by Horace
a Colchian or an Assyrian, a native of Thebes or Argos.
Writers, follow tradition, or at least avoid anomalies
120 when you’re inventing. If you portray the dishonoured Achilles,
see that he’s tireless, quick to anger, implacable, fierce;
have him repudiate laws, and decide all issues by fighting.
Make Medea wild and intractable, Ino tearful,
Ixion treacherous, Io a roamer, Orestes gloomy.
If you are staging something untried and taking the risk
of forming a new character, let it remain to the end
as it was when introduced, and keep it true to itself.
It’s hard to express general things in specific ways.
You’d be well advised to spin your plays from the song of Troy
130 rather than introduce what no one has said or thought of.
If you want to acquire some private ground in the public domain,
don’t continue to circle the broad and common track,
or try to render word for word like a loyal translator;
don’t follow your model into a pen from which
diffidence or the laws of the genre prevent escape;
and don’t begin in the style of the ancient cyclic poet:
‘Of Priam’s fate I sing and a war that’s famed in story.’
What can emerge in keeping with such a cavernous promise?
The mountains will labour and bring to birth a comical mouse.
140 How much better the one who makes no foolish effort:
‘Tell, O Muse, of the man who after Troy had fallen
saw the cities of many people and their ways of life.’
His aim is not to have smoke after a flash, but light
emerging from smoke, and thus revealing his splendid marvels:
the cannibal king Antíphates, the Cyclops, Scylla, Charybdis.
He doesn’t start Diomeédes’ return from when Meleager
died, nor the Trojan war from the egg containing Helen.
He always presses on to the outcome and hurries the reader
into the middle of things as though they were quite familiar.
150 He ignores whatever he thinks cannot be burnished bright;
he invents at will, he mingles fact and fiction, but always
so that the middle squares with the start, and the end with the middle.
Consider now what I, and the public too, require,
if you want people to stay in their seats till the curtain falls
and then respond with warmth when the soloist calls for applause:
you must observe the behaviour that goes with every age-group,
taking account of how dispositions change with the years.
The child who has learnt to repeat words and to plant his steps
firmly is keen to play with his friends; he loses his temper
160 easily, then recovers it, changing from hour to hour.
The lad who has left his tutor but has not acquired a beard
enjoys horses and hounds and the grass of the sunny park.
Easily shaped for the worse, he is rude to would-be advisers,
reluctant to make any practical plans, free with his money;
quixotic and passionate, he soon discards what he set his heart on.
Manhood brings its own mentality, interests change;
now he looks for wealth and connections, strives for position,
and is wary of doing anything which may be hard to alter.
An old man is surrounded by a host of troubles: he amasses
170 money but leaves it untouched, for he’s too nervous to use it;
poor devil, his whole approach to life is cold and timid;
he puts things off, is faint in hope, and shrinks from the future.
Morose and a grumbler, he is always praising the years gone by
when he was a boy, scolding and blaming ‘the youth of today’.
The years bring many blessings as they come to meet us; receding,
they take many away. To avoid the mistake of assigning
an old man’s lines to a lad, or a boy’s to a man, you should always
stick to the traits that naturally go with a given age.
An action is shown occurring on stage or else is reported.
180 Things received through the ear stir the emotions more faintly
than those which are seen by the eye (a reliable witness) and hence
conveyed direct to the watcher. But don’t present on the stage
events which ought to take place within. Much of what happens
should be kept from view and then retailed by vivid description.
The audience must not see Medea slaying her children,
or the diabolical Atreus cooking human flesh,
or Procne sprouting wings or Cadmus becoming a snake.
I disbelieve such exhibitions and find them abhorrent.
No play should be longer or shorter than five acts,
190 if it hopes to stage a revival ‘in response to public demand’.
Don’t let a god intervene unless the deénouement requires
such a solution; nor should a fourth character speak.
The chorus should take the role of an actor, discharging its duty
with all its energy; and don’t let it sing between the acts
anything not germane and tightly joined to the plot.
It ought to side with the good and give them friendly advice,
control the furious, encourage those who are filled with fear.
It ought to praise the simple meal which is not protracted,
healthy justice and laws, and peace with her open gates.
200 It ought to preserve secrets, and pray and beseech the gods
that good fortune may leave the proud and return to the wretched.
The pipe (which was not, as now, ringed with brass and a rival
of the trumpet, but rather slender and simple with not many openings)
was once enough to guide and assist the chorus and fill
with its breath the rows of seats which weren’t too densely packed.
The crowd was, naturally, easy to count because it was small,
and the folk brought with them honest hearts, decent and modest.
