by Horace
if you do whatever occurs to your prick, if you carefully whip up
the harsh rate of interest, causing many a weal,
50 there’s no point in lending a thirsty ear to the public.
Spit out what isn’t you; let the crowd take back what they
have conferred; live alone, and learn how sparse your furniture is.
SATIRE 5
‘Poets conventionally ask for a hundred tongues.’ ‘But surely your verse is of a less pretentious kind.’ ‘It is, but I would gladly have a hundred tongues to express my gratitude to you, Cornutus; for you taught me the Stoic way of life.
‘Only the wise man, who has subjected his impulses to the control
of reason, can claim to be truly free.’
The satire has many points in common with Horace II. 7.
This is the poet’s age-old cry: ‘Give me a hundred
voices, a hundred mouths, and a hundred tongues for my songs!’
whether he’s writing a play to be mouthed by a dismal tragedian,
or showing a wounded Parthian pulling a spear from his groin.
‘What’s the point of all this? What lumps of nutritious verse
are you cramming in, that you need a hundred throats to ingest them?
Bards committed to the elevated style may gather mists
on Helicon – those who would bring Thyestes’ or Procne’s saucepan
to the boil to provide a regular supper for tasteless Sweetman.
10 You’re different; you don’t squeeze air from a bellows which gasps
as the furnace smelts the ore, or go in for hoarse and pent-up
muttering, inanely cawing to yourself some deep observation,
nor do you strain to blow up your cheeks until they go plop.
You keep to the dress of everyday speech, clever at the pointed
juxtaposition; you’ve a fairly well-rounded diction; you’re expert
at scraping unhealthy habits and nailing vice with a stroke
of wit. Draw your material from there. Leave to Mycenae
its menus of heads and feet, and get used to common food.’
It’s certainly not my aim to swell my page with frivolities
20 dressed in mourning in the hope of lending weight to smoke.
What I have to say is private; now, with the Muses’ encouragement,
I’m offering my conscience to you, Cornutus, for a thorough inspection.
I want to show you, my dear friend, how much of my soul
belongs to you. Go on – tap it. You’re adept at telling
what sounds solid from painted stucco put on by the tongue.
for this I would venture to ask for a hundred throats
to enable me to utter in clear tones how firmly I have tucked you
inside my heart’s folds, that my words may reveal what lies
obscure and beyond expression within its deepest fibres.
30 On shyly removing the purple band which had kept me out of trouble,
and presenting my locket to the family gods in their old-fashioned clothes
(when a young man’s friends are enticing, and his new white toga allows him
to run his eyes along the whole Subura at will,
when the road forks, and minds wandering in ignorance of life
are led in fear and confusion along the branching paths),
I took you as a father. you lifted my tender years
in your Socratic arms, Cornutus. With quiet dexterity,
you laid your ruler down to straighten my twisted behaviour.
My mind struggled to submit as it felt the pressure of reason,
40 and under your thumb it took on the right form and features.
Together, I remember, we enjoyed those long and sunny days;
together we spent the early part of the night at supper.
The two of us planned a single scheme of work and rest,
and relaxed our serious concerns as we ate a simple meal.
Make no mistake about it, our days are held together
by a solid pact; from the first they have followed the same star.
Fate, with truth in its hand, holds our every minute
poised in the even Scales; or the hour which dawned when the loyal
pair was born has assigned to the Twins our harmonious lives,
50 and with Jove’s help we are breaking Saturn’s baleful power.
There is certainly some star which makes me blend with you.
Thousands of human types: variegated life-styles.
Each with his own aim, all with different prayers.
Under an Eastern sun one man exchanges Italian
goods for shrivelled pepper and seeds of anaemic cumin,
while another lies replete and bloated in well-soaked sleep.
One is a sports fanatic, another gambles his shirt,
another is soft about sex. But then, when stony arthritis
smashes their fingers into the branches of an old beech-tree,
60 they moan too late that their days have passed in a thick miasma,
with the sun choked by smog, and they’ve turned their backs on life.
But you enjoy acquiring a pallor from your books at night.
Tending the young like a farmer, you clear their ears and sow
Cleanthes’ seed. Young and old, you should draw from that
a clear aim for your urges, supplies for your dismal greyness.
‘Tomorrow will do for that.’
‘Well do it tomorrow.’
‘What?
A day’s grace? That’s a big concession!’
When the next day dawns
we have finished yesterday’s tomorrow, and look – a new tomorrow
is baling away our years; it will always be just ahead.
70 Although you are under the same carriage and close to the rim
of the wheel that revolves in front, it’s futile trying to catch it,
for you are running in the rear position on the back axle.
We need freedom – not the sort which Jack acquires
when he appears as John Smith on the voters’ list and is issued
with coupons for mouldy bread. So barren of truth, you imagine
Romans are made by a whirl. Tom is a worthless yokel,
bleary with booze; you couldn’t trust him with a bucket of mash.
