by Horace
The fifth satire describes how the Stoic Cornutus taught Persius that the only true freedom was moral freedom. This central tenet of the school was summed up in the saying, ‘all fools are slaves; only the wise are free’.
These are just a few examples of Stoic theory in Persius. It must be added, however, that by this time Stoicism had become very eclectic. For example, although the dualism of mind and body (Satires 2) is found in Stoics like Poseidonius and Seneca, it goes back to Plato and beyond him to the Pythagoreans. The call for self-knowledge (Satires 4) is one of the oldest elements in Greek thought – the maxim ‘know thyself’ was inscribed above the portals of Apollo’s temple at Delphi. And certainly the Stoics were not the only people to stress the moral function of poetry (Satires 1). Finally, the theme of Satire 6 is that the sensible man will use what he has and will not struggle to amass a fortune for his heir. The same advice can be found in Plato, Aristotle, the Cynics, and the Epicureans. It is therefore perhaps a mistake to lay too great a stress on the purely Stoic side of Persius.
Furthermore, the modern reader is not primarily interested in Persius as an expositor of ethical ideas. The ideas themselves are traditional. It is the form in which they are presented that catches our attention. To amplify this would involve an essay on Persius’ style, and that would be inappropriate here. I can only give a few examples from the Prologue.
Persius begins by disclaiming inspiration: he has not drunk from Hippocrene. But he doesn’t put it so simply. He translates the Greek Hippocrene – ‘horse spring’ – into Latin, choosing the pedestrian word for horse. The result is fons caballinus – ‘cart-horse spring’, instead of fons equinus – ‘steed spring’. That is not how Nathaniel Hawthorne and his predecessors spoke of Pegasus. One thinks rather guiltily of the massive dray depicted by Rubens in ‘Perseus frees Andromeda’.
The satirist goes on to say that he had nothing to do with the Heliconides (‘maids of Helicon’) – a word found nowhere else; he is not a full member of the bards’ fraternity, only a semipaganus (‘half clansman’) – another unique word. The established poets who line the walls of the public libraries have ivy licking their busts. The graphic and semi-derisive lambunt – ‘lick’, which suggests that every piece of ivy is like a fawning animal, is typical of Persius. He ends by saying (ironically, for he was well off) that the prospect of cash makes all kinds of uninspired people poetic:
If cash sends out a tempting ray of hope,
then raven poets and magpie poetesses
you’d swear were singing Pegasus’ nectar-flow.
The middle line has the unusual device of two nouns juxtaposed, the first functioning as an adjective. Not only that, the device occurs twice in the one line – corvos poetas et poetridas picas. Finally, linking up with the allusion to Pegasus in v. 1, we have the extraordinary line
cantare credas Pegaseium nectar.
Theocritus had spoken of the Muse letting nectar drop on a poet’s mouth. A critic of Horace’s accuses him of believing that he alone distils the honey of poetry. But it took Persius to describe someone as ‘singing nectar’. Also, he couples the noun with the adjective Pegaseium (a form found nowhere else) which means ‘pertaining to Pegasus’, hence ‘inspired by the Muses’.
This compressed, allusive, metaphorical style is at once the delight and the despair of the translator. If he irons out every peculiarity he is doing violence to the poet. If he always gives a literal rendering the result will in many cases be unintelligible. So he must simply use his judgement as best he can and hope that the over-all effect is reasonably accurate.
A NOTE ON SOME TRANSLATIONS OF HORACE AND PERSIUS
For a long time the only translation of Horace’s Satires readily obtainable in England was the Loeb version by H. R. Fairclough first printed in 1926. Fairclough was a sound scholar, and except in a very few cases he gave an accurate rendering of the Latin. But apart from the question of price and format, there ought surely to be more than one type of translation available. Fairclough’s is in prose, which by definition involves a loss of rhythmical regularity. And the prose itself is often rather stilted. Here is the opening of the famous encounter with the pest on the Sacred Way (I. 9):
I was strolling by chance along the Sacred Way, musing after my fashion on some trifle or other, and wholly intent thereon, when up there runs a man I knew only by name and seizes me by the hand: ‘How d’ye do, my dearest fellow?’ ‘Pretty well, as times are now,’ I answer, ‘I hope you get all you want.’