When, thanks to their victories, the people widened their country,
extending the walls around their city and flouting the ban
210 which used to restrain daytime drinking on public occasions,
a greater degree of licence appeared in tunes and tempo.
(What taste was likely from an ignorant crowd on holiday,
a mixture of country and town, riff-raff and well-to-do?)
Vulgar finery and movements augmented the ancient art,
as the piper trailed his robe and minced across the stage.
The musical range of the sober lyre was also enlarged,
while a cascading style brought in a novel delivery,
and the thought, which shrewdly purveyed moral advice and also
predicted the future, came to resemble the Delphic oracles.
220 The man who competed in tragic verse for a worthless he-goat
later presented as well the naked rustic satyrs.
Rough, though without any loss of dignity, he turned to joking;
for the crowd which, after observing the rites, was drunk and unruly,
had to be kept in their seats by something new and attractive.
However, to make a success of your clownish cheeky satyrs
and achieve a proper transition from heavy to light, make sure
that no god or hero who is brought on to the stage
shall, after just being seen in regal purple and gold,
take his language down to the plane of a dingy cottage,
230 or in trying to keep aloft grasp at cloudy nothings.
Tragedy thinks it beneath her to spout frivolous verse;
and so, like a lady obliged to dance on a public holiday,
she’ll be a little reluctant to join the boisterous satyrs.
If I ever write a satyr drama, my Pisos, I shan’t
confine my choice to plain and familiar nouns and verbs;
nor shall I strive so hard to avoid the tone of tragedy
that it might as well be the voice of Davus or brazen Pythias,
who has just obtained a talent by wiping Simo’s eye,
as of Silenus – guardian and servant of the god in his care.
240 I’ll aim at a new blend of familiar ingredients; and people
will think it’s easy – but will waste a lot of sweat and effort
if they try to copy it. Such is the power of linkage and joinery,
such the lustre that is given forth by commonplace words.
Fauns from the forest, in my opinion, ought to be careful
not to go in for the dandy’s over-emotional verses,
or to fire off volleys of filthy, disgraceful jokes,
as if they came from the street corner or the city square.
Knights – free-born and men of property – take offence
and don’t greet with approval all that’s enjoyed by the buyer
250 of roasted nuts and chick-peas, or give it a winner’s garland.
A long syllable after a short is named Iambus.
Being a quick foot, he ordered iambic verses
to be called ‘trímeters’, in spite of the fact that six beats
occurred in a pure iambic line. At a time in the past,
so as to reach the ear with a bit more weight and slowness,
he was kind and obliging enough to adopt the stately spondees
and share the family inheritance – though never going so far
in friendship as to relinquish the second or fourth position.
Iambus rarely appears in Accius’ ‘noble’ trímeters,
260 and his all too frequent absence from the lines that Ennius trundles
onto the stage leaves them open to the damaging charge
of hasty and slapdash work or a disregard of art.
It isn’t every critic who detects unmusical pieces;
so Roman poets have enjoyed quite excessive indulgence.
Shall I therefore break out, and ignore the laws of writing?
Or assume my faults will be seen by all, and huddle securely
within the permitted range? Then I’ve avoided blame;
I haven’t earned any praise. My Roman friends, I urge you:
get hold of your Greek models, and study them day and night.
270 To be sure, your forefathers praised the rhythm and wit of Plautus.
On both counts their admiration was far too generous,
in fact it was stupid – assuming that you and I know how
to tell the difference between clumsy and clever jokes,
and discern correctness of sound with the aid of ear and fingers.
We are told Thespis discovered the genre of the tragic Muse
which was never known before; he carried his plays on a wagon
to be sung and acted by men who had smeared lees on their faces.
After him came Aeschylus, introducing the mask
and lordly robe; he laid a stage on lowish supports
280 and called for a sonorous diction and the wearing of high-soled boots.
Old Comedy followed, winning a lot of acclaim;
but its freedom exceeded the proper limit and turned to violence
which needed a law to control it. The law was obeyed, and the chorus
fell silent in disgrace, having lost its right of insult.
Our own native poets have left nothing untried.
They have often been at their best when they have had the courage
to leave the paths of the Greeks and celebrate home affairs
with plays in Roman dress, whether serious or comic.
Latium now would be just as strong in her tongue as she is
290 in her valour and glorious arms if the patient work of the file
didn’t deter our poets each and every one.
Children of Numa, condemn the piece which many a day
and many a rub of the stilus have not smoothed and corrected
ten times over, to meet the test of the well-pared nail.
