receive Pompeius Grosphus; and, if he asks any favor, grant it him frankly: Grosphus will desire nothing but what is right and just. The proceeds of friendship are cheap, when good men want any thing. But that you may not be ignorant in what situation the Roman affairs are; the Cantabrians" have fallen by the valor of Agrippa, the Armenians by that of Claudius Nero: Phraates has, suppliant on his knees," admitted the laws and power of Cæsar. Golden plenty has poured out the fruits of Italy from a full horn. EPISTLE XIII. TO VINNIUS ASINA. Horace cautions him to present his poems to Augustus at a proper in As on your setting out I frequently and fully gave you structions, Vinnius, that you would present these volumes to Augustus sealed up if he shall be in health, if in spirits, finally, if he shall ask for them: do not offend out of zeal to 74 Cantaber. A nation of Spain (inhabiting what is now Biscay, and part of Asturias), distinguished for the spirited opposition which they made to the Romans. In A. U. c. 729 Augustus, in person, headed an expedition to punish them, but no sooner had he left their country than this warlike people reasserted their independence. Horace alludes here (and also Carm. iii. 8, 22, Cantaber será domitus catena) to the chastisement which they received from Agrippa, A. U. c. 734. M'CAUL. 75 Genibus minor. The poet only means that Phraates was reduced to the lowest submissions, to purchase the protection of Augustus against his own subjects. Dacier understands the words literally, and that Caesaris means Tiberius, from whose hand the Parthian monarch received his crown. But is it not astonishing that Velleius Paterculus, always disposed to flatter Tiberius, hath forgotten a circumstance so glorious to him, and that we have not the least marks of it in any other historian. SAN. 76 Our poet sent Augustus not only the letter addressed to him (the first of the second Book), but also the last odes and last epistles he had written. He calls these pieces volumina, because they were separately rolled up; and he desires Vinnius to present them sealed, that they might not be exposed to the impertinent curiosity of the court. RODELL me, and industriously bring an odium upon my books [by being] an agent of violent officiousness. If haply the heavy load of my paper should gall you," cast it from you, rather than throw down your pack in a rough manner where you are directed to carry it, and turn your paternal name of Asina into a jest, and make yourself a common story. Make use of your vigor over the hills, the rivers, and the fens. As soon as you have achieved your enterprise, and arrived there, you must keep your burden in this position; lest you happen to carry my bundle of books under your arm, as a clown does a lamb, or as drunken Pyrrhia [in the play does] the balls of pilfered wool, or as a tribe-guest his slippers with his fuddlingcap. You must not tell publicly, how you sweated with carrying those verses, which may detain the eyes and ears of Cæsar. Solicited with much entreaty, do your best. Finally, get you gone, farewell: take care you do not stumble, and break my orders. 78 EPISTLE XIV. TO HIS STEWARD. He upbraids his levity for contemning a country life, which had been his choice, and being eager to return to Rome. my STEWARD of woodlands and little farm that restores me to myself, which you despise, [though formerly] inhabited by five families, and wont to send five good senators to Varia: let us try, whether I with more fortitude pluck the thorns out of my mind, or you out of my ground: and whether Horace or his estate be in a better condition. Though my affection and solicitude for Lamia, mourning 77 Augustus had rallied Horace for the shortness of his epistles, "vereri mihi videris ne majores libelli tui sint quàm ipse es;" you seem afraid that your letters should be longer than you are. The poet therefore sends a number of them together that he might make up in weight what he wanted in length. ED. DUBL. 78 Conviva tribulis. Athenæus tells us, that people of the same tribe had entertainments, called cœnæ thiase (probably not unlike our modern clubs), which were regulated by laws. The guests carried their bonnets, to preserve them from the weather; and slippers to put on when they went into the house of the master of the feast. ED. DUBL. 80 for his brother, lamenting inconsolably for his brother's loss, detain me; nevertheless my heart and soul" carry me thither and long to break through those barriers that obstruct my way. I pronounce him the happy man who dwells in the country, you him [who lives] in the city. He to whom his neighbor's lot is agreeable, must of consequence dislike his own. Each of us is a fool for unjustly blaming the innocent place. The mind is in fault, which never escapes from itself. When you were a drudge at every one's beck, you tacitly prayed for the country and now, [being appointed] my steward, you wish for the city, the shows, and the baths. You know I am consistent with myself, and loth to go, whenever disagreeable business drags me to Rome. We are not admirers of the same things: hence you and I disagree. For what you reckon desert and inhospitable wilds, he who is of my way of thinking calls delightful places; and dislikes what you esteem pleasant. The bagnio, I perceive, and the greasy tavern raise your inclination for the city: and this, because my little spot will sooner yield frankincense and pepper than grapes; nor is there a tavern near, which can supply you with wine; nor a minstrel harlot, to whose thrumming you may dance, cumbersome to the ground: and yet you exercise with plowshares the fallows that have been a long while untouched, you take due care of the ox when unyoked, and give him Lis fill with leaves stripped [from the boughs]. The sluice gives an additional trouble to an idle fellow, which, if a shower fall, must be taught by many a mound to spare the sunny