by Horace
(you have too much sense and taste). If you do write something later,
be sure to read it aloud to the critic Tarpa, and also
to your father and me. Then hold it back ‘till the ninth year’,
keeping your jotter inside the house. You can always delete
390 what hasn’t been published; a word let loose is gone for ever.
Before men left the jungle, a holy prophet of heaven,
Orpheus, made them abhor bloodshed and horrible food.
Hence he is said to have tamed rabid lions and tigers.
It is also said that Amphíon, who built the city of Thebes,
moved rocks by the sound of his lyre and led them at will
by his soft appeals. This was the wisdom of olden days:
to draw a line between sacred and secular, public and private;
to bar indiscriminate sex, and establish laws of marriage;
to build towns and inscribe legal codes on wood.
400 That is how heavenly bards and their poems came to acquire
honour and glory; after them Tyrtaeus and Homer
won renown, for their verses sharpened the courage of men
to enter battle. Song was the medium of oracles, song
showed the way through life. By means of Pierian tunes
a king’s favour was sought, and an entertainment devised
to close a season of long work. So don’t be ashamed
if you love the Muse’s skill on the lyre and Apollo’s singing.
Is it a gift or a craft that makes outstanding poetry?
I fail, myself, to see the good either of study
410 without a spark of genius or of untutored talent.
Each requires the other’s help in a common cause.
The Olympic athlete who strains to breast the finishing tape
worked and suffered a lot as a boy, sweating and freezing,
leaving wine and women alone. The piper competing
at Delphi was once a learner and stood in awe of his teacher.
Is it enough to proclaim ‘I’m a marvellous poet!
The last one home is a cissy; I hate to lag behind
or admit I’m utterly ignorant of something I never learnt’?
As an auctioneer attracts a crowd to bid for his goods,
420 a poet with large estates and large sums invested
encourages toadies to come and obtain something for nothing.
If he’s also the sort who knows how to serve delicious dinners,
who will sponsor a shifty and penniless client or come to his rescue
when he’s up to his neck in a lawsuit, then I’ll be very surprised
if the lucky fellow can tell a true friend from a sham.
When you have given someone a present, or plan to do so,
and he’s pleased and excited, never invite him to hear any verses
you have written. He’ll shout ‘Fine! Lovely! Oh yes!’
He will turn pale at this, at that he will squeeze a tear
430 from his loyal eyes; he will jump to his feet and stamp the ground.
Just as those who are hired to come and wail at a funeral
say and do, if anything, more than the truly bereaved,
so the fake is more visibly moved than the real admirer.
When kings are keen to examine a man and see if he merits
their trust, we are told, they make him submit to the test of wine,
plying him with a succession of glasses. So if you compose,
make sure you are not deceived by the fox’s hidden malice.
When you read a piece to Quintilius he’d say ‘Now shouldn’t you alter
that and that?’ If you swore you had tried again and again
440 but couldn’t do any better, he’d tell you to rub it out
and to put the lines which were badly finished back on the anvil.
If, instead of removing the fault, you chose to defend it,
he wouldn’t waste another word or lift a finger
to stop you loving yourself and your work without a rival.
An honest and sensible man will fault lines that are feeble,
condemn the clumsy, proscribe with a black stroke of the pen
those which haven’t been trimmed, prune pretentious adornment,
where a place is rather dark insist that light be admitted,
detect ambiguous expressions, and mark what ought to be changed.
450 He’ll be a new Aristarchus; nor will he say ‘Why should I
annoy a friend over trifles?’ For such ‘trifles’ will lead
to serious trouble once he is greeted with laughter and hisses.
As with the man who suffers from a skin disease or jaundice
or religious frenzy caused by the lunar goddess’s anger,
sensible people are wary of touching the crazy poet
and keep their distance; children unwisely follow and tease him.
Away he goes, head in the air, spouting his verses;
and if, like a fowler watching a bird, he happens to tumble
into a pit or a well, however long he may holler
460 ‘Somebody! Help!’ no one will bother to pull him out.
If anyone does bring help and drops him down a rope,
‘How do you know,’ I’ll say, ‘he didn’t throw himself in
on purpose, and doesn’t want to be left there?’ I’ll add the tale
of the poet of Sicily’s death – how Empedocles, eager to join
the immortals, leaped into Etna’s inferno (thus catching fire
for the first time). Dying is a poet’s right and privilege.
To save him against his will is tantamount to murder.
He’s done it before; and it’s not as if, when you hauled him up,
he’d become human and cease to yearn for a notable death.
470 One wonders why he persists in writing poetry. Is it
a judgement for pissing on his father’s ashes, or has he profaned
a gruesome place where lightning has struck? He’s certainly mad,
and like a bear that has managed to smash the bars of its cage
he scatters everyone, cultured or not, by the threat of reciting.
For he firmly grips the person he catches, and reads him to death.
