Book 2

Since you alone sustain affairs so many and so great, guarding the Italian state with arms, gracing it with morals, mending it with laws—I should sin against the common good, Caesar, if I delayed your time with a long discourse. Romulus and Father Liber, and Castor with Pollux, after their mighty deeds received into the temples of the gods, while they tended the earth and the race of men, settled harsh wars, composed them, allotted lands, founded towns, lamented that the favour they hoped for did not answer their deserts. He who crushed the dread hydra and subdued the famous monsters by his fated labour found that envy is mastered only at the final end: for he scorches with his brightness who outweighs the arts ranked beneath him; once extinguished, that same man will be loved. On you, while present, we lavish ripe honours, and set up altars to swear by your divinity, confessing that nothing of the kind has arisen or will arise. But this people of yours, wise and just in one thing— in setting you before our own leaders, before the Greeks— in all else by no means reckons by a like reason and measure, and, save what it sees withdrawn from the world and done with its own times, disdains and hates; so partisan to the old that the Tables which forbid sin, which the Ten Men sanctioned, the treaties of kings made at Gabii or struck with the rigid Sabines, the pontiffs' books, the seers' aged scrolls, it keeps proclaiming the Muses spoke on the Alban mount. If, because the oldest writings of the Greeks are also the best, Roman writers are to be weighed in the same balance, there is no reason to say much: there is nothing hard inside the olive, nothing outside the nut; we have come to fortune's height, we paint and play the lyre and wrestle more skilfully than the oiled Achaeans. If time, like wine, makes poems better, I should like to know what year confers worth on writings. A writer who fell a hundred years ago—must he be reckoned among the perfect and the old, or among the worthless and the new? Let a fixed point exclude dispute. "He is old and sound who completes a hundred years." What of one who perished a month or a year short— among whom must he be classed? The old poets, or those whom both the present and the after age reject? "That man, surely, may be honourably placed among the old, who is younger by a brief month or a whole year." I take the leave allowed, and, like the hairs of a horse's tail, I pluck out little by little, and take away one, then take away another, until the man falls, baffled by the logic of the dwindling heap, who looks back to the calendars and gauges worth by years, and admires nothing but what Libitina has consecrated. Ennius—both wise and brave and a second Homer, as the critics say—seems to care but lightly how his promises and Pythagorean dreams turn out. Is not Naevius in our hands, and clinging to our minds, almost fresh? So sacred is every old poem. Whenever it is disputed which of two is the elder, Pacuvius carries off the name of the learned old man, Accius of the lofty; Afranius' toga is said to have fitted Menander, Plautus to hurry after the model of Sicilian Epicharmus, Caecilius to win by weight, Terence by art. These mighty Rome learns by heart, and these, packed in a narrow theatre, she watches; these she has and counts as her poets from the age of the writer Livius down to our own time. Sometimes the crowd sees rightly, and there are times it errs. If it so admires and praises the old poets that it sets nothing before them, compares nothing to them, it strays. If it believes they said some things too archaically, most things harshly, and confesses many a passage feeble, it is wise, and is of my mind, and judges with Jove's consent. I do not, for my part, attack or think Livius' songs deserve to be destroyed—the verses I remember the flogging Orbilius dictated to me as a boy; but that they should be thought polished and beautiful, falling barely short of the perfect, I marvel, seeing that among them, if by chance a graceful word has flashed out, and if one verse and another is a little neater, it unjustly draws and sells the whole poem. I am indignant that anything is censured, not because it is thought clumsily or gracelessly composed, but because it is recent, and that not pardon for the old, but honour and rewards are demanded. Were I to doubt whether rightly or not Atta's play treads its way through the saffron and the flowers, nearly all the fathers would cry that shame had perished, when I try to censure the things that grave Aesopus, that learned Roscius acted; either because they think nothing right but what has pleased themselves, or because they think it shameful to obey their juniors, and that the things they learned beardless they must, as old men, confess should be unlearned. Now the man who praises the Salian hymn of Numa, and that which, like me, he does not understand, yet wishes alone to seem to know, does not