no trace of them. In these smaller poems he shows himself as great a master of metre as of language. The more sustained power which he has over the flow of his verse, is best exemplified by the skylark ring of his great Nuptial Ode, by the hurrying agitation of the Attis, and the stately calm of the Peleus and Thetis, giving place to a more impassioned movement in the 'Ariadne' episode. But in his shorter poems, also, he shows the true gift of the [Greek: aoidos]--the power of using musical language as a symbol of the changing impulses of feeling. Thus the delicate playfulness and tenderness of his phalaecians,--the lingering long-drawn-out sweetness, and the calm subdued sadness of the scazon, as exemplified in the 'Sirmio,' and the Miser Catulle desinas ineptire,-- the 'bright speed' of the pure iambic, so happily answering to the subject of the 'phaselus,' and its bold impetus as it is employed in the attack on Julius Caesar--the irregular but sonorous grandeur of his Sapphic[63],--the majesty which in the Hymn to Diana blends with the buoyant movement of the glyconic,--all attest that the words and melody of the poems were born together with the feeling and meaning animating them. Although his elegiac poems are not written with the smoothness and fluency which was attained by the Augustan poets, yet those among them which record his graver and sadder moods have a plaintive force and natural pathos, which their roughness seems to enhance. If his epigrammatic pieces, written in that metre, want the polish and point to which his brilliant disciple attained under the Empire, we may believe that Catullus experienced the difficulty which Lucilius found, and which Horace at last successfully overcame, of adapting a metre originally framed for the expression of serious feeling to the commoner interests and experiences of life. The language of Catullus in these shorter poems is his own, or, where not his own, is drawn from such wells of Latin undefiled as Plautus and Terence. His metres are happy applications of those invented or largely used by the earlier lyric poets of Greece,--Sappho, Anacreon, Archilochus,--and the later Phalaecus. For the form of some of his longer poems he has taken, and not with the happiest result, the Alexandrine poets for his models. But in these shorter poems, so far as he has had any models, he has tried to emulate the perfection attained in the older and purer era of Greek inspiration. But it is not through imitation that he has attained a perfection of form like to theirs. It is owing to the singleness and strength of his feeling and impression, that these poems are so exquisite in their unity and simplicity. Catullus does not care to present the gem of his own thought in an alien setting, as Horace, in his earlier Odes at least, has often done. It is one of the surest notes of his lyrical genius that, while more modest in his general self-estimate than any of the great Roman poets, he trusts more implicitly than any of them to his own judgment and inspiration to find the most fitting and telling medium for the communication of his thought. Thus he presents only what is essential, unencumbered with any associations from older poetry. The form is indeed so perfect that we scarcely think of it. We feel only that nothing mars or interrupts the revelation of the poet's heart and soul. We apprehend, as perhaps we never apprehended before, some one single feeling of great potency and great human influence in a poem of some ten or twenty lines, every word of which adds something to the whole impression. Thus for instance, in the poems-- Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus,-- Acmen Septimius suos amores,-- Verani, omnibus e meis amicis,-- Iam ver egelidos refert tepores,-- Paene insularum Sirmio insularumque,-- Miser Catulle, desinas ineptire,-- we apprehend through a perfectly pure medium, and by a single intuition, the highest pitch of the passionate love of man and woman, the perfect beauty and joy of self-forgetful friendship, the eager enthusiasm for travel and adventure, the deep delight of returning to a beautiful and well-loved home, the 'sorrow's crown of sorrows' in 'remembering happier things.' We may see, too, in a totally different sphere of experience, how Catullus instinctively seizes the moment of supreme intensity of emotion, and utters what is vitally characteristic of it. He is not, in any sense, one of the Anacreontic singers of the pleasures of wine, of whom Horace is the typical example in ancient times. Neither was he one, who, like Burns, habitually forgot, in the excitement of good fellowship, the perils of Bacchanalian merriment. Yet even the drinking songs of the Scottish poet scarcely realise with more vivacity the moment of mad elevation when a revel is at its height, than Catullus has done in the song of seven short lines-- Minister vetuli puer Falerni Inger mi calices amariores, etc. The 'Hymn to Diana' occupies an intermediate place between the poems founded on personal feelings and the longer and more purely artistic pieces. Like the first it seems unconsciously, or at least without leaving any trace of conscious purpose, to have conformed to the conditions of the purest art. It is, like them, a perfect whole, one of those, to quote Mr. Munro, '"cunningest patterns" of excellence, such as Latium never saw before or after, Alcaeus, Sappho, and the rest then and only then having met their match[64]'. It resembles some of the longer poems in being a creation of sympathetic imagination, not an immediate expression of personal feeling. It must have been written for some public occasion; and the selection of Catullus to compose it would imply that he was recognised as the greatest lyrical poet in his lifetime, and that it was written after his reputation was established. It is a poem not only of pure artistic excellence, but of imaginative conception, like that exemplified in the 'Attis' and the 'Epithalamium of Peleus and Thetis.' The 'Diana' of Catullus is not a vague abstraction or conventional figure, as the Gods and Goddesses in the Odes of Horace are apt to be. The mythology of Greece received a new life from his imagination. In this poem he shows too, what he hardly indicates elsewhere[65], that he could identify himself in sympathy with the national feeling and religion of Rome. The Goddess addressed is a living Power, blending in her countenance the human and picturesque aspects of the Greek Artemis with the more spiritual and beneficent attributes of the Roman Diana. Yet no confusion or incongruity arises from the union into one concrete representation of these originally diverse elements. She lives to the imagination as a Power who, in the fresh morning of the world, had roamed in freedom over the mountains, the woods, the secret dells, and the river-banks of earth[66],--and now from a far away sphere watched over women in travail, increased the store of the husbandman, and was the especial guardian of the descendants of Romulus. This poem affords a natural transition to the longer and more purely artistic pieces in the centre of the volume. Yet with some even of these a personal element is interfused. The hymn in honour of the nuptials of Manlius, is, like the short poem on the loves of Acme and Septimius, inspired by the poet's sympathy with the happiness of a friend. The 68th poem attempts to weave into one texture his own love