Satires

BESIDE what you have told me, O Tiresias, answer to this petition of mine: by what arts and expedients may I be able to repair my ruined fortunes-why do you laugh? Does it already seem little to you, who are practiced in deceit, to be brought back to Ithaca, and to behold [again] your family household gods? 0 you who never speak falsely to any one, you see how naked and destitute I return home, according to your prophecy: nor is either my cellar, or my cattle there, unembezzled by the suitors [of Penelope]. But birth and virtue, unless [attended] with substance, is viler than seaweed.

Since (circumlocutions apart) you are in dread of poverty, hear by what means you may grow wealthy. If a thrush, or any [nice] thing for your own private [eating], shall be given you; it must wing way to that place, where shines a great fortune, the possessor being an old man: delicious apples, and whatever dainties your well-cultivated ground brings forth for you, let the rich man, as more to be reverenced than your household god, taste before him: and, though he be perjured, of no family, stained with his brother's blood, a runaway; if he desire it, do not refuse to go along with him, his companion on the outer side.[*](Comes exterior. In walking with a companion, the side which is most exposed was called the outer side. When three people walk together, the middle is, for the same reason, the most honorable place, and is therefore always given to the person of most distinction, interior comes.) What, shall I walk cheek by jole with a filthy Damas? I did not behave myself in that manner at Troy, contending always with the best. You must then be poor. I will command my sturdy soul to bear this evil; I have formerly endured even greater. Do thou, O prophet, tell me forthwith how I may amass riches, and heaps of money. In troth I have told you, and tell you again. Use your craft to lie at catch for the last wills of old men: nor, if one or two cunning chaps escape by biting the bait off the hook, either lay aside hope, or quit the art, though disappointed in your aim. If an affair, either of little or great consequence, shall be contested at any time at the bar; whichever of the parties live wealthy without heirs, should he be a rogue, who daringly takes the law of a better man, be thou. his advocate: despise the citizen, who is superior in reputation, and [the justness of] his cause, if at home he has a son or a fruitful wife. [Address him thus:] "Quintus, for instance, or Publius[*](Quinte, puta, aut Publi. A slave was no sooner made free, than he qualified himself with a surname, such as Marcus, Quintus, Publius, which carried a sort of dignity with it. The Romans saluted each other by their surnames.) (delicate ears delight in the prefixed name), your virtue has made me your friend. I am acquainted with the precarious quirks of the law; I can plead causes. Any one shall sooner snatch my eyes from me, than he shall despise or defraud you of an empty nut. This is my care, that you lose nothing, that you be not made a jest of." Bid him go home, and make much of himself. Be his solicitor yourself: persevere, and be steadfast: whether the glaring dog-star shall cleave the infant statues; or Furius, destined with his greasy paunch,[*](Pingui tentus omaso. Furius, in a poem on the Gallic war, had said, Iupiter hibernas cana nivo conspuet Alpes. Horace applies it to the author himself; adding pingui tentus omaso in ridicule of his appearance. Furius poeta immanis ventris, qui nivem spumam (sputum) Iovis dixit. Ideo hoc ejus persona dedit, tanquam ipse spuat.: Sch. Acr. Orelli considers three several passages of Furius to be referred to: rubra canicula findit infantes statuas, is a passage in which Furius describes a statuary, and thought he had a happy expression in infantes, since statues are ἀγλώττοι. By pingui tentus omasi, some general opposed to Caesar is described as a voracious barbarian. Hibernas, etc., formed the first line of his poetical history of Caesar.) shall spue white snow over the wintery Alps. Do not you see (shall some one say, jogging the person that stands next to him by the elbow) how indefatigable he is, how serviceable to his friends, how acute? [By this means] more tunnies shall swim in, and your fish-ponds will increase.