favour and applaud the buried genius, but assails ours, and out of spite hates us and what is ours. But if novelty had been as hateful to the Greeks as it is to us, what would now be old? Or what would it have that the public might read and thumb, each man for himself? As soon as Greece, her wars laid aside, began to trifle, and to slip into vice through prospering fortune, now she burned with passion for athletes, now for horses, loved the craftsmen of marble or ivory or bronze, hung her face and mind on a painted panel, now took delight in flute-players, now in tragic actors; like an infant girl playing under her nurse's eye, what she eagerly sought she gave up, satisfied, full soon. What is there pleasing or hateful that you would not think changeable? This blessed peace and favouring winds brought about. At Rome it was long sweet and the custom, the house thrown open in the morning, to wake and expound the law to a client, to lay out money carefully on sound names, to hear one's elders, to tell the younger by what means one's estate might grow and ruinous extravagance be lessened. The fickle people has changed its mind and glows with one passion for writing; boys and grave fathers, their hair bound with leaves, dine and dictate poems. I myself, who declare I write no verses, am found more lying than the Parthians, and before sunrise awake I call for pen and paper and writing-cases. A man ignorant of ships fears to steer one; southernwood to the sick none but he who has learned it dares to give; what belongs to physicians physicians promise; smiths handle the smith's tools; but we, learned and unlearned alike, write poems everywhere. Yet this error and this slight madness—how many virtues it has, gather thus: the bard's mind is rarely greedy; he loves verses, this alone is his study; he laughs at losses, runaway slaves, and fires; he plots no fraud against partner or boy or ward; he lives on pulse and second-grade bread; though sluggish and bad at soldiering, he is useful to the city, if you grant this, that great things are helped by small ones too. The poet shapes the tender, lisping mouth of the boy, even now turns his ear from indecent speech, and presently moulds his heart with friendly precepts, a corrector of harshness and envy and anger; he tells of deeds well done, equips the rising age with famous examples, consoles the helpless and the sick. Whence would the chaste girl, with the chaste boys, who knows no husband, learn her prayers, had the Muse not given her a bard? The chorus begs for help and feels the divinity present, woos the heavenly rains with learned prayer, winning, averts diseases, drives off dreaded perils, obtains both peace and a year rich in fruits; by song the gods above are appeased, by song the dead below. The old farmers, sturdy and blest with little, after the grain was stored, easing in festival time the body, and the very mind that bore hardships in hope of the end, with their fellow-workers, their children, and faithful wife, used to appease Earth with a pig, Silvanus with milk, the Genius, mindful of the brief span of life, with flowers and wine. Through this custom Fescennine licence, once devised, poured out rustic abuse in alternating verses, and the freedom, welcomed through the recurring years, played pleasantly, until at last the savage jest began to turn to open frenzy, and through honourable homes to range, threatening with impunity. They smarted, stung by the bloody tooth; even the untouched felt concern for the common case; indeed a law and penalty was passed forbidding anyone to be described in a hurtful song: they changed their tune, brought back, through fear of the cudgel, to speaking well and giving delight. Captured Greece took captive her fierce conqueror, and the arts she brought into rustic Latium; so that rough Saturnian measure drained away, and refinement drove out the gross poison; yet for a long age there nonetheless remained, and remain today, traces of the countryside. For late did the Roman turn his wits to Greek writings, and, quiet after the Punic wars, began to ask what Sophocles and Thespis and Aeschylus might offer of use. He tried, too, whether he could translate them worthily, and pleased himself, sublime and keen by nature: for he breathes tragedy enough, and dares with success, but in his ignorance thinks it shameful, and fears, to make an erasure. Comedy is believed, because it draws its matter from common life, to have least of sweat; but it bears by so much more burden, as it gets less pardon. Look how Plautus upholds the part of a lovesick youth, of a thrifty father, of a wily pander, how great a Dossennus he is among the greedy parasites, how slack-shod he runs across the stage. For he is eager to drop the coin into his money-box; after this he cares not whether the play falls flat or stands upright. The man whom Glory has borne to the stage in her windy car the listless spectator unstrings, the eager