The Satires of Horace and Persius by Horace & Persius
Author:Horace & Persius [Horace & Persius]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Poetry, Classics
ISBN: 9780140455083
Google: j33ype6k73AC
Amazon: 0140455086
Goodreads: 132864
Publisher: Penguin Group USA, Inc.
Published: 1973-01-01T06:00:00+00:00
EPISTLE 16
After describing his Sabine estate, Horace reflects on the nature of goodness.
My dear Quinctius, to save you asking about my farm –
whether it feeds its master from the furrow, or makes him rich
with the fruit of the olive, with apples, or meadows, or vine-clad elms –
I’m writing a chatty letter on the nature and site of the place.
If I told you the chain of mountains was broken by a shady valley,
so that the sun in its morning approach looks on the right side
and warms the left as it speeds away in its flying car,
you’d praise its mildness. What if I added that the bushes grow
lots of cornels and plums, that the oak and ilex delight
10 the herd with plenty of acorns and the owner with plenty of shade?
Why you’d say Tarentum’s greenery had been brought nearer to home!
There is also a spring, which deserves to give its name to the river.
(The Hebrus is no more cool or clear as it winds across Thrace.)
The stream is good for an invalid’s head – and for his stomach.
This retreat, which I love and which is, I assure you, delightful,
keeps me fit, you’ll be glad to hear, in the heat of September.
Your life is in order if you manage to be what you seem.
We in Rome have long been accustomed to call you happy;
but you mustn’t put anyone’s view of yourself above your own,
20 or count anyone happy apart from the wise and good,
or, if people constantly say you’re sound and healthy,
conceal and disguise your fever as dinner approaches, until
with knife and fork in hand you suddenly start to shiver.
Fools, from a wrong-headed shyness, hide their open wounds.
If someone spoke of the wars you had fought on land and sea,
and stroked your eagerly listening ear with words like these:
‘May Jove, who cares for both you and the country, keep it a secret
whether the people are more concerned for your welfare
or you for the people’s’, you’d know the praise belonged to Augustus.
30 When you allow yourself to be called ‘wise and faultless’,
do tell me, is the name you acknowledge really yours?
‘Well, I enjoy being called “good” and “wise”, as you do.’
What the public gave today it can take, if it likes, tomorrow;
it tears the badge of office from one who has proved a failure.
‘Drop it, it’s mine.’ I drop it, and walk sadly away.
If the same public came after me, shouting ‘Thief!’ and ‘Lecher!’,
and alleged I had strangled my own father with a knotted cord,
should I be hurt by such false charges, and change colour?
False honour delights, and lying slander dismays,
40 no one, unless he’s flawed and infirm. So who is the good man?
‘He who abides by the senate’s decrees and the laws and statutes;
who as an arbiter settles many important cases, as a sponsor ensures payment,
as a witness victory in court.’
But his own household and his neighbours, one and all, can see
he’s rotten inside, and owes his appeal to a handsome skin.
‘I haven’t stolen or run away’ – if one of my slaves
said that, I’d answer: ‘As a reward you’re not being flogged.
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