Epistles 2.2 (Fairclough)

My Florus, loyal friend of great and good Nero, suppose someone by chance should wish to sell you a slave, born at Tibur or Gabii, and should deal with you thus: “Here’s a handsome boy, comely from top to toe; you may take him, to have and to hold, for eight thousand sesterces; home-bred he is, apt for service at his owner’s beck, knows a bit of Greek learning, and can master any art; the clay is soft—you will mould it to what you will; moreover, he will sing for you over your cups in a sweet if artless fashion. Too many promises lessen confidence, when a seller who wants to shove off his wares praises them unduly. I am under no constraint; I have slender means, but am not in debt. None of the slave-dealers would give you such a bargain; not everyone would easily get the like from me. Once he played truant, and hid himself, as boys will do, under the stairs, fearing the hanging strap.” Give me the sum asked, if his running off, duly noted, does not trouble you: the seller, I take it, would get his price without fear of penalty. You bought him with your eyes open—fault and all; the condition was told you; do you still pursue the seller and annoy him with an unjust suit? I told you when you were leaving that I was lazy; I told you that for such duties I was well-nigh crippled, lest you should angrily scold, because no letter of mine reached you in reply. What good did I then do, if when right is on my side you still attack it? And then, over and above this, you complain that the verses you looked for I fail to send, false to my word.

A soldier of Lucullus, by dint of many toils, had laid by savings, but one night, when weary and slumbering, had lost all down to the last penny. After this, furious as a wolf, angry with himself and his foe alike, and fiercely showing hungry teeth, he dislodged, they say, a royal garrison from a strongly fortified site, rich in vast treasure. Winning fame thereby, he was decorated with gifts of honour, and received, over and above, twenty thousand sesterces in coin. Soon after this it chanced that the commander, wishing to storm some fort, began to urge the man with words that might have given spirit even to a coward: “Go, sir, whither your valour calls you. Go, good luck to you!—to win big rewards for your merits. Why stand still?” On this the shrewd fellow, rustic though he was, replied: “Yes, he will go—go where you wish—he who has lost his wallet.”

At Rome I had the luck to be bred, and taught how much Achilles’ wrath had harmed the Greeks. Kindly Athens added somewhat more training, so that, you know, I was eager to distinguish the straight from the crooked, and to hunt for truth in the groves of Academe. But troublous times tore me from that pleasant spot, and the tide of civil strife flung me, a novice in war, amid weapons that were to be no match for the strong arms of Caesar Augustus. Soon as Philippi gave me discharge therefrom, brought low with wings clipped and beggared of paternal home and estate, barefaced poverty drove me to writing verses. But now that I have sufficient store, what doses of hemlock could ever suffice to cleanse my blood, if I were not to think it better to slumber than to scribble verses?

The years, as they pass, plunder us of all joys, one by one. They have stripped me of mirth, love, feasting, play; they are striving to wrest from me my poems. What would you have me do? After all, men have not all the same tastes and likes. Lyric song is your delight, our neighbour here takes pleasure in iambics, the one yonder in Bion’s satires, with their caustic wit. ’Tis, I fancy, much like three guests who disagree; their tastes vary, and they call for widely different dishes. What am I to put before them? what not? You refuse what your neighbour orders: what you crave is, to be sure, sour and distasteful to the other two.

Besides all else, do you think I can write verses at Rome amid all my cares and all my toils? One calls me to be surety, another, to leave all my duties and listen to his writings. One lies sick on the Quirinal hill, another on the Aventine’s far side; I must visit both. The distances, you see, are comfortably convenient! “Yes, but the streets are clear, so that nothing need hinder you in conning verses.” In hot haste rushes a contractor with mules and porters; a huge crane is hoisting now a stone and now a beam; mournful funerals jostle massive wagons; this way runs a mad dog: that way rushes a mud-bespattered sow. Now go, and thoughtfully con melodious verses. The whole chorus of poets loves the grove and flees the town, duly loyal to Bacchus, who finds joy in sleep and shade. Would you wish me, amid noises by night and noises by day, to sing and pursue the minstrels’ narrow pathway? A gifted man, that has chosen for home sequestered Athens, that has given seven years to his studies and grown grey over his books and meditations, when he walks abroad is often more mute than a statue and makes the people shake with laughter: and here amid the waves of life, amid the tempests of the town, am I to deign to weave together words which shall awake the music of the lyre?

Two brothers at Rome, a lawyer and a pleader, were on such terms that nothing but compliments would each hear from the other’s lips: the one was Gracchus to the other, the other Mucius to him. And our singer poets—how does this madness trouble them any the less? I compose lyrics, my friend elegiacs: “’Tis wondrous to behold! A work of art, engraven by the Muses nine!” Mark you first, with what pride, with what importance, our contemplative gaze wanders o’er the temple, now open to Roman bards. And by and by, if haply you have time, follow, and draw close to hear what each has to offer, and with what he weaves for himself a chaplet. We belabour each other, and with tit for tat use up our foe, like Samnites, in a long-drawn bout, till the first lamps are lighted. By his vote I come off an Alcaeus. What is he by mine? What, but a Callimachus! If he seems to claim more, he becomes a Mimnermus, and is glorified with the title of his choice. Much do I endure, to soothe the fretful tribe of bards, so long as I am scribbling, and humbly suing for public favour; but now that my studies are ended and my wits recovered, I would, without fear of requital, stop up my open ears when they recite.

