The Satires of Horace and Persius

by Horace

  young folk too are often deterred from doing wrong

  by the ill repute of other people. That is the reason

  130 why I am free from the graver vices and have to cope

  only with milder, more venial, faults.

  Perhaps even these

  may be largely removed by the lapse of time or the straight talk

  of a friend, or my own reflection. For when I go off to my sofa

  or the colonnade, I’m not idle: ‘This is more honest;

  this will help to improve my life; this will endear me

  to my friends; that was a dirty trick so and so did; could I

  ever be so thoughtless as to act like that?’ Such is the discourse

  that I hold behind closed lips. When I get any free time

  I amuse myself on paper. That’s one of the milder faults

  140 I mentioned above. If you aren’t prepared to fall in with this habit

  a mighty company of poets will rally round to bring me

  assistance (for we are by far the larger group in numbers)

  and, like the Jews, we shall make you fall in with our happy band.

  SATIRE 5

  This is an account of the journey which Horace took in the company of Maecenas to a summit conference – probably that which was held in Tarentum in the spring of 37 BC. As a result of this conference the final clash between Antony and Octavian was postponed for another six years. Apart from his value as a travelling companion Horace may have had some secretarial duties to perform, but this is never stated and the serious purpose of the trip is not allowed to obtrude.

  The sketch-map opposite shows the route taken. I have added

  Venusia (Horace’s birthplace) and Tarentum, even though they are

  21

  not mentioned in the poem. The total distance from Rome to Brindisi

  was about 340 miles. The journey as described by Horace took just

  under a fortnight.

  Leaving the big city, I found lodgings at Aricia

  in a smallish pub. With me was Heliodorus, the professor

  of rhetoric, the greatest scholar in the land of Greece. From there

  to Forum Appi crammed with bargees and stingy landlords.

  Being lazy types we divided this stretch, though speedier travellers

  do it in one. The Appian is easier when taken slowly.

  Here I declared war on my stomach because of the water

  which was quite appalling, and waited impatiently as the other travellers

  enjoyed their dinner.

  Night was preparing to draw her shadows

  10 over the earth and to sprinkle the heavens with glimmering lights

  when the lads started to shout at the boatmen, who replied in kind.

  ‘Bring her over here!’ ‘How many hundred are you going to pack in?’

  ‘Whoah, that’s enough!’

  While the fares are collected and the mule harnessed,

  a whole hour goes by. The blasted mosquitoes and the marsh

  frogs make sleep impossible. The boatman, who has had a skinful

  of sour wine, sings of his distant loved one, and a traveller

  tries to outdo him. At last the weary traveller begins

  to nod. The lazy boatman allows the mule to graze;

  he ties the rope to a stone and lies on his back snoring.

  20 When day dawns we find the barge is making no progress.

  This is remedied when a furious passenger jumps ashore,

  seizes a branch of willow, and wallops the mule and the boatman

  on the head and back.

  It was almost ten before we landed.

  We washed our hands and face in Feronia’s holy spring.

  Then after breakfast we crawled three miles up to Anxur

  perched on its shining rocks which are visible far and wide.

  This was where the excellent Maecenas was due to come,

  along with Cocceius – envoys on a mission of huge importance;

  both were adept at reconciling friends who had quarrelled.

  30 I went in to smear some black salve on my eyes,

  which were rather bloodshot. Meanwhile Maecenas and Cocceius arrived,

  and also Fonteius Capito, a man of consummate charm

  and tact, who held a unique place in Antony’s affections.

  We left Fundi with relief in the Praetorship of Aufidius Luscus,

  laughing at the gear of that fatuous official – the toga complete

  with border, the broad-striped tunic, and the pan of glowing charcoal.

  After a weary journey, we stopped at the Mamurras’ city.

  Murena lent us his home, Capito provided the food.

  Dawn the next day found us in a state of high

  40 excitement, for on reaching Sinuessa we were joined by Plotius, Varius,

  and Virgil. No finer men have ever walked the face

  of the earth; and no one is more dearly attached to them all than I am.

  Imagine how pleased we were and how warmly we greeted each other!

  For me there’s nothing in life to compare with the joy of friendship.

  Near the Campanian Bridge accommodation was provided

  by a small house, fuel and salt by official caterers.

  Then, at Capua, the mules laid down their packs early.

  Maecenas went off to take exercise; Virgil and I had a sleep,

  for ball-games are bad for inflamed eyes and dyspeptic stomachs.

  50 Next we put up at a well-stocked villa belonging to Cocceius,

  which overlooks the inns of Caudium. Now, O Muse,

  recount in brief, I pray thee, the clash of Sarmentus the clown

  with Messius Cicirrus, and from what lineage each entered

  the fray. Messius comes of glorious stock – Oscans!

  Sarmentus’ lady owner is still alive. With such

  pedigrees they joined battle. Sarmentus was the first to strike:

  ‘I declare you’re the image of a wild horse!’

