The Portable Roman Reader (Portable Library) (32 page)

Wealth and peace had brought an age in which the art of poetry was cultivated as never before. Lucretius and Catullus, splendid as their diction is, are still chiefly important for what they have to say; they can be read in translation without too great a loss. But much of the matter in the
Odes
of Horace is either the merest platitude or the merest chit-chat, turned into poetry by his
curiosa felicitas,
his choice and arrangement of words. The same thing is true of the greatest lines in Virgil. A. E. Housman has told us that a verse from the Psalms, in the Prayer-Book version, can bring tears to his eyes and make his skin bristle, while the same verse in the King James version leaves him cold. It is the same with such a line as that in Virgil, of the dead souls who cannot pass Lethe:
“Tendebantque manus ripæ ulterioris amore.”
What it means is simply: “They stretched out their hands for desire of the farther shore,” but that will bring tears to no one’s eyes, while the original will —
experto crede.
Those enchantments must be taken on faith; but anyone can enjoy, say, the sheer technical ingenuity, amounting to bravura, with which Ovid strings together his stories in the
Metamorphoses.

It was an age of elegance and urbanity generally, not merely in literature. The
Satires
and
Epistles
of Horace, his verse letters to his friends, have the precise note of the man about town, a note that is hardly struck again until the letters of Horace Walpole. And as in all ages of great urbanity, there was a vogue for country life. Virgil began the pastoral convention. The pastoral indeed begins with the Greek Theocritus, but the pastoral convention with Virgil. Theocritus wrote about the real shepherds and their songs; it is Virgil who first used the figure of a shepherd to mean himself, and a kind employer to mean his patron. But the convention is still not so conventional as it later became; in some of the
Eclogues,
at least, the shepherds might actually be shepherds. In Virgil’s
Georgics,
a treatise on farming which is, surprisingly, not merely in verse but in poetry, and in Horace’s constant invitations to his Sabine farm, there is real feeling not merely for country life but for simplicity. It is the last time that feeling was to be expressed.

The Romans of the Augustan Age were genuinely interested in the Roman past; but there was another reason for being concerned with it. When Pollio began a history of the First Triumvirate and after, Horace warned him that he was “walking over hidden fires”; he took the warning and stopped at the defeat of the conspirators at Philippi. The past was safe; present events were not. By an arbitrary act of Augustus, Ovid was exiled to the half-Greek, half-barbaric town of Tomi, near the mouth of the Danube, where he spent the rest of his life. For this, Ovid says, there were two reasons. One was the scandal occasioned by his Ars
Amatoria,
though there is nothing in it to shock anyone who has lived to see the release of
Jurgen,
not to mention
Ulysses,
and it is hard to believe that the Romans were more easily scandalized than we. It is true, however, that its tone is cynical, and it unfortunately appeared at the time when Augustus’s daughter was involved in a scandal. The other, and probably more important, reason for Ovid’s banishment is not known; it apparently involved some offense to Augustus, or to the imperial house, since Augustus’s successor Tiberius left Ovid unpardoned. Perhaps the most strongly supported theory is that Ovid was one of the adherents of Tiberius’s rivals for the throne, Agrippa or Germanicus. The troubles had begun.

(Publius Virgilius Maro, 70 B.C.—19 B.C.)

Translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Tityrus, thou in the shade of a spreading beech-tree reclining, Meditatest, with slender pipe, the Muse of the woodlands. We our country’s bounds and pleasant pastures relinquish, We our country fly; thou, Tityrus, stretched in the shadow, Teachest the woods to resound with the name of the fair Amaryllis.

O Meliboeus, a god for us this leisure created, For he will be unto me a god forever; his altar Oftentimes shall imbue a tender lamb from our sheep-folds. He, my heifers to wander at large, and myself, as thou seest, On my rustic reed to play what I will, hath permitted.

Truly I envy not, I marvel rather; on all sides In all the fields is such trouble. Behold, my goats I am driving, Heartsick, further away: this one scarce, Tityrus, lead I; For having here yeaned twins just now among the dense hazels, Hope of the flock, ah me! on the naked flint she hath left them. Often this evil to me, if my mind had not been insensate, Oak-trees stricken by heaven predicted, as now I remember ; Often the sinister crow from the hollow ilex predicted. Nevertheless, who this god may be, 0 Tityrus, tell me.

O Melibœus, the city that they call Rome, I imagined, Foolish I! to be like this of ours, where often we shepherds Wonted are to drive down of our ewes the delicate off. spring. Thus whelps like unto dogs had I known, and kids to their mothers, Thus to compare great things with small had I been accustomed. But this among other cities its head as far hath exalted As the cypresses do among the lissome viburnums.