Further, if any one in affluent circumstances has reared[*](Sublatus. A word taken from a Roman custom of laying their new-born infants on the ground, and educating only those the father took up.) an ailing son, lest a too open complaisance to a single man should detect you, creep gradually into the hope [of succeeding him], and that you may be set down as second heir; and, if any casualty should dispatch the boy to Hades, you may come into the vacancy. This die seldom fails. Whoever delivers his will to you to read, be mindful to decline it, and push the parchment from you: [do it] however in such a manner, that you may catch with an oblique glance, what the first page[*](Prima cera signifies the first page of the will, in which the testator's name was written. Secundo versus was the second line, which contained the names of the heirs and co-heirs.) intimates to be in the second clause: run over with a quick eye, whether you are sole heir, or co-heir with many. Sometimes a well-seasoned lawyer, risen from a Quinquevir,[*](The quinqueviri were a kind of tip-staff or bailiff, in the colonies and municipal towns. A man who had passed through these little offices may well be supposed to be sufficiently knowing in what we call the practice, and from this body public notaries and registers were chosen. Horace therefore means, by scriba recoctus, a notary sufficiently refined in tricks and cunning of the law. Recoctus is properly double-dyed, that hath fully taken its color.) shall delude the gaping raven; and the fortunehunter Nasica shall be laughed at by Coranus.

This was [ever] among the number of my wishes: a portion of ground not over large, in which was a garden, and a founain with a continual stream close to my house, and a little woodland besides.The gods have done more abundantly, and better, for me [than this]. It is well: 0 son of Maia,[*](Maia nate. He addresses his prayer to Mercury, not only because this god was a patron of poets in general, and that our poet, as we find in his Odes, was particularly obliged to his protection, but because he presided over industry and merchandise, as Hercules did over any sudden, accidental increase of riches. Besides, he was a rural deity, from whence, as Dacier observes, the poet recommends the preservation of his cattle to him, in the fourteenth verse.) I ask nothing more save that you would render these donations lasting to me. If I have neither made my estate larger by bad means, nor am in a way to make it less by vice or misconduct; if I do not foolishly make any petition of this sort"Oh that that neighboring angle, which now spoils the regularity[*](Denormat. We do not find this word in any other author.) of my field, could be added! Oh that some accident would discover to me an urn [full] of money! as it did to him, who having found a treasure, bought that very ground he before tilled in the capacity of an hired servant, enriched by Hercules' being his friend;" if what I have at present satisfies me grateful, I supplicate you with this prayer: make my cattle fat for the use of their master, and every thing else, except my genius:[*](Et caetera praeter ingenium. The Latins, in speaking of style, have expressions not unlike this, pingue et adipatum dicendi genus; poetae pinguae quiddam sonantes. This playing on the double meaning of the word is much in our author's manner. Besides, Mercury was a good humored god, who understood raillery, de Dis non tristibus. Yet, for fear the deity should understand the word caetera in its full extent, and without any exception, the petitioner pleasantly guards against the fatness of his understanding.) and, as you are wont, be present as my chief guardian. Wherefore, when I have removed myself from the city to the mountains and my castle,[*](In arcem. He considers his country-house as a citadel inaccessible to the cares that besieged him at Rome.) (what can I polish, preferably to my satires and prosaic muse?[*](Musaque pedestri. The muse of satire, if such an expression may be allowed, is a muse on foot. She borrowed nothing from poetry but the measures of her verses, tho, only particular in which she differs from prose.)) neither evil ambition destroys me, nor the heavy[*](Plumbeus. This epithet very well expresses the weight of air in autumn, when the south wind was usually attended at Rome with pestilential disorders. Our poet's country-house was covered by mountains, in such a manner, that he had nothing to fear from its bad effects.) south wind, nor the sickly autumn, the gain of baleful Libitina.