I doubt if that represents the spoken English of any place or period. The earlier prose version by E. C. Wickham (1903), which Fairclough should have acknowledged, varies quite a lot in fluency, but it usually keeps close to the Latin. I have frequently consulted both these translations and am much in their debt.
The last verse translation to appear in England was that of John Conington (1874). Written in ten-syllable rhyming couplets, it is a work of great dexterity which can still be read with pleasure. Here is his rendering of the same passage of I. 9:
Along the Sacred Road I strolled one day,
Deep in some bagatelle (you know my way),
When up comes one whose name I scarcely knew –
‘The dearest of dear fellows! how d’ye do?’
He grasped my hand – ‘Well thanks: the same to you.’
As it happens, those five lines correspond to five in the original, but such compression could not be maintained. A little later the pest says of himself:
‘There’s not a man can turn a verse so soon,
Or dance so nimbly when he hears a tune:
While, as for singing – ah! my forte is there:
Tigellius’ self might envy me, I’ll swear.’
‘When he hears a tune’, ‘ah! my forte is there’, and ‘I’ll swear’ are all imported to eke out the rhyme. As a result of such expansion Conington’s translation of I. 9 has 109 verses to Horace’s 78. In defence it might be argued that, since Horace averages about fifteen syllables to a line as opposed to Conington’s ten, Conington is justified in taking half as many lines again. But even if that were granted a more serious difficulty would remain, namely that the rhyming couplets make the sense-units too short and regular. The metre can still be used to translate Ovid’s elegiacs – if one has the elegance and ingenuity of Mr L. P. Wilkinson. But it is really too tight a jacket for the Horatian sermo. This may sound an odd contention in view of the achievements of Pope, but then Pope was not translating; he was imitating. This allowed him to omit much of the original and to bring in characteristically brilliant effects of antithetical wit.
Consider vv. 7–14 of his dialogue with Fortescue in imitation of Satires II. 1:
P. Timorous by nature, of the rich in awe,
I come to counsel learned in the law:
‘You’ll give me, like a friend both sage and free,
Advice; and (as you use) without a fee.’
F. I’d write no more.
P. ‘Not write? but then I think,
And for my soul I cannot sleep a wink,
I nod in company, I wake at night,
Fools rush into my head, and so I write.’
Delightful, but only the tiniest nucleus comes from Horace, as a literal rendering will show: ‘Trebatius, advise me what to do.’ ‘Take a rest.’ ‘You mean not write verses at all?’ ‘I do.’ ‘Dammit that would be the best thing, but I can’t get to sleep.’
Even when full credit is given to these versions, the obvious fact remains that rhyming couplets would not do for a modern translation. They do not allow the thought to flow on in a conversational style, and they demand conventional licences of diction and word-order which are not granted today.10 These were doubtless among the points in Professor Smith Palmer Bovie’s mind when he produced his verse translation in 1959. Based on stress instead of rhyme, the rendering is fluent, contemporary, and often amusing. I did not consult it when preparing the present version, but I remember noting when I read it ten years
ago that it did not attempt to keep very close to the Latin, and that from time to time it jazzed up the original by inserting intellectual jokes. For example, the phrase from I. 2. 113 Inane abscindere soldo (to mark off solid from void) is rendered ‘to distinguish between romance and mere sexistentialism’, and vv. 11 – 12 of I. 8 appear thus:
A plebeian community sepulchre, ‘Parasites Lost’
(for guys like Pantolabus or that fool Nomentanus).
