Epistles 1.19 (Fairclough)

If you follow old Cratinus, my learned Maecenas, no poems can please long, nor live, which are written by water-drinkers. From the moment Liber enlisted brain-sick poets among his Satyrs and Fauns, the sweet Muses, as a rule, have had a scent of wine about them in the morning. Homer, by his praises of wine, is convicted as a winebibber. Even Father Ennius never sprang forth to tell of arms save after much drinking. “To the sober I shall assign the Forum and Libo’s Wall; the stern I shall debar from song.” Ever since I put forth this edict, poets have never ceased to vie in wine-drinking by night, to reek of it by day. What, if a man were to ape Cato with grim and savage look, with bare feet and the cut of a scanty gown, would he thus set before us Cato’s virtue and morals? In coping with Timagenes, his tongue brought ruin to Iarbitas; so keen was his aim and effort to be deemed a man of wit and eloquence. A pattern with faults easy to copy leads astray. So if by chance I lost my colour, these poets would drink the bloodless cummin. O you mimics, you slavish herd! How often your pother has stirred my spleen, how often my mirth!

I was the first to plant free footsteps on a virgin soil; I walked not where others trod. Who trusts himself will lead and rule the swarm. I was the first to show to Latium the iambics of Paros, following the rhythms and spirit of Archilochus, not the themes or the words that hounded Lycambes. And lest you should crown me with a scantier wreath because I feared to change the measures and form of verse, see how manlike Sappho moulds her Muse by the rhythm of Archilochus; how Alcaeus moulds his, though in his themes and arrangement he differs, looking for no father-in-law to besmear with dead verses, and weaving no halter for his bride with defaming rhyme. Him, never before named by other lips, I, the lyrist of Latium, have made known. It is my joy that I bring things untold before, and am read by the eyes and held in the hands of the gently born.

Would you know why the ungrateful reader praises and loves my pieces at home, unjustly decries them abroad? I am not one to hunt for the votes of a fickle public at the cost of suppers and gifts of worn-out clothes. I am not one who, listening to “noble writers” and taking my revenge, deign to court the tribes of lecturing professors. “Hence those tears.” If I say, “I am ashamed to recite my worthless writings in your crowded halls, and give undue weight to trifles,” “You are in merry mood,” says one, “and keep your lines for the ears of Jove.” Fair in your own eyes you are, and believe that you, and you alone, distil the honey of poesy. At this I am afraid to turn up a scornful nose, and lest, if he wrestle with me, I be torn by his sharp nails, “The place you choose suits me not,” I cry, and call for a truce in the sports. For such sport begets tumultuous strife and wrath, and wrath begets fierce quarrels, and war to the death.