of Lesbia, and the romance of Laodamia and Protesilaus. But in general these poems bring before us a new side of the art of Catullus. In one way indeed they add to our knowledge of his personal tastes. The larger place given in them to ornament and illustration lets us know what objects in Nature afforded him most delight. His life was too full of human interest to allow him to devote his art to the celebration of Nature: yet he could not have been the poet he was if he had not been susceptible to her influence. And this susceptibility, indicated in occasional touches in the shorter poems, finds greater scope in the poems of impersonal art which still remain to be considered. Among the more purely artistic pieces none is more beautiful than the Nuptial Ode in celebration of the marriage of his friend Manlius, a member of the great house of the Torquati, and one of the most accomplished men of his time, with Vinia Aurunculeia. In this poem Catullus pours forth the fulness of his heart 'In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.' It is marked by the excellence of his shorter pieces and by poetical beauty of another order. Resembling his shorter poems in being called forth by an event within his own experience, it breathes the same spirit of affection and of sympathy with beauty and passion. It is written with the same gaiety of heart, blending indeed with a graver sense of happiness. The feeling of the hour does not merely express itself in graceful language: it awakens the active power of imagination, clothes itself in radiant imagery, and rises into the completeness and sustained melody of the highest lyrical art. The tone of the whole poem is one of joy, changing from the rapture of expectation in the opening lines to the more tranquil happiness of the close. The passion is ardent, but, on the whole, free from grossness or effeminate sentiment. Even where, in accordance with the Roman marriage customs, he abandons himself for a few stanzas to the spirit of raillery and banter-- Ne diu taceat procax Fescennina locutio[67]-- he remembers the respect due to the innocence of the bride. Thoughts of her are associated with the purest objects in Nature,--with ivy clinging round a tree, or branches of myrtle,-- Quos Hamadryades deae Ludicrum sibi roscido Nutriunt humore,-- or with a hyacinth growing in some rich man's garden. Like the eager lover of beauty among our own poets, he sees in other flowers-- Alba parthenice velut Luteumve papaver-- the symbol of maidens-- 'Whom youth makes so fair and passion so pale.' The grace of trees and the bloom of flowers were prized by him among the fairest things in Nature. The charm in woman which most moves his imagination is virgin innocence unfolding into love, or passion ennobled by truth and constancy of affection. So too, in the Epithalamium of Peleus and Thetis, he compares Ariadne in her maidenhood to the myrtle trees growing on the banks of Eurotas, and to the bloom of vernal flowers:-- Quales Eurotae progignunt flumina myrtos Aurave distinctos educit verna colores[68]. In this Ode he expresses not merely, as in the Acme and Septimius, his sympathy with the joy of the hour. He recognises in marriage a greater good than in the love for a mistress. He associates it with thoughts of the power and security of the household, of the pure happiness of parental love, of the continuance of a time-honoured name, and of the birth of new defenders of the State. The charm of the poem does not arise from its tone of feeling and its clear ringing melody alone. The bright spirit of the day awakens the inward eye which creates pictures and images of beauty in harmony with itself. The poet sees Hymenaeus coming from the distant rocks of Helicon, robed in saffron, and wreathed with fragrant amaracus, in radiant power and glory, chanting the song with his ringing voice, beating the ground with his foot, shaking the pine-torch in his hand. As the doors of the house are opened, and the bride is expected by the singers outside, by one vivid flash of imagination he reveals all their eager excitement-- Viden ut faces Splendidas quatiunt comas? The two pictures, further on in the poem, of a peaceful old age prolonged to the utmost limit of human life-- Usque dum tremulum movens Cana tempus anilitas Omnia omnibus annuit,-- and of infancy, awakening into consciousness and affection,-- Torquatus volo parvulus Matris e gremio suae Porrigens teneras manus, Dulce rideat ad patrem Semihiante labello; Sit suo similis patri Manlio et facile insciis Noscitetur ab omnibus, Et pudicitiam suae Matris indicet ore[69]; are drawn with the truest and most delicate hand. The whole conception and execution of this poem, as also of the Attis and of the Epithalamium of Peleus and Thetis, leave no doubt that Catullus was richly endowed with the vision and the faculty of genius, as well as with impassioned feeling and the gift of musical expression. The poem which immediately follows is also an Epithalamium, intended to be sung by young men and maidens, in alternate parts. It is written in hexameter verse, and in rhythm, thought, and feeling resembles some of the golden fragments from the Epithalamia of Sappho. The whole poem sounds like a song in a rich idyll. Its charm consists in its calm and mellow tone, in the dramatic truth with which the feelings and thoughts natural to the young men and maidens are alternately expressed, and especially in the beauty of its two famous similes. In the first of these a flower is again the symbol of the bloom and innocence of maidenhood, growing up apart and safe from all rude contact. The idea in the concluding lines of the simile-- Idem cum tenui carptus defloruit ungui, Nulli illum pueri, nullae optavere puellae,-- may probably have been suggested by a passage in Sappho, of which these two lines remain, [Greek: hoian tan hyakinthon en ôresi poimenes andres possi katasteiboisi, chamai de te porphyron anthos.] In the second simile, which is supposed to be spoken by the young men, the vine growing upon a bare field, scarcely rising above the ground, unheeded and untended, is compared to the maid who 'Grows, lives, and dies in single blessedness;' while the same vine, when wedded to the elm, is regarded as the symbol of the usefulness, dignity, and happiness which await the bride. The absence of all personal allusion in this poem, and its resemblance in tone and rhythm to some fragments of the Lesbian poetess, might suggest the idea that it was translated, or at least imitated, from the Greek. But, on the other hand, from its harmony with the kind of subject and imagery in which Catullus most delights, and from the close observation of Italian Nature, shown in such lines as this-- Iam iam contingit summum radice flagellum,-- it seems more probable that it was an adaptation of the style of his great model to some occasion within his own experience, than that it was a mere exercise in translation, like his 'Coma Berenices.' The 'Attis' is the most original of all his poems. As a work of pure imagination, it is the most remarkable poetical creation in the Latin language. In this poem Catullus throws himself, with marvellous power, into a character and situation utterly alien to common experience, and pours an intense flood of human feeling and passion into a legend of strange Oriental fanaticism. The effect of the piece is, in a great measure, produced by the startling