Persius, Satire 1 Translated by Lewis Evans (1889) Formatted by C. Chinn (2008) P. Oh the cares of men ! Oh how much vanity is there in human affairs!" L. Who will read this? P. Is it to me you say this? Nobody, by Hercules! L. Nobody! P. Say two perhaps, or nobody. L. It is mean and pitiful stuff! P. Wherefore? No doubt Polydamas and Trojan dames will prefer Labeo to me. 5 It is all stuff! Whatever turbid Rome may disparage, do not thou join their number; nor by that scale of theirs seek to correct thy own false balance, nor seek thyself out of thyself. For who is there at Rome that is not? Ah! if I might but speak ! But I may, when I look at our gray hairs, and our severe way of life, 10 and all that we commit since we abandoned our childhood's nuts. When we savor of uncles, then, then forgive! L. I will not! P. What must I do? For I am a hearty laugher with a saucy spleen. We write, having shut ourselves in, one man verses, another free from the trammels of meter, something grandiloquent, which the lungs widely distended with 15 breath may give vent to. And this, of course, some day, with your hair combed and a new toga, all in white with your birthday Sardonyx, you will read out from your lofty seat, to the people, when you have rinsed your throat, made flexible by the liquid gargle; languidly leering with lascivious eye! Here you may see the tall Titi in trembling excitement, with lewdness 20 of manner and agitation of voice, when the verses enter their loins, and their inmost parts are titillated with the lascivious strain. And dost thou, in thy old age, collect dainty bits for the ears of others? Ears to which even thou, bursting with vanity, wouldst say, "Hold, enough!" L. To what purpose is your learning, unless this leaven, and this wild fig-tree 25 which has once taken life within, shall burst through your liver and shoot forth? P. See that pallor and premature old age! Oh Morals! Is then your knowledge so absolutely naught, unless another know you have that knowledge? L. But it is a fine thing to be pointed at with the finger, and that it should be said, “That's he!” Do you value it at nothing, that your works should form 30 the studies of a hundred curly-headed youths? P. See! over their cups, the well-filled Romans inquire of what the divine poems tell. Here some one, who has a hyacinthine robe round his shoulders, snuffling through his nose some stale ditty, distills and from his dainty palate lisps trippingly his Phyllises, 35 Hypsipyles, and all the deplorable strains of the poets. The heroes hum assent! Now are not the ashes of the poet blest? Does not a tomb-stone press with lighter weight upon his bones? The guests applaud. Now from those Manes of his, now from his tomb and favored ashes, will not violets 40 spring? “You are mocking,” he says, “and indulging in too scornful a sneer. Lives there the man who would disown the wish to deserve the people's praise, and having uttered words worthy of the cedar, to leave behind him verses that dread neither herrings nor frankincense?” Whoever thou art that hast just spoken, and that hast a fair right to plead on 45 the opposite side, I, for my part, when I write, if any thing perchance comes forth aptly expressed (though this is, I own, a rare bird), yet if any thing does come forth, I would not shrink from being praised: for indeed my heart is not of horn. But I deny that that " excellently!" and "beautifully!" of yours is the end and object of what is right. For sift thoroughly all this " beautifully" and what 50 does it not comprise within it! Is there not to be found in it the Iliad of Accius, intoxicated with hellebore? are there not all the paltry sonnets our crude nobles have dictated? in fine, is there not all that is composed on couches of citron? You know how to set before your guests the hot paunch; and how to make a present of your threadbare cloak to your companion shivering with cold, 55 and then you say, " I do love the truth ! tell me the truth about myself!" How is that possible? Would you like me to tell it you? Thou drivelest, Bald-pate, while thy bloated paunch projects a good foot and a half hanging in front! O Janus ! whom no stork pecks at from behind, no hand that with rapid motion imitates the white ass's ears, 60 no tongue mocks, projecting as far as that of the thirsting hound of Apulia! Ye, O patrician blood I whose privilege it is to live with no eyes at the back of your head, prevent the scoffs that are made behind your back! What is the people's verdict? What should it be, but that now at length verses flow in harmonious numbers, and the skillful joining allows the critical nails 65 to glide over its polished