meadow. Come now, attend to what hinders our agreeing. [Me,] whom fine garments and dressed locks adorned, whom you 79 When the Latins use mens animusque or mens animi, they would express all the faculties of the soul. Mens regards the superior and intelligent part, animus the sensible and inferior, the source of the passions. DAC. 80 Mediastinus was a slave of the lowest kind, who had no regular service appointed for him, but waited upon other slaves in the vilest employments. Among other directions given by Cato to his son, when he went to the army, "Ille imperator, tu illi ac cæteris Mediastinus." ED. DUBL. 81 Horace, to render the comparison between himself and his slave more just, draws a picture of the life they passed in their youth at Rome. He confesses that his own conduct had not been extremely regular, yet that of his slave, who was probably the confidant of his pleasures, had not been more wise. But while the master renounces the follies of his know to have pleased venal Cynara without a present, whom [you have seen] quaff flowing Falernian from noon-a short supper [now] delights, and a nap upon the green turf by the stream side: nor is it a shame to have been gay, but not to break off that gayety. There there is no one who reduces 82 my possessions with envious eye, nor poisons them with obscure malice and biting slander; the neighbors smile at me removing clods and stones. You had rather be munching your daily allowance with the slaves in town; you earnestly pray to be of the number of these: [while my] cunning foot-boy envies you the use of the firing, the flocks, and the garden. The lazy ox wishes for the horse's trappings: the horse wishes to go to plow. But I shall be of opinion, that each of them ought contentedly to exercise that art which he understands. EPISTLE XV. TO C. NEUMONIUS VALA. Preparing to go to the baths either at Velia or Salernum, he inquires after the healthfulness and agreeableness of the places. 83 Ir is your part, Vala, to write to me (and mine to give youth, though without blushing for them, the servant would continue in them as long as he lived. DAC. 82 Limat. Limis oculis aspicere aliquem, to look askew, or askance; but the Latins never used limare in that sense. The Scholiast explains the word limat by deterit, imminuit, for it was a superstition among the ancients, as Dacier observes, that an envious eye could lessen what it looked at, and corrupt our enjoyment of it. ED. DUB. "limat"=" quasi lima atterit, attenuare conatur." ORELLI. 83 Quæ sit hiems Veliæ, etc. The arrangement in this Epistle is very intricate. The first twenty-five lines form one strained hyperbaton. The natural order is: 25. Scribere te nobis, tibi nos accedere par est, Quæ sit hiems Veliæ, quod cœlum, Vala, Salerni; 14. Major utrum populum frumenti copia pascat; 22. Tractus uter plures lepores, uter educet apros; Utra magis pisces et echinos æquora celent, Pinguis ut inde domum possim Phæaxque reverti. M'CAUL credit to your information) what sort of a winter it is at Velia, what the air at Salernum, what kind of inhabitants the country consists of, and how the road is (for Antonius Musa** [pronounces] Baia to be of no service to me; yet makes me obnoxious to the place, when I am bathed in cold water even in the midst of the frost [by his prescription]. In truth, the village murmurs at their myrtle-groves being deserted, and the sulphurous waters, said to expel lingering disorders from the nerves, despised; envying those invalids, who have the courage to expose their head and breast to the Clusian springs, and retire to Gabii and [such] cold countries. My course must be altered, and my horse driven beyond his accustomed stages. Whither are you going? will the angry rider say, pulling in the left-hand rein," I am not bound for Cuma or Baiæ:-but the horse's ear is in the bit.) [You must inform me likewise] which of the two people is sup 86 84 Antonius Musa was a freeman of Augustus, and brother of Euphorbus, physician to king Juba. He had the happiness of curing Augustus of a distemper, which his other physicians thought desperate, and this cure raised both the faculty and its professors out of contempt. The prince and people contended in honoring a man who had restored a life so valuable to the state. He was rewarded with a considerable sum of money; he was exempted from all public taxes; he was made free of Rome, allowed to wear a gold ring, and his statue was placed next to that of Esculapius. These glorious distinctions were not confined to him alone, but extended to all of the profession, and the disciples of Hippocrates were then first allowed the privileges and immunities of a Roman citizen. The cold bath was now prescribed for all disorders, but the same prescription which had cured Augustus, having unhappily killed Marcellus, the science of physic, and the people who practiced it, fell into their original contempt. After this example, we may believe, that Horace would not be willing to run the same hazard, and therefore we may naturally date this letter in the beginning of 731, six or seven months after the recovery of Augustus, which happened in August. SAN. 85 This does not suppose that he had already gone into the cold bath, but that he proposed it, and was yet undetermined between that of Salernum and Velia. "Perluor" does not mark a past action, but the present disposition, as if he had said, "cùm in eo sum ut perluar." SAN. 86 Mutandus locus est. "We must go no more to Baiæ;" where the poet had frequently been. Sanadon blames this apostrophe; for although a rider naturally enough may sometimes talk to his horse, yet an author can hardly be supposed to sit down to write to him. 87 At the entrance into Campania the road divides; the right leads to Cuma and Baiæ; the left to Capua, Salernum, and Velia. The horse is going to his usual stage at Baiæ, but Horace turns him to the left, to the Lucanian road. TORR. |