Satires 1.5 (Fairclough)

Leaving mighty Rome, I found shelter in a modest inn at Aricia, having for companion Heliodorus the rhetorician, far most learned of all Greeks. Next came Appii Forum, crammed with boatmen and stingy tavern-keepers. This stretch we lazily cut in two, though smarter travellers make it in a single day; the Appian Way is less tiring, if taken slowly. Here owing to the water, for it was villainous, I declare war against my stomach, and wait impatiently while my companions dine.

Already night was beginning to draw her curtain over the earth and to sprinkle the sky with stars. Then slaves loudly rail at boatmen, boatmen at slaves: “Bring to here!” “You’re packing in hundreds!” “Stay, that’s enough!” What with collecting fares and harnessing the mule a whole hour slips away. Cursed gnats and frogs of the fens drive off sleep, the boatman, soaked in sour wine, singing the while of the girl he left behind, and a passenger taking up the refrain. The passenger at last tires and falls asleep, and the lazy boatman turns his mule out to graze, ties the reins to a stone, and drops a-snoring on his back. Day was now dawning when we find that our craft was not under way, until one hot-headed fellow jumps out, and with willow cudgel bangs mule and boatman on back and head.

At last, by ten o’clock we are barely landed, and wash face and hands in thy stream, Feronia. Then we breakfast, and crawling on three miles climb up to Anxur, perched on her far-gleaming rocks. Here Maecenas was to meet us, and noble Cocceius, envoys both on business of import, and old hands at settling feuds between friends. Here I put black ointment on my sore eyes. Meanwhile Maecenas arrives and Cocceius, and with them Fonteius Capito, a man without flaw, so that Antony has no closer friend.

Fundi, with its “praetor” Aufidius Luscus, we quit with delight, laughing at the crazy clerk’s gewgaws, his bordered robe, broad stripe, and pan of charcoal. Next, wearied out we stop in the city of the Mamurrae, Murena providing shelter and Capito the larder. Most joyful was the morrow’s rising, for at Sinuessa there meet us Plotius, Varius, and Virgil, whitest souls earth ever bore, to whom none can be more deeply attached than I. O the embracing! O the rejoicing! Nothing, so long as I am in my senses, would I match with the joy a friend may bring.

The little house close to the Campanian bridge put a roof above our heads, and the state-purveyors, as in duty bound, furnished fuel and salt. Next, at Capua, our mules lay aside their saddle-bags at an early hour. Maecenas goes off to ball-playing, Virgil and I to sleep, for such play is hard on the sore-eyed and the dyspeptic. Another stage, and we are taken in at the well-stocked villa of Cocceius, lying above the inns of Caudium.

Now, O Muse, recount in brief the contest of Sarmentus the jester and Messius Cicirrus, and the lineage of the two who engaged in the fray. Messius was of famous stock, an Oscan; the mistress of Sarmentus is still living: from such ancestry sprung, they entered the lists. And first Sarmentus: “You, I say, are like a wild horse.” We laugh, and Messius himself, “I grant you,” and tosses his head. “Oh!” says Sarmentus, “if only the horn had not been cut out of your forehead, what would you do, when you can threaten, thus dehorned?” Now an unsightly scar had disfigured the left side of his bristly brow. With many a joke on his Campanian disease and on his face, he begged him to dance the Cyclops shepherd-dance: he would need neither mask nor tragic buskin. Much had Cicirrus to say to this. Had he yet, he inquired, made a votive offering of his chain to the Lares? Clerk though he was, yet his mistress’s claim was not less strong. At the last he asked why he had ever run away, since a pound of meal was enough for one so lean and so puny. Right merrily did we prolong that supper.

Thence we travel straight to Beneventum, where our bustling host was nearly burned out while turning lean thrushes over the fire. For as Vulcan slipped out through the old kitchen the vagrant flame hastened to lick the roof. Then you might have seen the hungry guests and frightened slaves snatching up the dinner, and all trying to quench the blaze.

From this point Apulia begins to show to my eyes her familiar hills, which the Altino scorches, and over which we had never crawled had not a villa near Trivicum taken us in, but not without smoke that brought tears, as green wood, leaves and all, was burning in the stove. Here I, utter fool that I am, await a faithless girl right up to midnight. Then, after all, sleep carries me off still thinking upon love, and evil dreams assail me.

From here we are whirled in carriages four and twenty miles, to spend the night in a little town I cannot name in verse, though ’tis quite easy to define it by tokens. Here water, nature’s cheapest product, is sold, but the bread is far the best to be had, so that the knowing traveller is wont to shoulder a load for stages beyond; for at Canusium, a place founded long ago by brave Diomede, it is gritty, and as to water, the town is no better off by a jugful. Here Varius leaves us, to the grief of his weeping friends.

Thence we come to Rubi, very weary after covering a long stage much marred by the rain. Next day’s weather was better, but the road worse, right up to the walls of Barium, a fishing town. Then Gnatia, built under the wrath of the water-nymphs, brought us laughter and mirth in its effort to convince us that frankincense melts without fire at the temple’s threshold. Apella, the Jew, may believe it; not I; for I “have learned that the gods lead a care-free life,” and if Nature works any marvel, the gods do not send it down from their heavenly home aloft when in surly mood! Brundisium is the end of a long story and of a long journey.