The situation with Persius was rather similar. There were two good prose translations – Conington (revised by Nettleship, 1893) and Ramsay (1918); one clever version in rhyming couplets (Tate, 1930); and a lively American rendering by Merwin (1961) in lines of five or six beats.11
As in the case of Horace, only the modern translator is capable of facing the obscene passages, scarce though they are. Tate justifies his evasions by a sophistical epigram: ‘to turn physiological accuracy into literary indecency is not the function of a translator’ (Introduction, p. 3). Conington in the Preface to his Horace is more candid: ‘I have omitted two entire satires and several passages from others. Some of them no one would wish to see translated: some, though capable of being rendered without offence a hundred or even fifty years ago, could hardly be so rendered now’ (i.e., in 1874). These two quotations show how the Victorian sense of propriety was already developing as the great lady ascended the throne, and how it still prevailed in the years preceding the Second World War. Its passing is not, perhaps, a matter for unmixed relief, but, however that may be, a translator can no longer claim that he is prevented from giving an honest rendering of his author by the delicacy of public taste.
The present translation is in verse because a prose rendering, apart from being superfluous, did not seem to offer much challenge. If this sounds rash, it must be remembered that satire was the least ‘inspired’ and the most relaxed and conversational of all the poetic genres. Like several recent translators I have chosen a line of six variable beats with a sufficient number of dactyls or anapaests to recall the movement of the original.12 Since this is a rather rambling form, it seemed best, in the hope of achieving economy, to have the same number of verses as the original poems, and to reproduce their strong pauses when these occurred at the end of a line. For example, Horace I. 1 has full stops or question marks at the end of vv. 3, 5, 8, and 10. These are observed in the translation.
Stress, unlike quantity, is sometimes a rather subjective thing. Take the opening line of Horace I. 1:
How is it, Maecenas, that no one is content with his own lot?
The problem is confined to the first three words. In conversation we might say, ‘how ís it’ or, more emphatically, ‘hów ís it’. In this case, if we want to be accurate, we must say ‘how is ít’; otherwise the line will have one beat too many. Other lines can be read correctly in more than one way. One other point to bear in mind, though it may be rather obvious, is that pronouns carry a stress when emphasized. I have seldom thought it necessary to indicate this with italics. In the matter of stress, then, there is bound to be some variation between one reader and another. All I would claim is that every line can be read in a natural way with six beats.
In 1987 a new version of Persius, with the genuine taste of ‘bitten nails’ (I. 106), was published by Guy Lee. In the dilemma mentioned on p. 31 above he tends, perhaps rightly, to favour strangeness over accessibility. William Barr’s commentary is an added bonus.
NOTES
1. Quintilian, Institutiones Oratoriae X. 1. 93.
2. A full account of the satura-question is given by C. A. Van Rooy and by M. Coffey (see Select Bibliography, p. 209).
3. Livy 7. 2.
4. Dryden, Discourse Concerning the Original and Progress of Satire. See W. P. Ker’s edition of Dryden’s essays, Oxford, 1926, vol. 2, pp. 86–7. There is a discussion of Dryden’s essay in the appendix of the present author’s book The Satires of Horace (hereafter referred to as SH).
5. Rheinisches Museum 97 (1954) 343–58.
6. The question of satyrs in Rome is explored by T. P. Wiseman in Journal of Roman Studies 78 (1988) 1–13. See also the points made on pp. 30–31 of my commentary (Select Bibliography, p. 210).
7. This short biography, based on material collected towards the end of the first century AD, will be found in the Loeb translation of Suetonius, vol. 2.
8. Lucan, as quoted in the biography of Persius; see the Loeb translation of Suetonius, vol. 2, p. 496. Quintilian X. 1. 94; Martial IV. 29. 7.
9. Cf. Tacitus, Annals 16.22 (Thrasea) and perhaps also 14.48 (Antistius); Dio 62. 29 (Cornutus). This is somewhat modified by Suetonius, Nero 39, but that passage says nothing of attacks on the Emperor’s poetry, and it does mention two cases of banishment.