surface? L. He knows how to carry on his verse as if he were drawing a ruddy line with one eye closed. Whether he has occasion to write against public morals, against luxury, or the banquets of the great, the Muses vouchsafe to our Poet the saying brilliant things. P. And see! now we see those introducing heroic sentiments, that were 70 wont to trifle in Greek: that have not even skill enough to describe a grove. Nor praise the bountiful country, where are baskets, and the hearth, and porkers, and the smoky Palilia with the hay: whence Remus sprung, and thou, O Quintius, wearing away the plow-boards in the furrow, when thy wife with trembling haste 75 invested thee with the dictatorship in front of thy team, and the lictor bore thy plow home—Bravo, poet! Some even now delight in the turgid book of Brissean Accius, and in Pacuvius, and warty Antiopa, "her dolorific heart propped up with woe" When you see purblind sires instilling these precepts into their sons, 80 do you inquire whence came this gallimaufry of speech into our language ? Whence that disgrace, in which the effeminate Trossulus leaps up in ecstasy at you, from his bench. Are you not ashamed that you can not ward off danger from a hoary head, without longing to hear the lukewarm "Decently said!" 85 "You are a thief!" says the accuser to Pedius. What says Pedius? He balances the charge in polished antitheses. He gets the praise of introducing learned figures. "That is fine!" Fine, is it? O Romulus, dost thou wag thy tail? Were the shipwrecked man to sing, would he move my pity, forsooth, or should I bring forth my penny? Do you sing, while you are carrying about a picture of yourself on a fragment of wood, 90 hanging from your shoulders. He that aims at bowing me down by his piteous complaint, must whine out what is real, and not studied and got up of a night. L. But the numbers have grace, and crude as you call them, there is a judicious combination. He has learned thus to close his line. "Berecynthean Atys;" and, "The Dolphin that clave the azure Nereus." 95 So again, " We filched away a chine from long-extending Apennine." "Arms and the man." Is not this frothy, with a pithless rind? Like a huge branch, well seasoned, with gigantic bark! P. What then is a tender strain, and that should be read with neck relaxed? L. "With Mimallonean hums they filled their savage horns; 100 and Bassaris, from the proud steer about to rive the ravished head, and Maenas, that would guide the lynx with ivy-clusters, re-echoes Evion; and reproductive Echo reverberates the sound!" P. Could such verses be written, did one spark of our fathers' vigor still exist in us ? This nerveless stuff dribbles on the lips, 105 on the topmost spittle. In drivel rests this Maenas and Attis. It neither beats the desk, nor savors of bitten nails. L. But what need is there to grate on delicate ears with biting truth? Take care, I pray, lest haply the thresholds of the great grow cold to you. Here the dog's letter sounds from the 110 nostril. P. For me then, henceforth, let all be white. I'll not oppose it. Bravo! For you shall all be very wonderful productions! Does that please you? "Here,” you say, “I forbid any one's committing a nuisance." Then paint up two snakes. Boys, go farther away: the place is sacred! I go away. Yet Lucilius lashed the city, and thee, 115 O Lupus, and thee too, Mucius, and broke his jaw-bone on them. Sly Flaccus touches every failing of his smiling friend, and, once admitted, sports around his heart; well skilled in sneering at the people with well-dissembled sarcasm. And is it then a crime for me to mutter, secretly, or in a hole? You must 120 do it nowhere. Yet here I will bury it! I saw, I saw with my own eyes, my little book! Who has not asses' ears? This my buried secret, this my sneer, so valueless, I would not sell you for any Iliad. Whoever thou art, that art inspired by the bold Cratinus, and growest pale over the wrathful Eupolis and the old man sublime, 125 turn thine eyes on these verses also, if haply thou hearest any thing more refined. Let my reader glow with ears warmed by their strains. Not he that delights, like a mean fellow as he is, in ridiculing the sandals of the Greeks, and can say to a blind man, Ho! you blind fellow! Fancying himself to be somebody, because vain of his rustic honors, 130 as Aedile of Arretium, he breaks up the false measures there. Nor again, one who has just wit enough to sneer at the arithmetic boards, and the lines in the divided dust; quite ready to be highly delighted, if a saucy wench plucks a Cynic's beard. To such as these I recommend the praetor's edict in the morning, and after dinner—Callirhoe.