one puffs up: so light, so small a thing it is, that a mind greedy of praise is overthrown or restored. Farewell to the playwright's trade, if a withheld palm sends me home lean, a granted one home plump. Often, too, this routs and terrifies the bold poet: that those greater in number, lesser in worth and rank, unlearned and dull and ready to come to blows, if the knights dissent, demand in the midst of the play either a bear or boxers: for in such the rabble delights. But even from the knight's ear all pleasure has now migrated to the wandering eyes and empty joys. The curtain is kept down four hours or more, while squadrons of cavalry and bands of infantry flee; soon the fortune of kings is dragged, their hands twisted behind them, chariots hasten, carriages, wagons, ships, captive ivory is carried, captive Corinth. Were he on earth, Democritus would laugh, whether a panther crossed with a camel, a confused breed, or a white elephant turned the crowd's faces; he would watch the people more attentively than the shows themselves, as giving him far more of a spectacle: the playwrights, however, he would think were telling a tale to a deaf ass. For what voices have prevailed to overpower the din our theatres ring with? You would think the Garganian wood was roaring, or the Tuscan sea; with such an uproar are watched the shows and the arts and the foreign riches with which the actor, smeared, once he has stood upon the stage, the right hand clashes with the left. "Has he said anything yet?" "Nothing at all." "What then pleases?" "The wool that has mimicked violets with Tarentine dye." And lest you think I praise grudgingly the things I myself decline to do, while others handle them rightly: that poet seems to me able to walk on a stretched rope, who with nothing wrings my heart, goads it, soothes it, fills it with false terrors, and, like a wizard, sets me now at Thebes, now at Athens. But come, to those too who choose to trust themselves to the reader rather than bear the disdain of the haughty spectator, give your brief care, if you wish to fill with books a gift worthy of Apollo, and to put a spur to the bards, that they may seek green Helicon with greater zeal. Many an ill, indeed, we poets often do ourselves (that I may cut down my own vineyard), when we give you a book while you are anxious or weary; when we are wounded if a single friend has dared to censure one verse; when, unrecalled, we go back over passages already recited; when we lament that our labours do not appear, our poems spun out on a fine thread; when we hope it will come to this, that, the moment you learn we are composing songs, you will of your own accord, obliging, send for us, forbid us to want, and force us to write. But still it is worth the trouble to know what kind of keepers Virtue, tested in war and at home, should have, not to be entrusted to an unworthy poet. Dear to Alexander the great king was that Choerilus, who, for verses uncouth and ill-born, received in payment royal coin, Philippics; but as ink, when handled, leaves a stain and blot, so most writers smear over splendid deeds with foul song. That same king, who a poem so ridiculous bought, lavish, at so dear a price, forbade by edict that anyone but Apelles should paint him, or any but Lysippus cast in bronze the features that counterfeited brave Alexander's face. But if you summoned that judgement, so fine in viewing works of art, to books and to these gifts of the Muses, you would swear he was born in the thick air of Boeotia. Yet your judgements about themselves do not disgrace you, nor the gifts which—with much praise of the giver— they bore away, the poets you love, Virgil and Varius; and the features cast in bronze figures show no more clearly than the bard's work shows forth the characters and minds of famous men. Nor would I rather compose discourses creeping along the ground than recount deeds achieved, and tell of the sites of lands and rivers, and citadels set on mountains, and barbarous realms, and the wars ended over the whole world under your auspices, and the bars confining Janus, the warden of peace, and Rome made fearful to the Parthians under your rule— if only I could do as much as I would wish; but neither does a slight song befit your majesty, nor does my modesty dare to attempt a theme my strength refuses to bear. But over-zeal foolishly burdens him it loves, especially when it commends itself with measure and art; for one learns more quickly, and remembers more gladly, that which one mocks, than what one approves and reveres. I care nothing for an office that weighs me down, nor do I wish, with features falsely made worse, to be set forth in wax anywhere, nor to be honoured by verses badly wrought, lest I blush, presented with the gross gift, and, together with my author, stretched out in a closed box, be carried off to the street that sells frankincense and perfumes and pepper and whatever is wrapped in clumsy paper.