vividness of its language and imagery, and by the impetuous rush of its metre. Though the poem may have been partly founded on Greek materials, yet Catullus has treated the subject in a thoroughly original manner. It is difficult to believe that any translation could produce that impression of genuine creative power, which is forced upon every reader of the Attis. There is nothing at all like the spirit of this poem in extant Greek literature. No other writer has presented so life-like an image of the frantic exultation and fierce self-sacrificing spirit of an inhuman fanaticism; and of the horror and sense of desolation which the natural man, more especially a Greek or Roman, would feel in the midst of the wild and strange scenes described in the poem, when first awaking to the consciousness of his voluntary bondage, and of the forfeiture of his country and parents, and the free social life of former days. A few touches in the poem--as, for instance, the expressions, 'niveis manibus,' 'roseis labellis,' and 'Ego gymnasii fui flos,'--all introduced incidentally,--force upon the mind the contrast between the tender youth and beauty of Attis and the fierce power of the passion that possesses him. The false excitement and noisy tumult of the evening deepen the sense of the terrible reality and blank despair of the morning. The effect of the whole drama of human passion and agony is intensified by the vividness of all its pictorial environment;--by the vision of the wild surging seas, through which the swift ship and its mad crew were borne, and of the gloom and horror of the woods that hid the sounding rites of the goddess, and the tall columns of her temple. With what a powerful and rapid touch he paints the aspect of sky, earth, and sea in the early morning-- Sed ubi oris aurei Sol radiantibus oculis Lustravit aethera album, sola dura, mare ferum, Pepulitque noctis umbras vegetis sonipedibus. Everything is seen in those sharply-defined forms, which imprint themselves on the brain in moments of intense excitement or agony. These three poems are composed with the unity and simplicity of the purest art. Like the shorter poems they have taken shape under the influence of one powerful motive; and the feeling with which they were conceived is sustained at its height through the whole composition. It is more difficult to find any single motive which combines into unity the original nucleus of the Epithalamium of Peleus and Thetis with the long episode of the desertion of Ariadne, which interrupts the continuity of the 64th poem. The form of art to which it belongs is the 'Epyllion' or heroic idyll, of which several specimens are found among the poems of Theocritus. This form was due to the invention of the Alexandrians; and Catullus in the selection of his subject and in his manner of treating it takes up the position of an imitator. But there is no reason to suppose that he is reproducing, still less translating, any particular work of these poets, or that his contemporaries--Cinna, Calvus, and Cornificius,--merely reproduced some Alexandrine original in their Zmyrna, Io, and Glaucus. A comparison of the imagery of this poem with that of the earlier Epithalamia, and a consideration of the passionate beauty with which the subject of love and marriage is treated, favour the conclusion that the style and substance of the poem are the workmanship of Catullus. It may be doubted whether any Alexandrine poet, except perhaps Apollonius, whom Catullus in this poem[70] often imitates, but does not translate, had sufficient imagination to produce the original which Catullus is supposed to have copied. But the plan of the poem may have been suggested by some Alexandrine model. The more complicated structure of the 68th poem is fashioned after a particular style of Greek art: and on entering upon a new and larger adventure, Catullus may have trusted to the guidance of those whom he regarded as his masters. The Alexandrians studied pictorial representation of outward scenes and of passionate situations, and works of tapestry on which such representations were wrought were common among their 'deliciae vitae[71].' Thus, the mode in which the story of Ariadne is told is one likely to have occurred to an Alexandrine poet. It would be also in keeping with the over-subtlety of a class of poets who owed more to learning than to inspiration, to combine apparently incongruous parts into one whole by some obscure link of connexion. Thus Catullus may have intended, in imitation of Callimachus or some other Alexandrian, to paint two pictures of the love of an immortal for a mortal,--the love of Thetis for Peleus, and of Bacchus for Ariadne,--and to heighten the effect of each by the contrast presented in the pendent picture. The original good fortune and the unbroken happiness of Peleus are more vividly realised by the contrast presented to the imagination in the betrayal and passionate agitation of Ariadne. The thought of the crowds of mortals and immortals who come together to celebrate the marriage of the Thessalian prince brings into greater relief the utter loneliness of Ariadne, when first discovered by 'Bacchus and his crew.' Or the original unifying motive of both pictures might be sought in the concluding lines, written in a graver tone than anything else in Catullus; and it might be supposed that he intended by the two pictures of divine favour granted to mortals (in one of which retribution is exacted for what he regards as the greatest sin in actual life--a violation of good faith) to enforce the lesson that it is owing to the sins of the latter time that the Gods have withdrawn their gracious presence from the earth. The thought contained in the lines Sed postquam tellus scelerest imbuta nefando, etc., is pure and noble, and purely and nobly expressed. These lines reveal a genuine and unexpected vein of reverence in the nature of Catullus. The sins which he specifies as alienating the Gods from men are those most rife in his own time, with which he has dealt in a more realistic fashion in his satiric epigrams. All this may, perhaps, be said. But on the other hand, Catullus is the least didactic of poets. He is also the least abstract and reflective. We cannot suppose (in the case of such a writer) all the concrete passionate life of the poem taking shape in his imagination in order to embody any idea however noble. The idea was the afterthought, not the creative germ. Nor can we think that the conception of the whole poem existed in his mind before, or independently of, the separate conception of its parts. He was attracted to both subjects by the charm which the Greek mythology and the bright spectacle of the heroic age had for his imagination, by their harmony with the feelings and passions with which he had most sympathy in real life, and by the scope which they afforded to his peculiar power as a pictorial artist. The device of the tapestry, by which the tale of Ariadne is told, was especially favourable to the exercise of this gift. He looked back upon an ideal vision of the golden morning of the world, when men were so stately and noble, and women so fair and true, that even the blessed Gods and Goddesses deigned to visit them, and to unite with them in marriage. The original motive of the two poems appears to be purely imaginative. If there was any intention to give artificial unity to the poem, by pointing the contrast