  ‘Right!’ says Messius,

  amid general laughter, and tosses his head.

  ‘Hey,’ says the other,

  ‘If you scare us like that when your horn’s cut off, what would you do

  60 with it still on your head?’ (The point being that the left side

  of his hairy brow was in fact disfigured by an ugly scar.)

  After many jokes about Messius’ face and ‘Campanian disease’

  he pleaded with him to do the dance of the shepherd Cyclops,

  swearing he would have no need of a mask or tragic buskins.

  Cicirrus wasn’t lost for an answer. Had Sarmentus got round to offering

  his chain, as promised, to the household gods? His status of clerk

  in no way diminished his mistress’s claim on him. Finally, why

  had he bothered to run away when a single pound of meal

  would have been enough for a tiny miserable scrap like him?

  70 We had great fun as the party continued into the night.

  From there straight on to Beneventum, where the fussy host very nearly

  burnt his house down while turning some skinny thrushes on the fire.

  For Vulcan fell out sideways through the old stove, and his darting

  flame instantly shot up to lick the roof overhead.

  Then, what a sight! greedy guests and frightened servants

  snatching up the dinner and all struggling to put out the blaze.

  From that point on Apulia began to bring into view

  her familiar hills. They were scorched as usual by the Scirocco,

  and we’d never have crawled across them had it not been for a villa

  80 close to Trivícum which provided shelter – and weepy smoke.

  (Damp branches were burning in the stove, leaves and all.)

  Here, like an utter fool, I stayed awake till midnight

  waiting for a girl who broke her promise. Sleep
in the end

  overtook me, still keyed up for sex. Then scenes from a dirty

  dream spattered my nightshirt and stomach as I lay on my back.

  From there we bowled along in waggons for twenty-four miles

  putting up at a little town which can’t be named in verse,

  though easily placed by its features: there they sell the most common

  of all commodities – water, but their bread is quite the finest,

  90 and a traveller, if wise, usually carries some with him on his journey;

  for the sort you get at Canusium (founded by bold Diomédes

  of yore) is gritty, and your jug is no better off for water.

  Varius here said a sad good-bye to his tearful friends.

  The following night we arrived at Rubi, utterly jaded

  from covering a long stretch of road damaged by heavy rain.

  On the next day the weather was better but the road worse

  all the way to the walls of Bari, renowned for fish.

  Then Gnatia, on whose construction the water-nymphs scowled,

  provided fun and amusement by trying to persuade us that incense

  100 melts without fire on the temple steps; Apella the Jew

  may believe it – not me, for I have learned that the gods live a life

  of calm, and that if nature performs a miracle, it’s not

  sent down by the gods in anger from their high home in the sky.

  Brindisi marks the end of this long tale and journey.

  SATIRE 6

  ‘In spite of your distinguished ancestry, Maecenas, you don’t look down on people of humble birth. But snobbery is very prevalent, and it’s hard for ordinary men to reach high positions. Yet perhaps such men are happier without political power. Certainly I have no ambition for myself, in spite of what people think. The position which I enjoy as your friend is a private matter. I gained it through personal qualities, for which I have to thank my father. He was responsible for my upbringing and education. The kind of life which I now enjoy would be impossible if I ever entered on a public career.’

  A well-to-do young Roman with political ambition would first do a period of military service. Then, in his late twenties, after holding some minor civil magistracy, he would stand for the Quaestorship. This office, which dealt with finance, carried with it admission to the Senate. After that, he might do a spell of civil administration as an Aedile before becoming a candidate for the Praetorship – an important office concerned with the administration of justice. Finally, at about the age of forty-two, he would be eligible for the Consulship.

  Horace did not wish to embark on this career himself, and he thought little of those who were now competing for positions of power. Yet he felt that such positions ought to be open to men of ability and not be restricted, as they had been in the past, to members of the upper class. These mixed emotions make the satire a rather complex poem.

  Although of all the Lydians settled on Tuscan soil

  none is of more exalted birth than you, Maecenas,

  and though you had forebears on both your mother’s and father’s side

  who held command over mighty legions in days gone by,

  you don’t on that account curl your nostril, as most people do,

  at men with unknown or (like myself) with freedmen fathers.

  When you assert that a man’s parentage makes no difference

  provided he himself is a gentleman, you rightly acknowledge

  that before Tullius held sway with his undistinguished monarchy

  10 many a man of no pedigree succeeded in living

  an upright life and was often honoured with high office;

  whereas Laevinus, a descendant of that Valerius who hurled

  Tarquin the Proud from his throne and drove him into exile, was never

  rated a penny the higher, even by the verdict of the people

  (that judge whom you know so well), who often foolishly confer

  office on worthless candidates and are stupidly enthralled by fame,

  gaping entranced at inscriptions and busts. So what is the right

  course for us who live in a different world from the masses?

