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fitting time; I'll meet him in the streets; I'll escort him home.

Life grants no boon to man without much toil." a 60 While he is thus running on, lo! there comes up Aristius Fuscus, a dear friend of mine, who knew the fellow right well. We halt. "Whence come you? Whither go you?" he asks and answers. I begin to twitch his cloak and squeeze his arms-they were quite unfeeling-nodding and winking hard for him The cruel joker laughed, pretending not to understand. I grew hot with "Surely you said there was something you wanted to tell me in private.'

to save me.

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anger.

I mind it well, but I'll tell you at a better time. To-day is the thirtieth Sabbath. Would you affront the circumcised Jews?

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I have no scruples," say I.

But I have. I'm a somewhat weaker brother, one of the many. You will pardon me; I'll talk another day."

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To think so black a sun as this has shone for me! The rascal runs away and leaves me under the knife. 74 It now chanced that the plaintiff came face to face with his opponent. Where go you, you scoundrel?" he loudly shouts, and to me: May I call you as witness?" I offer my ear to touch.c He hurries the man to court. There is shouting here and there, and on all sides a running to and fro. Thus was I saved by Apollo."

litigant to touch the tip of his ear. The custom was an old one and is referred to in Plautus.

d Apollo was the god who befriended poets. The expression comes, however, from Homer (Iliad, xx. 443), τὸν δ ̓ ἐξήρπαξεν ̓Απόλλων, words which Lucilius had also used.

X

ON SATIRE

Horace resumes a discussion of the main subject of his fourth Satire, which had brought down considerable censure upon him from the critics, who upheld the excellence of early Latin poetry, and to these he now makes reply.

He reminds them that, while he had found fault with Lucilius's verse, he had also credited it with great satiric power. In this he was quite consistent, for one may admire good mimes without holding them to be good poems. You may make people laugh, but you must also have a terse style and a proper mixture of the grave and the gay, such as is seen in the robust writers of Old Attic Comedy, whom Hermogenes and his school never read. But Lucilius is admired for his skill in blending Greek and Latin. Nonsense!" cries Horace, such a mixture is a serious blemish, and no more acceptable in poetry than in oratory " (1-30).

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The poet here confesses that at one time he had thought of writing in Greek instead of Latin, but realized in time that this would be like carrying faggots to the forest (31-35).

So while Bibaculus essays something grand and lofty, Horace is less ambitious and turns to a more modest field. If we survey contemporary literature, comedy is pre-empted by Fundanius; Pollio has won

fame in tragedy and Varius in the epic; Virgil is simple and charming in his pastorals. Satire alone was open to Horace, for Varro Atacinus and others had tried it and failed, while Horace has met with success, however short he may come of the first in the field (36-49).

It is true that Horace had criticized Lucilius, just as Lucilius had pointed out defects in Accius and Ennius. His verse is faulty-his stream is muddy, he lacks finish, he wrote too freely. If we were to compare him with a writer who is carving out a new species of verse quite untouched by the Greeks, we might attribute to him some polish, but the fact remains that had he lived in the Augustan age, he would have filed away his roughnesses, and learned "the last and greatest art, the art to blot" (50-71).

A writer should aim at pleasing, not the multitude, but a small circle of good critics. If he wins their approval, he may bid the cheap teachers of the lecture-room go hang! (72-91).

With this statement of his conviction, Horace puts the finishing touch to his First Book (92).

In this satire Horace is a spokesman for the chief writers of the Augustan era, setting forth some of their ideals in contrast with the ignorance and vulgarity of popular scribblers, as represented by men like Tigellius. Among the requisites of good satire Horace speaks of the appropriate use of humour, together with the qualities of brevity, clearness, purity of diction and smoothness of composition, all of which are characteristic of the so-called plain style, or genus tenue, of poetry as of oratory. (For a full discussion see papers by Hendrickson and Ullman; also Fiske, Lucilius and Horace, pp. 336 ff.)

X.

[Lucili, quam sis mendosus, teste Catone
defensore tuo pervincam, qui male factos
emendare parat versus ; hoc lenius ille,
quo melior vir est, longe subtilior illo,
qui multum puer et loris et funibus udis
exoratus, ut esset opem qui ferre poetis
antiquis posset contra fastidia nostra,

grammaticorum equitum doctissimus. ut redeam illuc : 11

Nempe incomposito dixi pede currere versus Lucili. quis tam Lucili fautor inepte est,

ut non hoc fateatur ? at idem, quod sale multo urbem defricuit, charta laudatur eadem.

Nec tamen hoc tribuens dederim quoque cetera ; nam2 sic

et Laberi mimos ut pulchra poemata mirer.

ergo non satis est risu diducere3 rictum

5

1 Ll. 1-8. These awkward verses are found in Mss. of class II only, but are not commented on by the scholiasts. Persius, an imitator of Horace, begins his third satire with nempe. In l. 4, vir, used by the writer as a long syllable, appears as vir et in a few later Mss.

2 num a M, II.

3 deducere K, II.

a The first eight lines are regarded as spurious, and the only reason for reproducing them is that they are given in many мss., though not in the best. The Cato referred to is Valerius Cato, a poet and critic of the late Republic, but who the grammaticorum equitum doctissimus was is not known.

SATIRE X

[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" :]

b

1 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.

5 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 It is surely impossible "by reaching back over the relative clause intervening" to refer these words to Cato, as does Hendrickson, who upholds the genuineness of these verses.

In Sat. i. 4, which may be compared with this Satire throughout.

• Mimes were dramatic scenes from low life, largely farcical and grotesque in character. Laberius, a Roman knight, who was compelled by Julius Caesar to act in his own mimes, was no longer living when Horace wrote.

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