between a love calm and happy from the beginning, and one at first passionate and afterwards betrayed, or between the holiness and nobleness of an ideal past, and the sin and baseness of the actual present, that intention was probably not present to the mind of the poet when he first contemplated his subject, but came to him in the course of its development. It may be said, therefore, that if any principle of unity is aimed at in the poem, it is one so artificial as rather to detract from the artistic merit of the composition. There is a similar want of unity in the 'Pastor Aristaeus' of Virgil, which was also composed in the manner of the Alexandrine Epyllion. The Alexandrians seem to have aimed rather at a combination of diverse effects than at a composition 'simplex et unum.' They cared much for the elaboration of details, little for the consistency of the whole. And the same tendency appears in their imitators. Neither can the poem be called a successful specimen of narrative. There is scarcely any story to tell in connexion with the marriage of Peleus. It is a succession of pictures, not a tale of passion or adventure. The romance of Theseus and Ariadne is told much less distinctly and simply than the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice in Virgil. There is dramatic power in the soliloquy of Ariadne, as in that of Attis, but the dramatic faculty in Catullus is rather a phase of his special lyrical gift, which enables him to identify himself with some single passionate situation, than the power of giving life to various types of character. The imaginative excellence of the poem is idyllic rather than epic or dramatic. There is a wonderful harmony of tone in his whole conception of the heroic age. He does not attempt to reproduce the picturesque life represented by Homer, nor the majestic passions imagined by the Attic tragedians, but he has his own vision of the stately and beautiful figures belonging to an ideal foretime,-- O nimis optato saeclorum tempore nati Heroes, saluete, deum genus. There is a sense of the freshness and brightness of the early morning in his conception of the time when the first ship, manned by the flower of Greek warriors, 'broke the silence of the seas' (Illa rudem cursu prima imbuit Amphitriten), and when the Gods and Goddesses of Olympus, the mysterious Powers over-ruling mortal destiny, and the other beings, half-human, half-divine, whom Greek imagination so lavishly created, appeared in their bodily presence to do honour to the union of a mortal with an immortal. The poem abounds in pictures, or suggestions of pictures, taken from the world of divine and human life, and of outward Nature. Such are those of the Nereids gazing on the Argo-- Emersere feri candenti e gurgite vultus Aequoreae monstrum Nereides admirantes,-- of Ariadne watching with pale and anxious face the perilous encounter of Theseus with the Minotaur-- Quam tum saepe magis fulgore expalluit auri,-- and again, looking on the distant fleet-- Saxea ut effigies bacchantis,-- of the advent of Bacchus-- Cum thiaso Satyrorum et Nysigenis Silenis,-- a passage which has inspired one of the masterpieces of modern art,--of Prometheus-- Extenuata gerens veteris vestigia poenae-- of the aged Parcae-- infirmo quatientes corpora motu-- spinning the thread of human destiny, as with clear-ringing voice they poured forth their truthful prophecy. So too the eye of an artist is shown in the description of the scenes in which the action takes place, and in the illustrative imagery with which the subject is adorned,--as in the pictures from mountain and sea scenery at lines 240 and 269; and in that image of a waste expanse of sea called up in the lines-- Idomeneosne petam montes? a gurgite lato Discernens ponti truculentum ubi dividit aequor? A genuine love of Nature, which his more personal poems only faintly suggest, appears in the lines describing the gifts which Chiron brought with him from the plains and vast mountain chains and river-banks of Thessaly-- Nam quoscumque ferunt campi, quos Thessala magnis Montibus ora creat, quos propter fluminis undas Aura parit flores tepidi fecunda Favoni, Hos indistinctis plexos tulit ipse corollis, Quo permulsa domus iucundo risit odore[72]; and in the enumeration of the various trees which Peneus, quitting Tempe,-- Tempe quae silvae cingunt super inpendentes,-- planted before the vestibule of the palace. The diction and rhythm of the poem are characterised by excellences of a quite different sort from those of his other pieces. Both produce the impression of very careful study and labour. In no previous work of Latin genius was so much use made of an artificial poetical diction. Though this diction has not the _naïveté_ or charm of his simpler pieces, yet it is very effective in its own way. It reveals new and unsuspected wealth in the ore of the Latin language. The old rhetorical artifices of alliteration, assonance, etc. are used more sparingly than in Lucretius, yet they do appear, as in the lines-- Peliaco quondam prognatae vertice pinus,-- Aut tereti tenues tinnitus aere ciebant,-- Putridaque infirmis variabant pectora palmis.--etc., etc. As in the Attis we find such word-formations as _sonipedibus_, _silvicultrix_, _nemorivagus_, so in this poem we have _fluentisono_, _raucisonos_, _clarisona_, _flexamino_, etc. We recognise his old partiality for diminutives, as in the Frigidulos udo singultus ore cientem, and Languidulosque paret tecum coniungere somnos. But there are many peculiarities of style which are scarcely, if at all, observable in his other poems. New artifices, such as those familiar to the Greek idyll, of the recurring chime of the same or similar words, are frequent, as in the lines-- Vos ego saepe meo vos carmine compellabo;-- Cui Iupiter ipse Ipse suos divom genitor concessit amores;-- Sicine me patriis avectam, perfide, ab oris, Perfide, deserto liquisti in litore Theseu? Sicine discedens neglecto numine divom;-- Nulla fugae ratio, nulla spes; omnia muta Omnia sunt deserta, ostentant omnia mortem, etc. The phrases are to a much greater extent cast in a Greek mould[73]. The words follow one another in a less natural order. Ornamental epithets, metaphorical phrases, and the substitution of abstract for concrete words, occur much more frequently. Latin poetry creates for itself an artificial diction by assimilating, to a much greater extent than in any earlier work of genius, the long-accumulated wealth of Greek poetry. This was a gain to its resources, opening up and giving expression to a new range of emotions, but a gain against which must be set off a considerable loss of freshness and _naïveté_. The rhythm also is elaborately constructed after a Greek model,--the model, not of Homer, but of the later poets who wrote in his metre. It is much more carefully and correctly finished than the rhythm of Lucretius. Each separate line has a smoother cadence. The whole movement is more regular, more calm, and more stately. But with all the occasional roughness of Lucretius there is much more life and force in his general movement. It is much more capable of presenting a continuous thought or action to the mind. The lines of Catullus seem intended to be dwelt on separately, and each to bring out some point of detail. There is generally a pause in the sense at the end of each line, and thus the lines, when read continuously, produce an impression of