Those who write poor verses are a jest; yet they rejoice in the writing and revere themselves; and, should you say nothing, they themselves praise whatever they have produced—happy souls! But the man whose aim is to have wrought a poem true to Art’s rules, when he takes his tablets, will take also the spirit of an honest censor. He will have the courage, if words fall short in dignity, lack weight, or be deemed unworthy of rank, to remove them from their place, albeit they are loth to withdraw, and still linger within Vesta’s precincts. Terms long lost in darkness the good poet will unearth for the people’s use and bring into the light—picturesque terms which, though once spoken by a Cato and a Cethegus of old, now lie low through unseemly neglect and dreary age. New ones he will adopt which Use has fathered and brought forth. Strong and clear, and truly like a crystal river, he will pour forth wealth and bless Latium with richness of speech; he will prune down rankness of growth, smooth with wholesome refinement what is rough, sweep away what lacks force—wear the look of being at play, and yet be on the rack, like a dancer who plays now a Satyr, and now a clownish Cyclops.

I should prefer to be thought a foolish and clumsy scribbler, if only my failings please, or at least escape me, rather than be wise and unhappy. Once at Argos there was a man of some rank, who used to fancy that he was listening to wonderful tragic actors, while he sat happy and applauded in the empty theatre—a man who would correctly perform all other duties of life, a most worthy neighbour, an amiable host, kind to his wife, one that could excuse his slaves, and not get frantic if the seal of a flask were broken, one that could avoid a precipice or an open well. This man was cured by his kinsmen’s help and care, but when with strong hellebore he had driven out the malady and its bile, and had come to himself again, he cried: “Egad! you have killed me, my friends, not saved me; for thus you have robbed me of a pleasure and taken away perforce the dearest illusion of my heart.”

In truth it is profitable to cast aside toys and to learn wisdom; to leave to lads the sport that fits their age, and not to search out words that will fit the music of the Latin lyre, but to master the rhythms and measures of a genuine life. Therefore I talk thus to myself and silently recall these precepts:

If no amount of water could quench your thirst, you would tell your story to the doctor: seeing that the more you get, the more you want, do you not dare to make confession to any man? If your wound were not relieved by the root or herb prescribed, you would give up being treated with the root or herb that did you no good: you had perhaps been told that perverse folly flees from him to whom the gods had given wealth; but though you are no wiser since you became richer, do you still follow the same counsellors?

But surely if wealth could make you wise, if less wedded to desires and fears, you would blush if there lived upon earth a greater miser than you. If that is a man’s own which he buys with bronze and balance, there are some things, if you trust the lawyers, which use conveys; the farm which gives you food is yours, and the bailiff of Orbius, when he harrows the corn-land which is shortly to give you grain, feels you to be his master. You give your coin; you receive grapes, poultry, eggs, a jar of wine: in that way, mark you! you are buying bit by bit the farm once purchased for three hundred thousand sesterces, or perhaps even more. What does it matter, whether you live on what was paid out lately or some time ago? The man who once bought a farm at Aricia or Veii bought the green for his dinner, though he thinks otherwise; he bought the logs with which he boils the kettle in the chill of nightfall. Yet he calls it all his own, up to where the poplars, planted beside fixed boundaries, prevent the wrangling of neighbours: just as though anything were one’s own, which in a moment of flitting time, now by prayer, now by purchase, now by force, now—at the last—by death, changes owners and passes under the power of another. Thus since to none is granted lasting use, and heir follows another’s heir as wave follows wave, what avail estates or granaries—what avail Lucanian forests joined to Calabrian, if Death reaps great and small—Death who never can be won over with gold? Gems, marble, ivory, Tuscan vases, paintings, plate, robes dyed in Gaetulian purple—there are those who have not; there is one who cares not to have. Of two brothers one prefers, above Herod’s rich palm-groves, idling and playing and the anointing of himself; the other, wealthy and untiring, from dawn to shady eve subdues his woodland farm with flames and iron plough. Why so, the Genius alone knows—that companion who rules our star of birth, the god of human nature, though mortal for each single life, and changing in countenance, white or black. I shall use and from my modest heap take what need requires, nor shall I fear what my heir will think of me, because he does not find more than I have given him. And yet, withal, I shall wish to know how much the frank and cheerful giver is distinct from the spendthrift, how much the frugal is at variance with the miserly. For it does differ whether you scatter your money lavishly, or whether, while neither reluctant to spend, nor eager to add to your store, you snatch enjoyment of the brief and pleasant hour, like a schoolboy in the spring holidays. Far from me be squalid want at home: yet, be my vessel large or small, I, the passenger aboard, shall remain one and the same. Not with swelling sails are we borne before a favouring north wind, yet we drag not out our life struggling with southern gales; in strength, in wit, in person, in virtue, in station, in fortune, behind the foremost, ever before the last.

You are no miser. Good! What then? Have all the other vices taken to flight with that? Is your heart free from vain ambition? Is it free from alarm and anger at death? Dreams, terrors of magic, marvels, witches, ghosts of night, Thessalian portents—do you laugh at these? Do you count your birthdays thankfully? Do you forgive your friends? Do you grow gentler and better, as old age draws near? What good does it do you to pluck out a single one of many thorns? If you know not how to live aright, make way for those who do. You have played enough, have eaten and drunk enough. ’Tis time to quit the feast, lest, when you have drunk too freely, youth mock and jostle you, playing the wanton with better grace.