Complete Works of Horace (Illustrated) (Delphi Ancient Classics)

by Horace Quintus Horatius Flaccus

  CONTENTS

  BOOK I.

  EPISTLE I.

  EPISTLE II.

  EPISTLE III.

  EPISTLE IV.

  EPISTLE V.

  EPISTLE VI.

  EPISTLE VII.

  EPISTLE VIII.

  EPISTLE IX.

  EPISTLE X.

  EPISTLE XI.

  EPISTLE XII.

  EPISTLE XIII.

  EPISTLE XIV.

  EPISTLE XV.

  EPISTLE XVI.

  EPISTLE XVII.

  EPISTLE XVIII.

  EPISTLE XIX.

  EPISTLE XX.

  BOOK II.

  EPISTLE I.

  EPISTLE II.

  BOOK I.

  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 suf
fer 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 mat
ters; 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.