monotony[74], which is increased by the frequent use of spondaic lines. The uniformity of his pauses, and the sameness of structure in a large number of his hexameters, enable us to appreciate the great improvement in rhythmical art which appeared some ten years later in the Bucolics of Virgil. Yet if Catullus does not, in this his most elaborate work, equal the natural force of language and rhythm displayed in his simpler pieces, the poem, as a whole, has a noble and stately movement, in unison with the noble and stately pictures of an ideal fore-time which it brings before the imagination. The four longer elegiac pieces which follow add little to our impression of the art of Catullus. In the 'Epistle to Manlius'--perhaps owing to the trouble by which his mind was darkened at the time of its composition--he does not use the elegiac metre, as a vehicle of his personal feelings, with much force or clearness. There is much more than in his phalaecians and iambics the appearance of effort, and there is much greater uncertainty as to his meaning. The 67th poem keeps alive with some vivacity a scandalous story of his native province which might well have been allowed to sink into oblivion. In the 'Coma Berenices,' and the poem addressed to Allius, he again writes under the influence of his Alexandrian masters. He seems to have regarded the 'Carmina Battiadae' with the admiration which youthful genius, not yet sure of its own powers, entertains for culture and established reputation,--the kind of admiration which led Burns to imagine that his own early inspiration might be of less value to the world than 'Shenstone's art.' Like Burns, too, Catullus is least happy when he gives up his own language, which he wields easily and powerfully, and the forms of art which came naturally to him, in deference to the standard of poetic taste recognised in his day. His selection of the 'Coma Berenices' as a task in translation, illustrates the attraction which the union of beauty and passion with truth and constancy of affection had for his imagination. The poem to Allius is the most artificially constructed of all his pieces. He endeavours to unite in it three distinct threads of interest,--that of his passion for Lesbia, that of the romance of Laodamia and Protesilaus, and that of his brother's death in the Troad. Although this triple combination is accomplished with much mechanical ingenuity[75], yet the effect of the poem as a whole is disappointing, and its motive,--gratitude for a service which no honourable man, according to our modern ideas of honour, would have rendered,--does not make amends for the want of simplicity in its structure. Yet as written in the heyday of his passion for Lesbia, and largely inspired by that passion, it has, along with an Alexandrian superfluity of ornament and illustration, many beauties of expression and feeling. The passionate devotion of Laodamia for Protesilaus is conceived with sympathetic power,-- Quo tibi tum casu pulcherrima Laudamia, Ereptum est vita dulcius atque anima Coniugium[76]. There is an exquisite picture of his own stolen meetings with his 'candida diva'; and depth and sincerity of affection are purely and simply expressed in the last two lines-- Et longe ante omnes mihi quae me carior ipse'st, Lux mea qua viva vivere dulce mihi'st. In this poem too, although the application of the image is an incongruous adaptation of an old Homeric simile, we meet with a descriptive passage which, more perhaps than any other in his poems, shows that Catullus was a true lover and close observer of Nature,-- Qualis in aerii perlucens vertice montis Rivos muscoso prosilit e lapide Qui cum de prona praeceps est valle volutus Per medium sensim transit iter populi, Dulce viatori lasso in sudore levamen, Cum gravis exustos aestus hiulcat agros[77]. The perfection attained by Catullus in his best lyrical poetry, and the power displayed in his longer pieces, are so high and genuine that we are hardly surprised at the enthusiasm of those who have ranked him, in respect both of art and genius, foremost among Roman poets. If the pure essence of poetry could be separated from the whole spiritual and intellectual being of the poet, much might be said in favour of that estimate. Others, who think that the work accomplished by Lucretius, Virgil, and Horace is, both in quantity and quality, of more lasting value to the world, cannot forget that had they died at the same early age as Catullus, their names would have been unknown, or perhaps remembered as those of Cinna and Cornificius are now. From the exquisite skill with which Catullus has treated light and playful themes, he has been sometimes compared to modern poets who have no other claim to recognition than a similar facility. But if he is to be compared with any, it is not with the minor poets, ancient or modern, but with the greater, that he is to be ranked. The two eminent English scholars who have made a special study of this poet, and have done more than almost any others in recent times to elucidate his meaning and gain for him his just recognition, look upon him as the equal of Sappho and Alcaeus. Among modern poets he has been compared to one, most unlike him in all the outward conditions of his life, and in many of the conditions of his art,--the poet Burns[78]. In general intellectual power, in the breadth of his human sympathies, the modern poet is much the greater. He is, in all ways, the larger man. But in some endowments of heart and genius the ancient poet is far from being the inferior. He was more fortunate in his nearness to the greatest source of poetic culture, and in the use of a medium of expression, not of a local and limited influence, but one which brings him into immediate relation with educated men of all ages and countries. But in the passionate ardour of their temperament, and the robustness, too closely allied with coarseness, of their fibre; in their susceptibility to beautiful and tender emotions, and the mobility of nature with which they yielded to impulses the most opposite to these; in their large capacity of love and scorn, of pleasure and pain; in their genuine sincerity and firm hold on real life; in the keenness of their satire, and their shrewd observation of the world around them;--in their simple and direct force of feeling and expression; in the freshness of their love for the fairer objects in Nature with which they were most familiar,--they have much in common. The resemblance of the concluding lines of the 'Final renunciation of Lesbia' to the sentiment of the 'Daisy' has been already noticed. The scornful advice, conveyed in the words 'pete nobiles amicos,' finds many an echo in the tones of the modern poet. The art of both is so inseparably associated with their lives, that our admiration of it can hardly help being enhanced or qualified by personal sympathy with, or dislike of their characters. In the case of Catullus it must be allowed that if a careless pursuit of pleasure, an apparent absence of all high aims in life, the too frequent indulgence in the coarsest language and the vilest imputations, could alienate our affections from a great poet, his art would be judged at a disadvantage. But his own frank revelations, from which we learn his faults, must equally be taken as the unintended evidence of his nobler and more generous nature. If his passions led him too far astray, he himself, so