Florus, faithful friend to good and famous Nero, if perhaps someone should wish to sell you a boy born at Tibur or at Gabii, and should bargain with you thus: "Here is one both fair and shapely from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet, who shall become and be yours for eight thousand sesterces, a home-bred slave apt for service at his master's nod, steeped in a little Greek learning, fit for any craft; out of moist clay you will mould him to whatever you please; indeed he will sing untaught, but sweetly, to one who drinks. Many promises lessen credit, when, beyond what is fair, he praises the wares who wishes to push off his goods. No need presses me; poor though I am, I owe no man. No dealer would do this for you; not lightly from me would just anyone get the like. He idled once, and, as happens, hid on the stairs in fear of the dangling strap: pay the money, if his one truancy does not hurt you." That man, I think, would take his price and fear no penalty: knowingly you bought a faulty slave; the terms were stated to you; do you nonetheless pursue him, and harass him with an unjust suit? I told you, when you set out, that I was lazy, I told you I was almost crippled for such duties, lest you should harshly chide me because no letter came back to you. What good did it do me, if you press the law, though it is on my side? You complain of this too, that I do not send you, false promiser, the poems you expected. A soldier of Lucullus, his savings gathered with much hardship, while he snored at night, weary, had lost them to the last penny: thereafter, a furious wolf, enraged alike at himself and the foe, with fasting teeth keen, he dislodged, they say, a royal garrison from a post strongly fortified and rich in many goods. Famous for that deed, he is honoured with goodly gifts, and receives besides twice ten thousand sesterces. By chance, about this time, a praetor, wishing to overthrow some fort or other, began to urge the same man on with words that could put heart even into a coward: "Go, good fellow, where your valour calls you; go with lucky step, to win the great rewards of merit. Why do you stand?" At this the rogue, rustic as he was: "He will go, he will go where you wish—the man who has lost his money-belt," said he. It was my lot to be reared at Rome, and to be taught how much Achilles in his wrath had harmed the Greeks. Kindly Athens added a little more art, namely the wish to tell the straight from the crooked, and to seek the truth among the groves of the Academy. But hard times drove me from that pleasant spot, and the tide of civil war swept me, a novice, into arms that would prove no match for Caesar Augustus' sinews. As soon as Philippi discharged me from there, humbled, my wings clipped, stripped of my father's home and land, bold poverty drove me to make verses; but now that I have enough, what hemlock could ever sufficiently purge me, did I not think it better to sleep than to write verses? The passing years rob us of our blessings one by one; they have stolen jests, love, banquets, play; they strain to wrench away my poems: what would you have me do? In short, not all admire and love the same things: you delight in lyric, this man takes pleasure in iambics, that one in the discourses of Bion and his black salt. Three guests seem to me almost at odds, demanding very different dishes for their varied palates. What shall I give? What not give? You refuse what the other orders; what you seek is surely disliked and sour to the other two. Besides all this, do you think I can write poems at Rome, amid so many cares and so many toils? One calls me to stand surety, another to hear his writings, while I leave all my duties; one lies sick on the Quirinal hill, another at the far end of the Aventine; both must be visited; you see how conveniently the distances lie. "But the streets are clear, so that nothing hinders the meditating mind." A hot contractor hurries with mules and porters, the crane heaves now a stone, now a huge beam, gloomy funerals struggle with sturdy wagons, here a mad dog flees, there a filthy sow rushes by: go now, and meditate tuneful verses to yourself. The whole choir of writers loves the grove and flees the city, true clients of Bacchus, who delights in sleep and shade: do you wish me, amid the din of nights and days, to sing, and to follow the narrow track of the bards? A genius that has chosen for itself empty Athens and given seven years to study and grown grey over books and cares, comes out more silent than a statue for the most part, and shakes the people with laughter: here, in the very billows of affairs and the storms of the city, am I to deign to weave words that would stir the lyre's sound? There was at Rome a lawyer who was brother to a rhetor, so that each might hear from the other's lips sheer praises— this one a Gracchus to the other, that one a Mucius to him. Does that frenzy harass our tuneful poets any less? I compose lyrics, this man elegies. "A marvel to behold, a work chiselled by the nine Muses!" See first with what conceit, with what great effort we look round upon the temple left empty for Roman bards! Then later, if you happen to be free, follow and hear from afar what each brings, and why each weaves himself a crown. We are struck, and with as many blows we wear out the foe, slow Samnites, fighting our duel till the first lamps. By his verdict I come off Alcaeus; by mine, what is he? What but Callimachus? If he seems to ask for more, he becomes a Mimnermus and grows by the title he longed for. Much I endure, to appease the irritable race of bards, when I write and beg, a suppliant, for the people's votes; but the same man, my studies finished and my mind recovered, will stop my open ears with impunity against reciters. They are laughed at who compose bad poems; but they rejoice in their writing and revere themselves, and, of their own accord, if you say nothing, praise whatever they have written, the happy men. But he who longs to have made a true poem