Satires 1.10 (Fairclough)

[Lucilius, how faulty you are I will prove clearly by the witness of Cato, your own advocate, who is setting to work to remove faults from your ill-wrought verses. This task is done so much more gently by him, as he is a better man, of much finer taste than the other, who as a boy was ofttimes gently entreated by the lash and moist ropes, so that later he might give aid to the poets of old against our present daintiness, when he had become the most learned of pedagogic knights. But to return:]

To be sure I did say that the verses of Lucilius run on with halting foot. Who is a partisan of Lucilius so in and out of season as not to confess this? And yet on the self-same page the self-same poet is praised because he rubbed the city down with much salt.

Yet, while granting this virtue, I would not also allow him every other; for on those terms I should also have to admire the mimes of Laberius as pretty poems. Hence it is not enough to make your hearer grin with laughter—though even in that there is some merit. You need terseness, that the thought may run on, and not become entangled in verbiage that weighs upon wearied ears. You also need a style now grave, now gay, in keeping with the role, now of orator or poet, at times of the wit, who holds his strength in check and husbands it with wisdom. Jesting oft cuts hard knots more forcefully and effectively than gravity. Thereby those great men who wrote Old Comedy won success; therein we should imitate them—writers whom the fop Hermogenes has never read, nor that ape, whose skill lies solely in droning Calvus and Catullus.

But that was a great feat, you say, “his mixing of Greek and Latin words.”

O ye late learners! ye who really think that a hard and wondrous knack, which Pitholeon of Rhodes achieved!

But a style, where both tongues make a happy blend, has more charm, as when the Falernian brand is mixed with Chian.

In your verse-making only (I put it to yourself), or does the rule also hold good when you have to plead the long, hard case of the defendant Petillius? Would you forsooth forget fatherland and father, and, while Pedius Publicola and Corvinus sweat over their causes in Latin, would you prefer to jumble with your native speech words imported from abroad, like the Canusian’s jargon?

I, too, though born this side of the sea, once took to writing verses in Greek; but after midnight, when dreams are true, Quirinus appeared and forbade me with words like these: “’Tis just as foolish to carry timber to a wood as to wish to swell the crowded ranks of the Greeks.”

So while the pompous poet of the Alps murders Memnon and botches with mud the head of the Rhine, I am toying with these trifles, which are neither to be heard in the Temple as competing for Tarpa’s verdict, nor are to come back again and again to be witnessed on the stage.

You alone of living poets, Fundanius, can charm us with the chit-chat of comedies, where the artful mistress and Davus fool old Chremes. In measure of triple beat Pollio sings of kings’ exploits. Surpassing all in spirit, Varius moulds the valorous epic. To Virgil the Muses rejoicing in rural life have granted simplicity and charm. This satire, which Varro of the Atax and some others had vainly tried, was what I could write with more success, though falling short of the inventor; nor would I dare to wrest from him the crown that clings to his brow with so much glory.

But I did say his stream runs muddy, and often carries more that you would rather remove than leave behind. Come, pray, do you, a scholar, criticize nothing in the great Homer? Does your genial Lucilius find nothing to change in the tragedies of Accius? Does he not laugh at the verses of Ennius as lacking in dignity, though he speaks of himself as no greater than those he has blamed? And as we read the writings of Lucilius, what forbids us, too, to raise the question whether it was his own genius, or whether it was the harsh nature of his themes that denied him verses more finished and easier in their flow than if one were to put his thoughts into six feet and, content with this alone, were proud of having written two hundred lines before and two hundred after supping? Such was the gift of Tuscan Cassius, more headstrong than a rushing river, whose own books and cases, so ’tis told us, made his funeral pile.

Grant, say I, that Lucilius was genial and witty: grant that he was also more polished than you would expect one to be who was creating a new style quite untouched by the Greeks, and more polished than the crowd of older poets: yet, had he fallen by fate upon this our day, he would smooth away much of his work, would prune off all that trailed beyond the proper limit, and as he wrought his verse he would oft scratch his head and gnaw his nails to the quick.

Often must you turn your pen to erase, if you hope to write something worth a second reading, and you must not strive to catch the wonder of the crowd, but be content with the few as your readers. What, would you be so foolish as to want your poems dictated in common schools? Not so I. “’Tis enough if the knights applaud me”—to quote dauntless Arbuscula’s scornful remark, when the rest of the house hissed her.

Am I to be stung by that louse Pantilius? Or tortured because Demetrius carps at me behind my back, or because silly Fannius, who sponges on Hermogenes Tigellius, girds at me? Let but Plotius and Varius approve of these verses; let Maecenas, Virgil, and Valgius; let Octavius and Fuscus, best of men; and let but the Viscus brothers give their praise! With no desire to flatter, I may name you, Pollio; you, Messalla, and your brother; also you, Bibulus and Servius; also you, honest Furnius, and many another scholar and friend, whom I purposely pass over. In their eyes I should like these verses, such as they are, to find favour, and I should be grieved if their pleasure were to fall short of my hopes. But you, Demetrius, and you, Tigellius, I bid you go whine amidst the easy chairs of your pupils in petticoats!