far as now appears, alone suffered from them. There is no trace in him of the selfish calculation, or the baser falsehood, which renders 'the life of pleasure,' as led by many men, detestable. There was in his case no 'hardening of all within' as its effect. The small volume bequeathed by him to the world is in itself a sufficient result of his few years. If he is in a great degree unreflective, if he does not consciously realise what are the ends of life, yet he does not look on life in a spirit of cynicism or frivolity. Whatever vein of reflection appears in him is not devoid of reverence and seriousness. His too frequent coarseness is to be explained by the manners of his age and race; and the imputations which he makes on his enemies were, in all probability, never meant to be taken seriously. Although unfortunate in his love, he has shown a capacity of ardent, self-forgetful, and constant devotion, that deserved a better object. He could care for another more than for his own life and happiness. And he had, in a degree rarely equalled, a virtue which devoted lovers often want, the truest, kindliest, most considerate and appreciative affection for many friends. His very dependence on their sympathy in all his joy and sorrow is a claim on the sympathy of the world. If to love warmly, constantly, and unselfishly be the best title to the love of others, few poets, in any age or country, deserve a kindlier place in the hearts of men than 'the young Catullus.' [Footnote 1: Cf. 'L. Iulium Calidum, quem post Lucretii Catullique mortem multo elegantissimum poetam nostram tulisse aetatem vere videor posse contendere.'--Corn. Nep. Vit. Att. 12.] [Footnote 2: 'Multa satis lusi.'--lxviii^a. 17. The context shows that the 'lusi,'--like Horace's 'lusit Anacreon,'--refers to the composition of amatory poetry founded on his own experience. It was for this kind of poetry that Manlius had applied to him, and he pleads his grief as an excuse for his inability to write any at that time, although he had written much in his earliest youth.] [Footnote 3: E.g. xvi. 12; liv. 6.] [Footnote 4: Martial iv. 14,-- Sic forsan tener ausus est Catullus Magno mittere passerem Maroni. Ibid. xi. 6. 16,-- Donabo tibi passerem Catulli.] [Footnote 5: B. Schmidt conjectures that the collection as we now have it was made after books were generally written in parchment. His whole collected poems would thus be more easily enclosed in a single volume, than when written on the old papyrus rolls.] [Footnote 6: Three poems formerly attributed to Catullus,--those between xvii and xxi,--are now omitted from all editions. On the other hand, one poem, lxviii, must, in all probability, be divided into two, and possibly some lines now attached to others are parts of separate poems.] [Footnote 7: Cf. B. Schmidt, quoting Bruner, Prolegomena, p. xcviii.] [Footnote 8: x. 6.] [Footnote 9: xvii. 7; liii. 1; lvi. 1.] [Footnote 10: ix.] [Footnote 11: xxv, xl, xlii, etc.] [Footnote 12: Cf. viii, xxxviii, lxv, etc.] [Footnote 13: liii.] [Footnote 14: Cf. 'quae etiam aleret adulescentis et parsimoniam patrum suis sumptibus sustentaret.' Cic. Pro M. Caelio, 16, 38. Gellius, another of her lovers, was probably about the same age, or a year or two younger than Caelius. Cf. Schwabe, p. 112, etc.] [Footnote 15: B. Schmidt supposes that he did not die till 52 B.C., and that he must have been born in 82 B.C. The reasons he assigns for this belief are not convincing. He thinks that it was unlikely that Catullus should have been reconciled to Julius Caesar in the winter of 55-54 B.C., so soon after the offence was committed, which must have been after the first invasion of Britain by Julius Caesar in the summer and autumn of 55. He shows that the reconciliation could not have taken place in the winter of 54-3, as Caesar was absent in Transalpine Gaul. He supposes therefore that it must have taken place in the winter of 53-2. He thinks it probable that Catullus' reconciliation must have taken place about the same time or subsequently to that of Calvus, who was likely to have influenced Catullus' political action, and that Calvus could not have desired to be reconciled till after the autumn of 54, when he prosecuted Vatinius. It seems quite arbitrary to suppose that a considerable time must have elapsed between the offence and the apology of Catullus. If Catullus was in Verona in the winter of 55-4, and in his father's house, and Julius Caesar was then, as was his habit, living on intimate terms with and enjoying the hospitality of the father of Catullus, that of itself affords an explanation of their meeting and reconciliation. If Catullus required to be induced by any one to make an apology, it is more likely that his father's influence moved him to do so than the example and influence of Calvus.] [Footnote 16: Cf. x, xiii, xxvi, xli, ciii.] [Footnote 17: lviii. 3; lxxix. 2.] [Footnote 18: Cf. cx, xli.] [Footnote 19: Reading suggested by Munro.] [Footnote 20: E.g. lxiv. 240-41:-- Ceu pulsae ventorum flamine nubes, Aerium nivei montis liquere cacumen. And this most characteristic feature of Alpine scenery,--lxviii^b. 17, etc.:-- Qualis in aerii perlucens vertice montis Rivos muscoso prosilit e lapide, etc.] [Footnote 21: For his influence on the art of the [Greek: neôteroi] cf. Schmidt, Prolegomena, p. lxii.] [Footnote 22: Schmidt believes that Cinna was a native of Brescia; Prol. lxiii; but he does not there give his reason for his belief.] [Footnote 23: Cf. xcv. 7: At Volusi Annales Paduam morientur ad ipsam.] [Footnote 24: The epigram on Cominius (cviii) was probably written at Rome, as he was not of sufficient importance to have made an impression on the people of Verona. The accusation of C. Cornelius, which excited odium against him, was made in 65 B.C. But it does not follow that the poem was written by Catullus at that time. He may have become acquainted with him later, and avenged some private pique by reference to the unpopularity formerly excited by him. There is no direct reference to the trial of Cornelius in the poem, which appears among others referring to a much later date.] [Footnote 25: lxviii. 15-18.] [Footnote 26: In the 'docto avo' we have an allusion to the author of the 'Istrian War.'] [Footnote 27: lxviii^b.] [Footnote 28: The _Caelius_ addressed in some of the poems is not M. Caelius Rufus, but a Veronese friend and confidant of Catullus-- 'Flos Veronensum ... iuvenum.' Caesar, Bell. Civ. i. 2, mentions M. Caelius Rufus simply as M. Rufus, Cicero in his epistles addresses him as 'mi Rufe.'] [Footnote 29: Among other indications the vow of Lesbia (xxxvi) throws light on her literary taste and accomplishment.] [Footnote 30: On the whole question compare Mr. Munro's Criticisms and Elucidations, etc., pp. 194-202. It has been argued on the other side that public opinion would not have tolerated the publicity given to an adulterous intrigue, especially one with a Roman matron so high in rank as the wife of Metellus Celer. But the state of public opinion in the last years of the Republic is not to be gauged either by that of an earlier time, or by that existing during the stricter censorship of the Augustan _régime_. Catullus himself (cxiii) testifies to what is known from other sources, the extreme laxity with which the marriage tie was regarded in the interval between 'the first and second consulships of Pompey.' Perhaps, however, if Metellus Celer had