will take up, with his tablets, the spirit of an honest censor; he will dare to shift from its place whatever has too little splendour, lacks weight, and is deemed unworthy of honour, though the words go back unwillingly, and still linger within the shrine of Vesta; the good man will dig out and bring into the light words long hidden from the people, splendid names for things, which, recorded by the ancient Catos and Cethegi, shapeless mould now buries and forsaken age oppresses; he will adopt new words, which usage, their parent, has brought forth. Vehement and clear, most like a pure stream, he will pour out his riches and bless Latium with a wealthy tongue; he will prune what runs to rankness, smooth the too-rough with wholesome culture, remove what is void of strength, will give the look of one at play, and yet be racked, like one who now moves as a Satyr, now as a rustic Cyclops. I would rather be thought a foolish, lazy writer, while my faults delight me, or at least deceive me, than be wise and gnash my teeth. There was at Argos a man, not obscure, who believed he was hearing wondrous tragic actors, sitting glad and applauding in an empty theatre; who in all else kept life's other duties by a right rule, a truly good neighbour, a charming host, gentle to his wife, able to pardon his slaves and not to rage at a broken seal upon a flask, able to avoid a precipice and an open well. When this man, restored by his kinsmen's wealth and care, had driven out the disease and the bile with neat hellebore, and come back to himself: "By heaven, you have killed me, friends, not saved me," he said, "from whom pleasure has thus been wrenched and the mind's most welcome delusion taken away by force." No doubt it is profitable to be wise, casting trifles aside, and to leave play to boys, for whom it is timely, and not to chase after words to be tuned to Latin strings, but to learn by heart the rhythms and measures of a true life. Therefore I say these things to myself, and silently recall: If no abundance of water could quench your thirst, you would tell the doctors: dare you confess to no one that the more you have gained, the more you crave? If a wound were no easier for the root or herb prescribed, you would shun the root or herb that did your healing no good: you had heard that to the man on whom the gods bestowed wealth, his crooked folly fell away; and since you are no wiser for being richer, do you still use the same advisers? But if riches could make a man prudent, could make you less greedy and less timid, surely you would blush if anyone lived on earth more miserly than you. If a thing is one's own which a man has bought with weights and bronze, then—if you trust the lawyers—usage too confers ownership of some things; the field that feeds you is yours, and Orbius' bailiff, when he harrows the crops that will soon give you grain, feels you for his master. You pay your money, you get grapes, chickens, eggs, a jar of wine: thus, indeed, in this way, you buy the farm little by little—bought, perhaps, for three hundred thousand sesterces, or even more. What does it matter whether you live on what you paid for late or long ago? The buyer of the Aricine and Veientan land once, eats the greens he bought, though he thinks otherwise; with bought wood he warms his kettle against the cold night; yet he calls it all his own, up to where the poplar planted on the fixed boundaries wards off neighbours' quarrels; as though anything were one's own, which in the moment of a fleeting hour, now by prayer, now by price, now by force, now by death at last, changes its masters and passes into another's rights. So, since perpetual use is given to none, and heir follows heir of another as wave overtakes wave, what use are estates or granaries? What good the Lucanian pastures added to the Calabrian glades, if Orcus reaps great with small, not to be entreated by gold? Gems, marble, ivory, Etruscan figurines, paintings, silver, robes dyed with Gaetulian purple— there are men who do not have them, and one who does not care to have them. Why one of two brothers prefers idleness and play and perfume to the rich palm-groves of Herod, while the other, wealthy and restless, from dawn to dusk subdues his woodland field with flames and iron, the Genius knows—the companion who governs our natal star, the god of human nature, mortal in each single head, changeful of countenance, white and black. I shall use, and take from my modest heap as much as need shall ask, nor shall I fear what my heir may judge of me, that he found no more than I was given; and yet I shall likewise wish to know how much a frank and cheerful man differs from a spendthrift, and how much the thrifty differs from the miser. For it makes a difference whether you scatter your goods as a prodigal, or neither make outlay unwillingly nor toil to gain more, but rather, as a boy of old at the festal Quinquatrus, snatch enjoyment of the brief and welcome time. Let squalid poverty be far from my house: whether I am borne in a great ship or a small, I am borne one and the same man. We are not driven on with swelling sails by a favouring North wind, yet neither do we drag out our life against opposing South winds; in strength, talent, looks, virtue, station, estate, last of the first, and ever ahead of the last. "You are not greedy: be off." What then? Have the other vices fled along with that one? Is your breast free of empty ambition? Free of the fear of death, and of anger? Dreams, magic terrors, marvels, witches, night-spectres, and Thessalian portents—do you laugh at them? Do you count your birthdays with thanks? Do you forgive your friends? Do you grow gentler and better as old age draws near? What good does it do you to have one thorn drawn out of many? If you do not know how to live rightly, give way to those who do. You have played enough, eaten enough, and drunk enough: it is time for you to depart, lest, having drunk too freely, the age that is more becoming in play laugh at you and shove you off.