Father of the morning,[*](Matutine pater. The satire properly begins here, and all before this line is a kind of preface. Janus presided over time, and therefore Horace calls him god of the morning, as if time seemed to be renewed every morning.) or Janus, if with more pleasure thou hearest thyself [called by that name], from whom men commence the toils of business, and of life (such is the will of the gods), be thou the beginning of my song. At Rome you hurry me away to be bail; "Away, dispatch, [you cry,] lest any one should be beforehand with you in doing that friendly office"[*](To show that all his distresses begin with the morning, the poet introduces Janus, the god of the morning, pressing them upon him, Urge sive Aquilo, etc.): I must go, at all events, whether the north wind sweep the earth, or winter contracts the snowy day into a arrower circle.[*](Interiore diem. The northern part of the circle which the sun describes in summer is more distant from our earth than the southern part, which he describes in winter. From hence our days are shorter in winter than in summer, and he may therefore be poetically said to drive the day in a smaller course. Horace calls this circle interiorem gyrum, by a figure taken from chariot races, in which the driver who turned nearest the goal marked a narrower circle, and was therefore called interior quadriga, with regard to those who were obliged to take a larger compass, exteriores. ) After this, having uttered in a clear and determinate manner [the legal form], which may be a detriment to me, I must bustle through the crowd; and must disoblige the tardy. "What is your will, madman, and what are you about, impudent fellow?" So one accosts me with his passionate curses. "You jostle every thing that is in your way, if with an appointment full in your mind you are posting away to Maecenas." This pleases me, and is like honey: I will not tell a lie. But by the time I reach the gloomy Esquiliae, a hundred affairs of other people's encompass me on every side: "Roscius begged that you would be with him at the court-house[*](Ad Puteal. He describes a part of the forum by a monument erected there to show that the place had been struck with thunder. Some of the proctors held a kind of sessions there to decide private causes.) to-morrow before the second hour." "The secretaries[*](Horace had purchased an employment of register or secretary to the treasury; from whence he is desired to return early from Maecenas to consult about some important affair that concerned the whole body.) requested you would remember, Quintus, to return to-day about an affair of public concern, and of great consequence." "Get Maecenas to put his signet[*](Imprimat his, cura.Dion informs us, that Maecenas was intrusted with the great seal of the Roman Empire, and was a kind of Lord High Chancellor to Augustus.) to these tablets." Should one say, "I will endeavor at it:" "If you will, you can," adds he; and is more earnest.

The seventh year approaching to the eighth is now elapsed, from the time that Maecenas began to reckon me in the number of his friends; only thus far, as one he would like to take along with him in his chariot, when he went a journey, and to whom he would trust such kind of trifles as these: "What is the hour?" "Is Gallina, the Thracian, a match for [the gladiator] Syrus?" "The cold morning air begins to pinch those that are ill provided against it;" — and such things as are well enough intrusted to a leaky ear. For all this time, every day and hour, I have been more subjected to envy. Our son of fortune here, says every body, witnessed the shows in company with [Maecenas], and played with him in the Campus Martius. Does any disheartening report spread from the rostrum through the streets, whoever comes in my way cousults me [concerning it]: "Good sir, have you (for you must know, since you approach nearer the gods) heard any thing relating to the Dacians?"[*](The Dacians had engaged in Antony's army at the battle of Actium, in 723, and Octavius had disobliged them by refusing some favors which they demanded by their embassadors. He was obliged to send Marcus Crassus against them the year following. SAN.) "Nothing at all for my part," [I reply]. "How you ever are a sneerer!" "But may all the gods torture me, if I know any thing of the matter." "What? will Caesar give the lands[*](Octavius promised the soldiers who had served under him in reducing Sicily, that he would divide some of the conquered lands among them. But the war in which he was engaged against Antony obliged him to defer the division, and immediately after the battle of Actium, the troops, which he had sent to Brundusium, mutinied on this occasion.He went himself to stop the beginning of a revolt, which might have been attended with most dangerous consequences. This affair was all the news at Rome when our poet wrote the present Satire.Sicily was called Triquetra from its triangular figure, and in some ancient coins it is represented under the figure of a woman with three legs.) he promised the soldiers, in Sicily, or in Italy?" As I am swearing I know nothing about it, they wonder at me, [thinking] me, to be sure, a creature of profound and extraordinary secrecy.