  For granted the people would have liked to put a Laevinus in office

  20 rather than a self-made Decius, and Appius the Censor would have struck

  me off the roll because my father wasn’t a gentleman –

  and rightly, for I ought to have rested content in my own skin.

  Yet Glory drags in chains behind her dazzling car

  the obscure no less than the noble. What did it do for Tillius

  to resume the broad stripe he had shed and become a Tribune?

  Resentment increased. (It would have been less had he stayed out of politics.)

  When a man is silly enough to wind those black straps

  around his calves and have a broad stripe going down his chest

  he immediately hears ‘Who is this fellow? What was his father?’

  30 Anyone who suffered from Barrus’ complaint and was eager to win

  fame for his beauty would, wherever he went, arouse

  the girls’ anxious concern about personal details: ‘What sort of

  face and legs and feet and teeth and hair does he have?’

  So anyone who claims that he will take charge of the citizen body,

  capital, Italy, empire, and the holy shrines of the gods,

  inevitably causes the whole world to take notice and ask

  who his father was and whether he’s stained by a low-born mother.

  ‘Do you, the son of Syrus, Dionysius or Dama, presume

  to hurl Romans from the rock or hand them over to Cadmus?’

  40 ‘Why not? My colleague Newman sits in the row behind me.

  He is now what my father was.’

  ‘Do you think that that

  makes you a Paulus or Messalla? If a couple of hundred waggons

  crashed into three big funerals in the Forum, Newman could drown

  the horns and trumpets with his voice; at least he has that in his favour.’

  I now revert to myself – only a freedman’s son,

  run down by all as only a freedman’s son,

  now because I’m a friend of yours, Maecenas, before

  because as a military tribune I commanded a Roman legion.

  The two factors are different; a person might have reason

  50 to grudge me that rank, but he shouldn’t grudge me your friendship too,

  especially as you are so careful to choose suitable people,

  and to hold aloof from rogues on the make. I could never say

  I was lucky in the sense that I just happened to win your friendship.

  It wasn’t chance that brought you into my life. In the first place

  the admirable Virgil and then Varius told you what I was.

  When I met you in person I simply gulped out a few words,

  for diffidence tied my tongue and stopped me from saying more.

  I didn’t pretend I had a distinguished father or owned

  estates outside Tarentum which I rode around on a horse.

  60 I told you what I was. As usual, you answered briefly. I left.

  Nine months later you asked me back and bade me to join

  your group of friends. For me the great thing is that I won

  the regard of a discriminating man like you, not by having

  a highly distinguished father but by decency of heart and character.

  Yet if my faults are not too serious and not too many,

  if my nature, apart from such blemishes, in other respects is sound

  (just as on a handsome body you might notice a few moles),

  if no one can fairly accuse me of greed or meanness or frequenting

  brothels, if (to blow my own trumpet) my life is clean

  70 and above reproach, and my friends are fond of me, then the credit

  is due to my father.


  He was a poor man with a few

  scraggy acres, yet he wouldn’t send me to Flavius’ school

  where important boys, the sons of important sergeant-majors,

  would go, with satchel and slate swinging from the left arm,

  clutching their tenpenny fee on the Ides of every month.

  Instead he courageously took his boy to Rome, to be taught

  the skills which any knight or senator would have his own

  progeny taught. Anyone who noticed my clothes and the servants

  in attendance (a feature of city life) would have assumed

  80 that the money for these items came from the family coffers.

  My father himself, who was the most impeccable guardian,

  went with me to all my classes. In short he preserved my innocence

  (the basic feature of a good character), and therefore saved me

  not only from nasty behaviour but from nasty imputations.

  He wasn’t worried that someone might fault him later on

  if I became an auctioneer or, like himself, a broker,

  and didn’t make much money; nor would I have complained.

  As it is, I owe him all the more respect and gratitude.

  I would never dream of complaining of such a father, and so

  90 while people often protest that it’s no fault of theirs

  that they don’t happen to possess noble and famous parents,

  I shan’t adopt that line. What I say and think is entirely

  different. If, at a certain point in our lives, nature

  ordered us all to travel again the way we had come

  and to choose, in keeping with our self-esteem, whatever parents

  we each thought best, I should be happy with the ones I had;

  I should not choose people whose honour was officially attested by rods

  and thrones. The masses would think me crazy, but you might think

  I was wise to avoid a load of trouble which I’ve never been used to.

  100 For then I should immediately have to acquire a large establishment,

  greet more visitors, take one or two companions with me

  to avoid being on my own when going off to the country

  or travelling abroad; I should have to maintain more grooms and horses

  and take a convoy of waggons. As things are, I can

  if I wish go all the way to Tarentum on a gelded mule

  with his flanks chafed by the heavy pack and his withers by the rider.

  No one will call me stingy as they do you, Tillius,