Then his master turns him round; from that quick spin he emerges
Tom Jones. What’s this? You won’t authorize a loan
80 which Jones has endorsed? You quail at the sight of Jones on the bench?
It’s true – Jones has said so! Would you sign this document, Jones?
That’s the real freedom; that’s what our cone-caps give us!
‘Well who can be called free, if not the man who is able
to spend his life as he chooses? I’m able to live as I choose;
am I not freer than Brutus?’
‘Your conclusion is false,’ replies
the Stoic here, who has rinsed his ears with biting vinegar.
I grant the rest, but you’ll have to remove that ‘able’ and ‘choose’.
‘I walked away from the Praetor and his rod as my own boss.
So why am I not able to do what I like – provided
90 it’s not forbidden by a section of Sabinus on Civil Law?’
Very well, listen – but drop that angry screwed-up grimace
while I pull those weedy old granny notions out of your skull.
It wasn’t in the Praetor’s power to confer a delicate conscience
on fat-heads, or grant them a proper use of their hurrying lives –
it would be easier to train a ham-fisted bruiser to play the harp.
Common sense intervenes and gabbles softly in your ear
that no one should be let do anything that he’s sure to make a mess of.
Human and natural law lay down a general rule
that bungling
ignorance should bar a person from performing an action.
100 Do you mix a dose of hellebore if you can’t adjust the weights
on a steel-yard? No – such an act is banned by the rules of medicine.
If a clod-hopping yokel who couldn’t locate the morning star
tried to take over a ship, Melicerta himself would cry
that shame had vanished from the world. Has philosophy taught you to live
a good upstanding life? Can you tell the true from the specious,
alert for the false chink of copper beneath the gold?
Have you settled what to aim for and also what to avoid,
marking the former list with chalk and the other with charcoal?
Are your wants modest, your housekeeping thrifty? Are you nice to your friends?
110 Do you know when to shut your barns and when to throw them open?
Can you walk steadily past a coin stuck in the mud
and not have to gulp down the Lord of Lucre’s saliva?
When you can truly say ‘I possess those goods, they’re mine’,
deem yourself free and wise in the sight of the Praetor and God.
But if, after just being counted as one of our batch, you retain
the skin of your old disguise and wear a glossy exterior
while keeping a cunning fox inside your rotten heart,
I revoke the concession I made above and draw in the rope.
It stands to reason you’ll do nothing right. Waggle your finger
120 and you’re wrong. Is anything smaller? But none of your incense will lead
the gods to place a gram of what’s right in a fool’s head.
It’s against nature to mix them. If you’re a clumsy oaf,
you couldn’t do three steps of Bathyllus’ satyr routine.
‘I’m free.’
On what grounds, when a slave to so many things?
Do you know no master but the one which the rod lifts from your back?
‘Here boy – run and take Crispinus’ scrapers to the baths.’
If he shouts ‘You good-for-nothing loafer!’ you aren’t jabbed into action
by the goad of slavery, nor does any external force
galvanize your muscles; but if inside, in your sickly heart,
130 masters come into being, how do you get off more lightly
than the lad who ran for the scrapers in fear of his owner’s strap?
It’s daylight and you’re lying snoring. ‘Get up,’ says Lady Greed,
‘Hey, get up!’ You won’t. She persists, ‘Up!’
‘I’m unable.’
‘Up!’
‘What for?’
‘What a question! Go and fetch kippers from Pontus,
plus beaver-musk, oakum, ebony, frankincense, slippery silk.
The pepper’s arrived, unload it before the camel’s had a drink.
Do a shady deal, then swear you haven’t.’
‘But God will hear.’
‘Ha! Listen, you numskull, if you want God on your side
you’ll spend your days happily scraping the bottom of the barrel.’
140 You’re dressed for the journey, loading the slaves with bundles and wine-jars.
‘Get this aboard right away!’ The huge vessel is ready
to hurry you over the Aegean, when Luxury slyly draws you
aside for a word of advice: ‘Just where the hell are you off to?
What do you mean? Are you mad? Why a whole jar of sedatives
couldn’t quell the frenzy that’s raging in that hot head!
You – hopping over the sea, having your supper on a bench
with your back propped against a coil of rope, while a squat mug
reeks of Veientine rosso ruined by stale resin!
All for what? That the cash you reared at the modest rate
150 of five per cent should strain to sweat out a greedy eleven?
Give yourself a treat; let’s make some hay. What you live is ours.
Soon enough you’ll turn into dust, ghost, and hearsay.
Live with death in mind; time flies – my words reduce it.’
Well then, two hooks are pulling in opposite ways.
Which will you follow, this or that? Your loyalty is bound
to vacillate, obeying and deserting each master in turn.
Even if you once succeed in making a stand and defying
their incessant orders, you can’t say ‘I’ve broken my bonds!’