And what so great occasion of seeing Rome hath possessed thee?

Liberty, which, though late, looked upon me in my inertness, After the time when my beard fell whiter from me in shaving—Yet she looked upon me, and came to me after a long while, Since Amaryllis possesses and Galatea hath left me. For I will even confess that while Galatea possessed me, Neither care of my flock nor hope of liberty was there. Though from my wattled folds there went forth many a victim, And the unctuous cheese was pressed for the city ungrateful, Never did my right hand return home heavy with money.

I have wondered why sad thou invokedst the gods,
Amaryllis, And for whom thou didst suffer the apples to hang on the branchesl Tityrus hence was absent! Thee, Tityrus, even the pine-trees, Thee, the very fountains, the very copses, were calling.

What could I do? No power had I to escape from my bondage, Nor had I power elsewhere to recognize gods so propitious. Here I beheld that youth, to whom each year, Melibœus, During twice six days ascends the smoke of our altars. Here first gave he response to me soliciting favor: “Feed as before your heifers, ye boys, and yoke up your bullocks.”

Fortunate old man! So then thy fields will be left thee,

And large enough for thee, though naked stone and the marish All thy pasture-lands with the dreggy rush may encompass. No unaccustomed food thy gravid ewes shall endanger, Nor of the neighboring flock the dire contagion infect them. Fortunate old man! Here among familiar rivers And these sacred founts, shalt thou take the shadowy coolness. On this side, a hedge along the neighboring cross-road, Where Hyblaean bees ever feed on the flower of the willow, Often with gentle susurrus to fall asleep shall persuade thee. Yonder beneath the high rock, the pruner shall sing to the breezes; Nor meanwhile shall thy heart’s delight, the hoarse wood-pigeons, Nor the turtle-dove cease to mourn from aerial elm-trees.

Therefore the agile stags shall sooner feed in the ether,
And the billows leave the fishes bare on the sea-shore, Sooner, the border-lands of both overpassed, shall the exiled Parthian drink of the Saone, or the German drink of the Tigris, Than the face of him shall glide away from my bosom!

But we hence shall go, a part to the thirsty Africs, Part to Scythia come, and the rapid Cretan Oaxes, And to the Britons from all the universe utterly sundered. Ah, shall I ever, a long time hence, the bounds of my country And the roof of my lowly cottage covered with greensward Seeing, with wonder behold? my kingdoms, a handful of wheat-ears! Shall an impious soldier possess these lands newly cultured, And these fields of corn a barbarian? Lo, whither discord Us wretched people hath brought! for whom our fields we have planted! Graft, Melibœus, thy pear-trees now; put in order thy vineyards. Go, my goats, go hence, my flocks so happy aforetime. Never again henceforth outstretched in my verdurous cavern Shall I behold you afar from the bushy precipice hanging. Songs no more shall I sing; not with me, ye goats, as your shepherd, Shall ye browse on the bitter willow or blooming laburnum.

Nevertheless this night together with me canst thou rest thee Here on the verdant leaves; for us there are mellowing apples, Chestnuts soft to the touch, and clouted cream in abundance; And the high roofs now of the villages smoke in the distance, And from the lofty mountains are falling larger the shadows.

 

Muses of Sicily, a loftier song
Wake we! Some tire of shrubs and myrtles low.
Are woods our theme? Then princely be the woods.

 

Come are those last days that the Sibyl sang:
The ages’ mighty march begins anew.
Now comes the virgin, Saturn reigns again:
Now from high heaven descends a wondrous race.
Thou on the newborn babe—who first shall end
That age of iron, bid a golden dawn
Upon the broad world—chaste Lucina, smile:
Now thy Apollo reigns. And, Pollio, thou
Shalt be our prince, when he that grander age
Opens, and onward roll the mighty moons:
Thou, trampling out what prints our crimes have left,
Shalt free the nations from perpetual fear.
While he to bliss shall waken; with the Blest
See the Brave mingling, and be seen of them,
Ruling that world o‘er which his father’s arm shed peace.

 

On thee, child, everywhere shall earth, untilled,
Show‘r, her first baby-offerings, vagrant stems
Of ivy, foxglove, and gay briar, and bean;
Unbid the goats shall come big-uddered home,
Nor monstrous lions scare the herded kine.
Thy cradle shall be full of pretty flowers:
Die must the serpent, treacherous poison-plants
Must die; and Syria’s roses spring like weeds.