survived Catullus, the Lesbia-poems might never have been publicly given to the world. After his death Clodia by her manner of life forfeited all claim to the immunities of a Roman matron.] [Footnote 31: lxviii^b. 105-6.] [Footnote 32: The poem lxviii-- Quod mihi fortuna casuque oppressus acerbo-- was addressed to Manlius just after Catullus had heard of his brother's death, i.e. probably late in the year 60, or early in the year 59 B.C. Manlius was himself suffering then from a great and sudden sorrow. The expressions in lines 1, 5, 6, 'casu acerbo,' 'sancta Venus,' 'desertum in lecto caelibe,' make it at least highly probable that this sorrow was the premature death of his young bride. If this generally accepted opinion is true, the Epithalamium must have been written some time before 59 B.C.] [Footnote 33: That of Westphal.] [Footnote 34: Schmidt supposes that poems ix, xii, xiii belong to a later date, 56 B.C., when he thinks that Veranius and Fabullus were with some otherwise unknown Piso in the Province of Hispania Citerior, and that the poems xxviii, Pisonis comites, cohors inanis, and xlvii, Porci et Socration, duae sinistrae Pisones, etc., belong to the same period. But not to speak of the fact that the character imputed to Piso, in the phrase 'duae sinistrae,' and in the words 'vappa,' 'verpa,' 'verpus,' applied to him, are in exact accordance with that ascribed to him in the virulent invective of Cicero (In L. Calpurnium Pisonem Oratio), it is difficult to see how the words in xxviii, Satisne cum isto Vappa frigoraque et famem tulistis? could apply to either the climate or the condition of Hispania Citerior at that time. But they closely coincide with the words of Cicero applied to the government by Piso of his province of Macedonia (17-40), 'An exercitus nostri interitus ferro, _fame_, _frigore_, pestilentia?' On the other hand, the words in ix, Visam te incolumem audiamque Hiberum Narrantem loca, facta, nationes, would be applicable to the adventures and dangers of Julius Caesar in further Spain in 61 B.C. There is no difficulty in supposing that the two young friends went together on two different occasions on the staff of two different provincial governors. The tone of the two different sets of poems is so different, the one set so bright and happy, the other so savage and bitter, that it is almost inconceivable that they belong to the same time and the same circumstances.] [Footnote 35: Schmidt supposes that the person to whom this letter is written is the same as the Allius of lxviii^b; that the lines beginning Non possum reticere are a continuation of what used to be thought a separate poem, Quod mihi fortuna, etc., that Manlius was the praenomen of Allius, and that he is addressed in the first part of the poem by the praenomen, in the latter by the gentile name. But the letter to Manlius clearly indicates the recent loss of his bride, or some distress connected with his marriage (lines 1, 5, 6), whereas at the end of the letter to Allius he says, 'Sitis felices et tu simul et tua vita;' lxviii. 155.] [Footnote 36: There is some uncertainty both as to the reading and interpretation of the lines (lxviii. 15-19). The most generally accepted view is that Manlius had written to let Catullus know that several fashionable rivals were supplanting him in his absence. Mr. Munro supposes that the letter was written from Baiae, and that the _hic_ is so to be explained. Another view of the passage is that Manlius had, without any reference to Clodia, merely rallied Catullus on leading a dull and lonely life at Verona, a place quite unsuitable for the pleasures of a man of fashion.] [Footnote 37: Cf. poems x. 30, etc., and xcv.] [Footnote 38: Cf. Munro's Criticisms and Elucidations of Catullus, p. 214.] [Footnote 39: An entirely different interpretation has recently been given to this poem (Schmidt, Prolegomena, xxxix, etc.). It is supposed not to be complimentary, but bitterly sarcastic. It is said that Catullus could not, except in irony, have described himself as 'pessimus omnium poeta;' and if those words applied to himself as a poet are irony, so must the words applied in strong contrast to Cicero as an advocate (tanto--quanto) be equally ironical. In that case the _omnium_ in the last line must not be taken in connexion with optimus, but with patronus. Cicero's readiness to be 'omnium patronus' is sarcastically commented on with immediate reference to his defence of Vatinius, which startled some of his best friends among the constitutional party. The formal address 'Marce Tulli' is also ironical. (If that is so, probably also the 'Romuli nepotum' is used in mock heroic irony, like the 'Remi nepotum' in lviii.) What then is the favour for which Catullus writes these ironically complimentary thanks? Schmidt supposes that Cicero had expressed either publicly or privately a very poor opinion of Catullus' poems, and that Catullus revenges himself by professing to agree with him, to be most grateful for the criticism (gratias tibi maximas Catullus agit), and to repay it by heaping ironical coals on his head. It is just possible that the poem might have been so understood in the set to which Catullus belonged, if we were certain that it was written at the time when Cicero defended Vatinius. But the general public could hardly have understood it so, and it is not surprising that it never occurred to any one to understand it in that sense till within the last year or two. It is not in keeping with Catullus' straightforward, outspoken vituperation, nor with the manners of the time (as shown in Cicero's speeches), to write an epigram which would leave the object of it in doubt whether it was written in earnest or derision. No doubt Catullus did not seriously think himself 'the worst of living poets,' worse for instance than Volusius. But there is an irony of modest self-depreciation, as that of Virgil when he applies to himself the words 'argutos inter strepere anser olores,' as well as of insulting banter. The change in the construction of the 'omnium' in the two consecutive lines would be at least startling. That Catullus, a young man, not intimate with Cicero, should address him as Marce Tulli is not perhaps more remarkable than that a young poet of the present day should in writing to a man of great eminence, twenty years his senior, address him as Mr. ----. Cicero writes banteringly and good-naturedly to one of his correspondents, Volumnius, probably a much younger man (Fam. vii. 32): 'Quod sine praenomine familiariter, ut debebas, ad me epistolam misisti, primum addubitavi, num a Volumnio senatore esset, quorum mihi est magnus usus.' There is no reason for supposing that Cicero ever passed any criticism favourable or unfavourable on Catullus, though in his letters he twice uses his phrases; and if he did, it was not in Catullus' way to retaliate without making it perfectly clear what he was retaliating for. Cicero was constantly in the way of doing kindnesses to all sorts of people, in the law-courts or by recommending them to some of his influential friends. He especially says that he had always done what he could to foster the genius of poets. He was attracted to young men like Catullus (he was not of the 'grex Catilinae'); and of his friend Calvus he writes with genuine appreciation. It is more natural as well as more pleasant to think of these two men of genius, in so far as they came in contact, having agreeable relations with one another, than to believe that the poet wrote these apparently straightforward, kindly appreciative lines in revenge for some real or fancied disparagement of his verses.] [Footnote 40: Cf. xxiv. 7:-- Qui? non est homo bellus? inquies. Est.] [Footnote 41: Two of the four poems connected with Calvus allude to his antagonism to Vatinius, which went on actively between the years 56 and 54 B.C. In none of them is there any allusion to Lesbia, who was never out of Catullus, thoughts or his verse till after his Bithynian journey.] [Footnote 42: Horace contrasts the 'dirge of Simonides' ('Ceae retractes munera neniae') with the lighter poetry of love.] [Footnote 43: Cf. Munro's Lucretius, p. 468, third edition.] [Footnote 44: lxxii. 