For a dog may snap its fastening after a struggle, but still
160 as it runs away a length of chain trails from its neck.
‘Davus, look – I really mean it – I intend to stop
the hell I’ve been through,’ Chaerestratus says as he gnaws his nails
to the quick. ‘Why should I bring disgrace to my decent relatives –
earning a bad name, squandering the family fortune
at the entrance to a house of ill repute, drunkenly singing
outside Goldie’s dripping door with my torch doused?’
‘Splendid my boy! Now take my advice and slaughter a lamb
for the gods who protect us.’
‘But Davus, do you think she’ll cry when I leave her?’
‘Nonsense, my boy! You’ll get a whack from her red slipper –
170 that’ll teach you to struggle and gnaw at the tight net!
Now you’re wild and fierce; if she called, at once you’d say:
“What’ll I do? Not go near her, not even now
when she asks me – begs me?”
Not even now, if you’ve made a clean
and genuine break.’
There, I tell you, is the freedom we’re after,
not in the piece of stick waved by a silly official.
The man who is led agape by the charms of whitened Ambition –
is he his own master? ‘Do without sleep, let the mob
scramble for showers of peas, so that old men in the sunshine
may one day remember our Festival of Flora. A fine aspiration!’
180 But when Herod’s day arrives, and lamps entwined with violets
are placed on the greasy window-sills spewing out heavy clouds
of smoke, and when the tunny’s tail swims, encircling
the cheap red dish, and the white jar is bloated with wine,
you move your lips in silence and blanch at the circumcised sabbath.
Demons in the dark, perils portended by an exploding egg,
Cybele’s towering eunuchs, a one-eyed priestess of Isis
complete with rattle – they fill you with gods who will puff up your body,
unless on rising you take, as prescribed, three heads of garlic.
If you make such remarks in the presence of varicose sergeant-majors,
190 at once the mighty Pulfenius gives vent to a bray of laughter,
and offers a clipped coin of bronze for a hundred Greeks.
SATIRE 6
A letter from Persius, who is spending the winter on the Ligurian coastat Luna (modern Luni now inland off the Bay of Spezia), to the lyric poet Caesius Bassus.
After the preliminary greetings Persius takes up the topic of money,rejecting in the Horatian manner the way of the miser and that of the spendthrift.
The main body of the poem, however, recommends that one should spend and enjoy what one has in a sensible way without worrying overmuch about the expectations of one’s heir.
Has the winter brought you out to your Sabine fireside, Bassus?
Are the lyre-strings waking beneath your stern highland quill?
You excel at turning the oldest words of our tongue into verse
and setting them to the virile sound of the Latin harp.
Though old in years, you’re an expert in the sport of young love,
playing with a tasteful touch.
The Ligurian coast is mild,
and I’m wintering here with my stretch of sea, where th
e cliffs present
a massive wall and the shore falls back in a deep gulf.
‘Good people, get to know the port of Luna – it’s worth it!’
10 So said Ennius the wise, on snoring off the dream
of being Quintus Homer descended from Pythagoras’ peacock.
Here I couldn’t care less for the toiling masses or the mischief
which the south wind is plotting for my cattle; couldn’t care less
that a certain corner of my neighbour’s land is richer than mine.
If all my social inferiors grew rich, I’d never become
hunched and shrivelled with resentment or forgo a tasty dinner,
or poke my nose at the seal of a bottle that’s gone flat.
Others may differ. Twins born under the same star
vary in temperament. One, for a birthday treat, will dip
20 his dry greens in brine which he has cunningly bought in a cup;
he personally shakes the precious pepper on his plate. The other,
a stylish lad, chews through a huge inheritance. For me
it’s ‘Enjoy what you have’, though I can’t feed my dependants on turbot,
nor can I tell the subtle flavour of a hen thrush.
Live up to your harvest; grind your granaries, as you should.
Why worry? Harrow again, and a new crop’s in the blade.
But you say you have obligations. A friend’s ship has gone down;
he’s clinging to the rocks of Bruttium, destitute – all his possessions
and his futile prayers committed to the deep; he’s sprawled on the beach,
30 with the mighty gods from the stern beside him; the ribs of the mangled
vessel are already drawing the gulls. Well, cut a sod
off your landed capital and give it to the poor fellow, to save him
from carting around his picture on a sea-blue board.
But your heir
will blame you for truncating your property; he’ll skimp the funeral feast,
put your bones in the urn without scent. Is the cinnamon flat,
or the cassia debauched with cherry bark? He wouldn’t know.
‘Serve you right,’ he’ll say, ‘for not keeping up the estate.’
Like Bruty, he blames it on Greek intellectuals: ‘That’s how it goes;
since these fancy ideas arrived from abroad with pepper
40 and dates, our farmhands have spoilt their porridge with greasy sauces.’
Will such things worry you beyond the pyre? But you, my heir,
whoever you are, may I have a word with you – here, in private?