The leech never lets go the skin till he’s full of blood.
PERSIUS
PROLOGUE
‘I have not undergone any of the usual rituals of consecration. I only half belong to the fraternity of bards. But, as we know, the prospect of cash makes all kinds of untalented people poetic.’
I never drenched my lips in cart-horse spring,
nor dreamed upon Parnassus’ two-pronged height
(I think) to explain my bursting on the scene
as poet. Pale Pirene and Helicon’s Maids
I leave to those whose portraits are entwined
with clinging ivy. I present my song,
a semi-clansman, at the bardic rites.
Who coached the parrot to pronounce ‘Bonjour!’?
Who helped the magpie mimic human speech?
10 Teacher of art, giver of genius’ gift –
the belly, adept at bending nature’s laws.
If cash sends out a tempting ray of hope,
then raven poets and magpie poetesses
you’d swear were singing Pegasus’ nectar-flow.
SATIRE 1
In the course of this dialogue between the satirist and an anonymous interlocutor Persius says that he expects to have few readers because the Romans do not want poetry to have any bearing on real life. Fashionable verse is false and affected, written without a proper apprenticeship to the craft and designed solely to win applause. This decadence in literary taste is directly related to the general decadence in morals. Romans have lost their traditional virility. The satire ends with a list of certain types whom Persius does not hope to have as readers.
Ah
, the obsessions of men! Ah, what an empty world!
‘Who will read this?’
Are you asking me? Why, no one.
‘No one?’
Well, perhaps one or two.
‘Disgraceful! Pathetic!’
But why?
Are you worried in case ‘Polyýdamas and the Trojan ladies’ prefer
Labeo to me? What the hell? If woolly old Rome attaches
no weight to a piece of work, don’t you step in to correct
the faulty tongue on her balance. Ask no one’s view but your own.
Is there any Roman who hasn’t – if only I could say it – but I can,
when I look at our venerable hair and that austere demeanour
and all we’ve been at since we gave up marbles avnd assumed the
10 wisdom
of disapproving uncles, then – sorry, it’s not that I want to –
but what can I do? It’s my wicked humour – I must guffaw!
Behind our study doors we write in regular metre,
or else foot-loose, a prodigious work which will leave the strongest
lungs out of breath. No doubt you’ll finally read the product
from a public platform, carefully combed, in a new white toga,
with a birthday gem on your finger, rinsing your supple throat
with a clear preparatory warble, your eyes swooning in rapture.
Then, what a sight! The mighty sons of Rome in a dither,
20 losing control of voice and movement as the quivering strains
steal under the spine and scratch the secret passage.
You old fraud – collecting titbits for other men’s ears –
ears which will puff your skin out of shape until you cry ‘Whoa there!’
‘What’s the point of study if that frothy yeast, that fig-tree
which has once struck root inside never bursts out of the heart?’
So that’s why you’re pale and peevish! My god, what have we come to?
Is it so futile to know things unless you are known to know them?
‘But it’s nice to be pointed out, and for people to say “that’s him!”
Isn’t it something to be set as a text for a mob of long-haired
schoolboys?’
30 Look, the Roman elite with well-filled stomach
are inquiring over the port ‘What has deathless verse to say?’
Then a creature with a hyacinth mantle draped around his shoulders
mumbles some putrid stuff through his nose, filtering out
a Phyllis or Hypsípyle or some other tear-jerking bardic rot,
letting the words trip prettily against his tender palate.
The great men murmur approval. Now surely the poet’s ashes
are happy; surely the gravestone presses more lightly on his bones!
The humbler guests applaud. Now surely violets will spring
from those remains, from his tomb, and from his blessed dust!
40 ‘You’re making fun,’ he says, ‘and curling your nostrils unfairly.
Who would deny that he hoped to earn a place on the lips
of the nation, to utter words that called for cedar oil,
and to leave behind pages that feared neither mackerel nor incense?’
You, whoever you are, my fictitious debating opponent,
if in the course of my writing something special emerges
(a rare bird, I admit), but if something special emerges,
I’m not the man to shrink from applause; my skin’s not that tough.
But I do say your ‘Bravo’ and ‘Lovely’ are not the final
and ultimate test of what’s good. For just shake out that ‘Lovely’.
50 What does it not contain? Why Attius’ Iliad’s there,
dotty with hellebore. Yes, and all the dear little elegies
thought up by dyspeptic grandees, all the stuff in fact
that is scribbled on citrus couches. You cleverly serve at dinner
hot sow’s udders, give a threadbare coat to a shivering client,
then say ‘I’m a lover of truth; tell me the truth about me. ’
How can he? Shall I oblige? You’re an airy doodler, baldy,
though your fat pot protrudes at least a foot and a half!
Janus, you have no stork pecking you from behind,
no wagging hands that mimic long white ears, no tongue
60 stuck out like a thirsty dog’s when his star is parching Apulia.