Because Democritus holds talent a greater blessing
than poor despised technique and debars a poet from Helicon
unless he’s mad, many no longer cut their nails
or beard; they make for secluded spots and avoid the baths.
For a man will surely acquire the name and esteem of a poet
300 if he never allows the scissors of Lícinus near his head –
a head which three Antícyras couldn’t cure. And me?
Like a fool I banish madness by taking springtime sedatives.
No one could put together better poems; but really
it isn’t worth it. And so I’ll play the part of a grindstone
which sharpens steel but itself has no part in the cutting.
Without writing, I’ll teach the poet his office and function,
where he can find his resources, what nurtures and shapes him,
what is correct, what not; what is right and wrong.
Moral sense is the fountain and source of proper writing.
310 The pages of Socrates’ school will indicate your material;
once that is provided, words will readily follow.
First be clear on what is due to your country and friends;
what is involved in loving a parent, brother, or guest;
what is the conduct required of a judge or member of senate;
what are the duties imposed on a general sent to the front.
Then you will give the proper features to every character.
The trained playwright, I say, should turn to life and behaviour
for dramatic models – and as a source of living speech.
A play with attractive moral comments and credible characters,
320 but wholly lacking in charm and poetic force and finish,
sometimes pleases the public and holds its interest better
than lines devoid of content – mere melodious wind.
The Muse bestowed on the Greeks talent and also the favour
of eloquent speech; they craved for nothing but admiration.
Roman children learn by doing long calculations
how to divide the as a hundred times. ‘Very well then,
young Albanus: five twelfths – we subtract one of them,
what’s the remainder? Come on, hurry up!’
‘A third, sir.’
‘Splendid!
You’ll look after your money! Now add a twelfth to make it – ’
330 ‘A half.’ But when this craze for coppers, this verdigris,
has formed on our hearts, how can we hope to fashion poems
fit to be oiled with cedar and stored in polished cypress?
The aim of a poet is either to benefit or to please
or to say what is both enjoyable and of service.
When you are giving advice, be brief, to allow the learner
quickly to seize the point and then retain it firmly.
If the mind is full, every superfluous word is spilt.
Make sure that fictions designed to amuse are close to reality.
A play should not expect us to take whatever it offers –
340 like ‘child devoured by ogress is brought alive from her belly’.
The senior bloc refuses plays which haven’t a message;
the haughty young bloods curl their nostrils at anything dry;
everyone votes for the man who mixes wholesome and sweet,
giving his reader an equal blend of help and delight.
That book earns the Sosii money; it crosses the ocean,
winning fame for the author and ensuring a lo
ng survival.
There are, of course, certain mistakes which should be forgiven.
A string doesn’t always sound as mind and finger intended
[when you want a bass it very often emits a treble],
350 nor does a bow invariably hit whatever it aims at.
In a poem with many brilliant features I shan’t be offended
by a few little blots which a careless pen has allowed to fall
or human nature has failed to prevent. Where do we stand, then?
If a copying clerk persistently makes the same mistake
in spite of numerous warnings, he is not excused; if a harpist
always misses the same note he causes laughter.
So for me the inveterate bungler becomes a Choerilus,
whose rare touches of goodness amaze and amuse me; I even
feel aggrieved when Homer, the pattern of goodness, nods.
360 Sleep, however, is bound to creep in on a lengthy work.
A poem is like a picture. One will seem more attractive
from close at hand, another is better viewed from a distance.
This one likes the gloom; this longs for the daylight,
and knows it has nothing to fear from the critic’s searching eye.
That pleased once; this will please again and again.
My dear Piso major, although your father’s voice
and your own good sense are keeping you straight, hear and remember
this pronouncement: in only a limited number of fields
is ‘fairly good’ sufficient. An average jurist and lawyer
370 comes nowhere near the rhetorical power of brilliant Messalla,
nor does he know as much as Aulus Cascellius; still,
he has a certain value; that poets should be only average
is a privilege never conceded by men, gods, or bookshops.
When, at a smart dinner, the orchestra’s out of tune,
or the scent is heavy, or poppyseeds come in Sardinian honey,
we take it amiss; for the meal could have been served without them.
It’s the same with a poem, whose raison d’être is to please the mind;
as soon as it misses the top level, it sinks to the bottom.
A man who is hopeless at field events avoids the equipment,
380 keeping his ignorant hands off shot, discus and javelin,
for fear of giving the crowds of spectators a free laugh.
The fellow who is useless at writing poetry still attempts it.
Why not? He’s free, and so was his father; his fortune is rated
at the sum required of a knight; and his heart’s in the right place!
You will compose and complete nothing against the grain