Satires 1.4 (Fairclough)

Eupolis and Cratinus and Aristophanes, true poets, and the other good men to whom Old Comedy belongs, if there was anyone deserving to be drawn as a rogue and thief, as a rake or cut-throat, or as scandalous in any other way, set their mark upon him with great freedom. It is on these that Lucilius wholly hangs; these he has followed, changing only metre and rhythm. Witty he was, and of keen-scented nostrils, but harsh in framing his verse. Herein lay his fault: often in an hour, as though a great exploit, he would dictate two hundred lines while standing, as they say, on one foot. In his muddy stream there was much that you would like to remove. He was wordy, and too lazy to put up with the trouble of writing—of writing correctly, I mean; for as to quantity, I let that pass. See, Crispinus challenges me at long odds: “Take your tablets, please; take mine. Let a place be fixed for us, and time and judges; let us see which can write the most.” The gods be praised for fashioning me of meagre wit and lowly spirit, of rare and scanty speech! But do you, for such is your taste, be like the air shut up in goat-skin bellows, and ever puffing away until the fire softens the iron.

Happy fellow, Fannius, who has delivered his books and bust unasked! “My writings no one reads, and I fear to recite them in public, the fact being that this style is abhorrent to some, inasmuch as most people merit censure. Choose anyone from amid a crowd: he is suffering either from avarice or some wretched ambition. One is mad with love for somebody’s wife, another for boys. Here is one whose fancy the sheen of silver catches; Albius dotes on bronzes; another trades his wares from the rising sun to regions warmed by his evening rays; nay, through perils he rushes headlong, like dust gathered up by a whirlwind, fearful lest he lose aught of his total, or fail to add to his wealth. All of these dread verses and detest the poet: “He carries hay on his horns, give him a wide berth. Provided he can raise a laugh for himself, he will spare not a single friend and whatever he has once scribbled on his sheets he will rejoice to have all know, all the slaves and old dames as they come home from bakehouse and pond.”

Come now, listen to a few words in answer. First I will take my own name from the list of such as I would allow to be poets. For you would not call it enough to round off a verse, nor would you count anyone poet who writes, as I do, lines more akin to prose. If one has gifts inborn, if one has a soul divine and tongue of noble utterance, to such give the honour of that name. Hence some have questioned whether Comedy is or is not poetry; for neither in diction nor in matter has it the fire and force of inspiration, and, save that it differs from prose-talk in its regular beat, it is mere prose. “But,” you say, “there is the father storming in passion because his spendthrift son, madly in love with a wanton mistress, rejects a wife with large dower, and in drunken fit reels abroad—sad scandal—with torches in broad daylight.” Would Pomponius hear a lecture less stern than this, were his father alive? “And so ’tis not enough to write out a line of simple words such that, should you break it up, any father whatever would rage in the same fashion as the father in the play. Take from the verses which I am writing now, or which Lucilius wrote in former days, their regular beat and rhythm—change the order of the words, transposing the first and the last—and it would not be like breaking up:

When foul Discord’s din

War’s posts and gates of bronze had broken in,

where, even when he is dismembered, you would find the limbs of a poet.

Of this enough. Some other time we’ll see whether this kind of writing is true poetry or not. To-day the only question I’ll ask is this, whether you are right in viewing it with distrust. Keen-scented Sulcius and Caprius stalk about, horribly hoarse and armed with writs, both a great terror to robbers, but if a man is honest of life and his hands clean, he may scorn them both. Though you be like Caelius and Birrius, the robbers, I need not be like Caprius or Sulcius: why should you fear me? I want no stall or pillar to have my little works, so that the hands of the crowd—and Hermogenes Tigellius—may sweat over them. Nor do I recite them to any save my friends, and then only when pressed—not anywhere or before any hearers. Many there are who recite their writings in the middle of the Forum, or in the baths. How pleasantly the vaulted space echoes the voice! That delights the frivolous, who never ask themselves this, whether what they do is in bad taste or out of season.

You like to give pain, says one, “and you do so with spiteful intent.” Where have you found this missile to hurl at me? Does anyone whatever with whom I have lived vouch for it? The man who backbites an absent friend; who fails to defend him when another finds fault; the man who courts the loud laughter of others, and the reputation of a wit; who can invent what he never saw; who cannot keep a secret—that man is black of heart; of him beware, good Roman. Often on each of the three couches you may see four at dinner, among whom one loves to bespatter in any way everyone present except the host who provides the water, and later him as well, when he has well drunk and the truthful god of free speech unlocks the heart’s secrets. Such a man you think genial and witty and frank—you who hate the black of heart. As for me, if I have had my laugh because silly “Rufillus smells like a scent-box, Gargonius like a goat,” do you think I am a spiteful, snappish cur? If in your presence somebody hinted at the thefts of Petillius Capitolinus, you would defend him after your fashion: “Capitolinus has been a comrade and friend of mine from boyhood; much has he done to serve me when asked, and I rejoice that he is alive and out of danger here in Rome—but still I do wonder how he got out of that trial.” Here is the very ink of the cuttlefish; here is venom unadulterate. That such malice shall be far from my pages, and first of all from my heart, I pledge myself, if there is aught that I can pledge with truth.

If in my words I am too free, perchance too light, this bit of liberty you will indulgently grant me. ’Tis a habit the best of fathers taught me, for, to enable me to steer clear of follies, he would brand them, one by one, by his examples. Whenever he would encourage me to live thriftily, frugally, and content with what he had saved for me, “Do you not see,” he would say, “how badly fares young Albius, and how poor is Baius? A striking lesson not to waste one’s patrimony!” When he would deter me from a vulgar amour, “Don’t be like Scetanus.” And to prevent me from courting another’s wife, when I might enjoy a love not forbidden, “Not pretty,” he would say, “is the repute of Trebonius, caught in the act. Your philosopher will give you theories for shunning or seeking this or that: enough for me, if I can uphold the rule our fathers have handed down, and if, so long as you need a guardian, I can keep your health and name from harm. When years have brought strength to body and mind, you will swim without the cork. With words like these would he mould my boyhood; and whether he were advising me to do something, “You have an example for so doing,” he would say, and point to one of the special judges; or were forbidding me, “Can you doubt whether this is dishonourable and disadvantageous or not, when so and so stands in the blaze of ill repute?” As a neighbour’s funeral scares gluttons when sick, and makes them, through fear of death, careful of themselves, so the tender mind is oft deterred from vice by another’s shame.

Thanks to this training I am free from vices which bring disaster, though subject to lesser frailties such as you would excuse. Perhaps even from these much has been withdrawn by time’s advance, candid friends, self-counsel; for when my couch welcomes me or I stroll in the colonnade, I do not fail myself: “This is the better course: if I do that, I shall fare more happily: thus I shall delight the friends I meet: that was ugly conduct of so and so: is it possible that some day I may thoughtlessly do anything like that?” Thus, with lips shut tight, I debate with myself; and when I find a bit of leisure, I trifle with my papers. This is one of those lesser frailties I spoke of, and if you should make no allowance for it, then would a big band of poets come to my aid—for we are the big majority—and we, like the Jews, will compel you to make one of our throng.