5-8:-- Nunc te cognovi: quare etsi impensius uror, Multo mi tamen es vilior et levior. Qui potis est? inquis. Quia amantem iniuria talis Cogit amare magis, set bene velle minus.] [Footnote 45: lxxxv. 1.] [Footnote 46: xi. 23.] [Footnote 47: lxxvi.] [Footnote 48: 'Calvus, if those now silent in the tomb Can feel the touch of pleasure in our tears For those we loved, who perished in their bloom, And the departed friends of former years: Oh then, full surely thy Quintilia's woe, For the untimely fate that bade ye part, Will fade before the bliss she feels to know How very dear she is unto thy heart.'--Martin.] [Footnote 49: Compare also his humorous notice of the compliment which he heard in the crowd paid to the speech of Calvus against Vatinius-- Dii magni, salaputium disertum.] [Footnote 50: xii.] [Footnote 51: xxxviii.] [Footnote 52: Mr. Munro, in his Elucidations (pp. 209, etc.), shows that the whole point of the poem consists in the contrast drawn between the 'Zmyrna' of Cinna and the 'Annals of Volusius.' Baehrens admits the reading 'Hortensius' into the text, but adds in a note on the word, _vox corrupta est_.] [Footnote 53: lxxvi. 1-4.] [Footnote 54: Cf. lxiii. 12:-- Neu me odisse putes hospitis officium.] [Footnote 55: Att. vii. 7. 6: 'Placet igitur etiam me expulsum et agrum Campanum perisse et adoptatum patricium a plebeio, Gaditanum a Mytilenaeo, et Labieni divitiae et Mamurrae placent et Balbi horti et Tusculanum.'] [Footnote 56: lxxvi. 19.] [Footnote 57: xvi. 5-6.] [Footnote 58: lxxxiv. Cicero also was afflicted by a bore of the same name, who stayed away from Rome in order 'that he might pass whole days discussing philosophy with Cicero at Formiae.' The Arrius of this poem is supposed to be Q. Arrius, Praetor in 73 B.C., whom Cicero speaks of as having been in the habit of acting as a kind of Junior Counsel along with Crassus ('qui fuit M. Crassi quasi secundarum'), and having, though a man of the lowest origin and without either culture or natural ability, got into a considerable practice. The words 'Hoc misso in Syriam' are supposed to imply that he was sent as a legatus to join Crassus in his Syrian province. The poem would thus be written about the end of 55 B.C. Schmidt.] [Footnote 59: Hor. A. P. 437-38:-- Quintilio si quid recitares, Corrige, sodes, Hoc aiebat et hoc. Schmidt supposes him to be the Alphenus Varus, the Jurist, to whom the 30th poem, written in a tone of tender reproach, is addressed. Catullus does not seem to address the same person by different names, unless Manius and Allius are the same. Thus M. Caelius Rufus is addressed as Rufus, the Caelius addressed in other poems being a native of Verona. As both Alphenus Varus and Quintilius Varus were natives of Cremona, Catullus was likely to have known both.] [Footnote 60: vii. 7-8.] [Footnote 61: xi. 22-24.] [Footnote 62: xvii. 12-15 and 15-16.] [Footnote 63: E.g. Litus ut longe resonante Eoa Tunditur unda.] [Footnote 64: 'Criticisms and Elucidations,' etc. p. 73.] [Footnote 65: The pride of Roman nationality is, perhaps, unconsciously betrayed in such phrases as 'Romuli nepotum,' in the lines addressed to Cicero.] [Footnote 66: xxxiv. 7-12:-- Quam mater prope Deliam Deposivit olivam, Montium domina ut fores Silvarumque virentium Saltuumque reconditorum Amniumque sonantum.] [Footnote 67: lxi. 122-46.] [Footnote 68: lxiv. 89-90.] [Footnote 69: 'Soon my eyes shall see, mayhap, Young Torquatus on the lap Of his mother, as he stands Stretching out his tiny hands, And his little lips the while Half open on his father's smile. 'And oh! may he in all be like Manlius his sire, and strike Strangers when the boy they meet As his father's counterfeit, And his face the index be Of his mother's chastity.'--Martin.] [Footnote 70: Cf. Mr. Ellis's notes on the poem.] [Footnote 71: Cf. Plaut. Pseud. 147:-- Neque Alexandrina beluata conchyliata tapetia. Mr. Ellis, in his Commentary on Catullus, p. 226, mentions that both the marriage of Peleus and Thetis, and the legend of Ariadne, were common subjects of ancient art. He points out also that the idea of the quilt on which the Ariadne story was represented was borrowed from Apollonius, i. 730-66.] [Footnote 72: 'Whate'er of loveliest decks the plain, whate'er The giant mountains of Thessalia bear, Whate'er beneath the west's warm breezes blow, Where crystal streams by flowery margents flow, These in festoons or coronals inwrought Of undistinguishable blooms he brought, Whose blending odours crept from room to room, Till all the house was gladdened with perfume.'--Martin.] [Footnote 73: E.g. 'Argivae robora pubis'--'decus innuptarum'--'funera nec funera,' etc., etc. Mr. Ellis's commentary largely illustrates the influence exercised by the phraseology of the Greek poets,--especially Homer, Euripides, Apollonius--on the poetical diction of Catullus in this poem.] [Footnote 74: This monotony, as is pointed out by Mr. Ellis, is, in a great degree, the result of the coincidence of the accent and rhythmical ictus in the last three feet of the line.] [Footnote 75: Westphal, pp. 73-83, has given an elaborate explanation of the principle on which the various parts of the poem are arranged and connected with one another.] [Footnote 76: The lines immediately following these are in the worst style of learned Alexandrinism.] [Footnote 77: 'As some clear stream, from mossy stone that leaps, Far up among the hills, and, wimpling down By wood and vale, its onward current keeps To lonely hamlet and to stirring town, Cheering the wayworn traveller as it flows When all the fields with drought are parched and bare.' --Martin.] [Footnote 78: This parallel was first pointed out by the writer of an excellent article on Catullus in the North British Review, referred to by Mr. Munro in his 'Criticisms and Elucidations,' p. 234.] THE END. Transcriber's Note: Sundry damaged or missing punctuation has been repaired. Page 28: 'Neibuhr' corrected to 'Niebuhr' (2nd entry) "Niebuhr went so far as to assert that the Romans ..." Page 53: Æneas and Aeneas both occurred on this page. Both spellings are correct, but as there is only the single instance of Æneas, with the æ ligature, and around 30 instances of Aeneas, wihout the ligature, Æneas has been amended to Aeneas. The Æ/æ ligature has not otherwise been used in this book. page 148: 'advorsam' is correct; alternative spelling for 'adversam'. page 157: 'adoped' corrected to 'adopted' "... into the forms which he adopted from Greece." page 447: 'dulness' is correct; Oxford Dictionary gives it as an alternative spelling. page 468: 'Luaguidnlosque' corrrected to 'Languidulosque' "Languidulosque paret tecum coniungere somnos."