My noble lords, who must live with a blind rear wall in your skull,
run and confront the jeering grimace at your back door!
‘Well what does the public say?’
What you’d expect – that poems
at last have a smooth-flowing rhythm; where the joint occurs, it sends
the critical nail skidding across the polished surface.
He rules each line, as if stretching a cord with one eye shut.
Our poet’s Muse always provides him with great themes –
the royal way of life, perhaps, or its splendours, or its dinners!
Just look, we are teaching them to voice heroic sentiments – amateurs
70 who used to doodle in Greek! They haven’t the skill to depict
a clump of trees or the well-fed land with its baskets and hearths
and pigs, and the hay smoking on Pales’ holiday – that’s where
Remus came from and Quintius, who was polishing his share in the furrow
when his flustered wife, with a quorum of oxen, invested him Dictator,
and the sergeant took home the plough. Bravo my noble bard!
Nowadays one man pores over the shrivelled tome
of Accius the old Bacchanal, others over Pacuvius
and his warty Antiopa – ‘a dolorous heart weighed down by woe’.
When you see myopic fathers dinning these daft ideas
80 into their sons, why ask who’s to blame for putting this sizzling
mish-mash into their mouths, and for that degrading rubbish
which makes our pumiced knights of the realm jitter on their seats?
You should be ashamed! Why you can’t defend that venerable head
in court without eagerly listening for a murmur of ‘Very nice!’
‘You, Pedius, are a thief!’ In answer Pedius weighs
the charges in trim antitheses and is praised for his clever figures.
‘How lovely!’ Well is it lovely? Or is Romulus wagging his tail?
Would that move me? If a shipwrecked mariner sang would I give him
a penny? Do you sing as you tote on your shoulders a picture of you
in the flotsam? Whoever would bowl me over will have to produce
90 some genuine tears, not rehearsed the night before.
‘But the crude old verses have been given a new smoothness and grace.
A metrical role has now been assigned to “Berecyntian Attis”
and to “The dolphin slicing his way through dark blue Nereus”,
and to “We stole a rib from the long spine of the Apennines.”
“Arms and the man” – what desiccated, antiquated stuff that is,
like the branch of an old cork tree enveloped in cakey bark!’
Well what is fresh, and good for reciting with limp-held wrist?‘
They filled their frightening horns with Bacchanalian brays.
100 The Bassarid carrying the head torn from a frisky calf
and the Maenad ready to guide the lynx with reins of ivy
cry Euhoe! Euhoe! The shout’s taken up by restorative Echo.’
Could such things happen if we cherished a spark of our fathers’ spunk?
This emasculated stuff, this Maenad and Attis, floats on the spit,
always on the tip of the tongue, ready to come drooling out.
It doesn’t pummel the back-rest or taste of bitten nails.
‘But why do you feel obliged to rub the rasp of
truth
on sensitive ears? Better watch it. You may get a chilly reception
from those baronial porches. Don’t you hear the rolling r
110 of an angry dog?’
From now let’s say everything’s white.
I don’t care. Bravo! Superb! You’re all just marvellous.
How’s that? You erect a notice which says ‘Refrain from shitting.’
Paint two holy snakes: ‘this is sacred ground, my lads;
find somewhere else to piss.’ i’m going. Lucilius crunched
the city – Lupus and Mucius and all – and smashed his molar.
While his friend is laughing, that rascal Horace lays his finger
on all his faults; gaining admission, he plays on the conscience –
so clever at holding the public up on that well-blown nose.
Am I forbidden to whisper – to myself – to a ditch – to anything?
120 Never mind; I’ll bury it here in my book. I’ve seen it myself:
EVERY MAN JACK HAS AN ASS’S EARS! That’s my secret;
that’s my joke. Slight as it is, I still wouldn’t sell it
for all your iliads.
If you’ve caught the spirit of brave Cratínus
or are pale from devotion to angry Euípolis and the Grand Old Man,
if you’ve an ear for a concentrated brew, then look at this.
I want a reader with his ears well steamed by that comic vinegar,
not the lout who is eager to jeer at Greek-style sandals,
and is willing to shout ‘Hey one-eye!’ at a man with that affliction,
who thinks he’s somebody just because as Aedile at Arezzo
130 he has smashed a few short measures with full municipal pomp,
nor the witty fellow who sniggers on seeing cones and numbers
traced in the sand of the abacus, and is vastly amused if a Nones-girl
cheekily pulls a philosopher’s beard. For them I suggest
the law reports in the morning, and Calliroë after lunch.
SATIRE 2
Men’s secret prayers are discreditable and foolish, revealing an ignorant and debased conception of divinity.
Count this a red-letter day, Macrinus! Another year
rolls in to your credit. Pour a drink for your guardian angel.
You never offer covetous prayers, asking the gods
for things that you wouldn’t dare to mention except in private.
But most of the wealthy offer incense from a silent casket.