10. These points apply even more to the eight-syllable couplet. See Cowper’s version of Horace I. 9.
11. For earlier verse translations see W. Frost, ‘English Persius: The Golden Age’, Eighteenth-Century Studies 2 (1968) 77–101.
12. The only exception is the Prologue of Persius, which is rendered in five-stress lines.
HORACE
Satires
BOOK I
SATIRE 1
‘Why are men discontented with their jobs? Presumably because they would prefer to do something else. Yet if they were given the opportunity to change they would most likely refuse it. A man will say that he puts up with his job simply in order to save enough for his retirement. But such men often continue to work even when they have made sufficient money.’ By now (v. 40) it appears that discontent is in some way connected with greed. In the main section of the poem (41–107) Horace talks to a miser who puts forward various arguments in defence of greed. Finally at v. 108 the opening topic is reintroduced in a modified form. ‘As a result of envious greed few people can say that they’ve had a happy life.’
How is it, Maecenas, that no one is content with his own lot –
whether he has got it by an act of choice or taken it up
by chance – but instead envies people in other occupations?
‘It’s well for the merchant!’ says the soldier, feeling the weight of his years
and physically broken down by long weary service.
The merchant, however, when his ship is pitching in a southern gale,
cries ‘Soldiering’s better than this! Of course it is! You charge,
and all in a moment comes sudden death or the joy of victory.’
The expert in law and statute longs for the farmer’s luck
10 when before daylight an anxious client knocks on his door.
The other, dragged up to town from the country to appear in court,
swears that only city folk know what happiness is.
To quote all the other examples would exhaust that windbag Fabius.
But I shan’t keep you – here’s what I’m getting at: suppose a god
were to say ‘Behold, here am I, ready to grant
your wishes. You who just now were a soldier shall become a merchant,
and you who just now were a lawyer shall become a farmer. Right!
Exchange roles and away you go. What are you waiting for?’
they’d refuse, even though they could have their heart’s desire.
20 Why should Jupiter keep his patience? He might well puff out
his cheeks in anger and vow with every justification
never again to be so obliging as to heed their prayers.
Again, not to skip over the subject with a laugh like someone
telling a string of jokes – and yet what harm can there be
in presenting the truth with a laugh, as teachers sometimes give
their children biscuits to coax them into learning their ABC?
However, joking aside, let’s take the matter seriously.
That fellow turning the heavy soil with his rough plough,
the crooked barman, the soldier, and the sailors who dash so bravely
30 across the seven seas maintain that their
only object
in enduring hardship is to make their pile, so when they are old
they can then retire with an easy mind. In the same way
the tiny ant with immense industry (for he is their model)
hauls whatever he can with his mouth and adds it to the heap
he is building, thus making conscious and careful provision for the future.
Then, as the year wheels round into dismal Aquarius, the ant
never sets foot out of doors but, very sensibly, lives
on what he has amassed. But you – neither scorching heat nor the cold
of winter can divert you from your money-grubbing; fire, tempest, sword –
40 nothing can stop you; no one else must be richer than you.
Why have a huge mass of silver and gold if it makes you
so nervous that you dig a hole in the ground and furtively bury it?
‘If you once broke in on it you’d soon be down to your last penny.’
If you don’t break in on it what’s so fine about having a heap?
Suppose your floor has threshed a hundred thousand bushels,
that doesn’t mean your stomach will hold any more than mine.
If you belonged to a slave-gang and happened to be carrying the bread-bag
on your aching shoulders, you wouldn’t get any more than the chap
who had carried nothing. Tell me, if a man lives within nature’s
50 limits, what matter whether he has a hundred or a thousand acres
of ploughed land?
‘But it’s nice to draw from a big pile!’
But if you let us draw the same amount from our little pile,
