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Horace

T >> Theodore Martin >> Horace




"Whole fleets of ships in long procession pass,
And captive ivory follows captive brass." (C.)

A milk-white elephant or a camelopard is considered more than a
substitute for character, incident, or wit. And if an actor presents
himself in a dress of unusual splendour, the house is in ecstasies,
and a roar of applause, loud as a tempest in the Garganian forest, or
as the surges on the Tuscan strand, makes the velarium vibrate above
their heads. Human nature is perpetually repeating itself. So when
Pope is paraphrasing Horace, he has no occasion to alter the facts,
which were the same in his pseudo, as in the real, Augustan age, but
only to modernise the names:--

"Loud as the waves on Orcas' stormy steep
Howl to the roarings of the Northern deep,
Such is the shout, the long-applauding note,
At Quin's high plume, or Oldfield's petticoat.
Booth enters--hark! the universal peal.
'But has he spoken?' Not a syllable.
'What shook the stage, and made the people stare?'
'Cato's long wig, flowered gown, and lackered chair.'"

We dine out. Maecenas is of the party, and comes in leaning heavily on
the two umbrae (guests of his own inviting) whom he has brought with
him,--habitués of what Augustus called his "parasitical table," who
make talk and find buffoonery for him. He is out of spirits to-day,
and more reserved than usual, for a messenger has just come in with
bad news from Spain, or he has heard of a conspiracy against Augustus,
which must be crushed before it grows more dangerous. Varius is there,
and being a writer of tragedies, keeps up, as your tragic author is
sure to do, a ceaseless fire of puns and pleasantry. At these young
Sybaris smiles faintly, for his thoughts are away with his ladylove,
the too fascinating Lydia. Horace--who, from the other side of the
table, with an amused smile in his eyes, watches him, as he "sighs
like furnace," while Neaera, to the accompaniment of her lyre, sings
one of Sappho's most passionate odes--whispers something in the ear of
the brilliant vocalist, which visibly provokes a witty repartee, with
a special sting in it for Horace himself, at which the little man
winces--for have there not been certain love-passages of old between
Neaera and himself? The wine circulates freely. Maecenas warms, and
drops, with the deliberation of a rich sonorous voice, now some sharp
sarcasm, now some aphorism heavy with meaning, which sticks to the
memory, like a saying of Talleyrand's. His _umbrae_, who have put
but little of allaying Tiber in their cups, grow boisterous and
abusive, and having insulted nearly everybody at the table by coarse
personal banter, the party breaks up, and we are glad to get out with
flushed cheeks and dizzy head into the cool air of an early summer
night--all the more, that for the last half-hour young Piso at our
elbow has been importuning us with whispered specimens of his very
rickety elegiacs, and trying to settle an early appointment for us to
hear him read the first six books of the great Epic with which he
means to electrify the literary circles. We reach the Fabrician
bridge, meditating as we go the repartees with which we might have
turned the tables on those scurrilous followers of the great man, but
did not. Suddenly we run up against a gentleman, who, raising his
cloak over his head, is on the point of jumping into the Tiber. We
seize him by his mantle, and discover in the intended suicide an old
acquaintance, equally well known to the Jews and the bric-a-brac
shops, whose tastes for speculation and articles of _vertu_ have
first brought him to the money-lenders, next to the dogs, and finally
to the brink of the yellow Tiber. We give him all the sesterces we
have about us, along with a few sustaining aphorisms from our
commonplace book upon the folly, if not the wickedness, of suicide,
and see him safely home. When we next encounter the decayed
_virtuoso_, he has grown a beard (very badly kept), and set up as
a philosopher of the hyper-virtuous Jaques school. Of course he
lectures us upon every vice which we have not, and every little
frailty which we have, with a pointed asperity that upsets our temper
for the day, and causes us long afterwards to bewail the evil hour in
which we rescued such an ill-conditioned grumbler from the kindly
waters of the river.

These hints of life and manners, all drawn from the pages of Horace,
might be infinitely extended, and a ramble in the streets of Rome in
the present day is consequently fuller of vivid interest to a man who
has these pages at his fingers' ends than it can possibly be to any
other person. Horace is so associated with all the localities, that
one would think it the most natural thing in the world to come upon
him at any turning. His old familiar haunts rise up about us out of
the dust of centuries. We see a short thick-set man come sauntering
along, "more fat than bard beseems." As he passes, lost in reverie,
many turn round and look at him. Some point him out to their
companions, and by what they say, we learn that this is Horace, the
favourite of Maecenas, the frequent visitor at the unpretending palace
of Augustus, the self-made man and famous poet. He is still within
sight, when his progress is arrested. He is in the hands of a bore of
the first magnitude. But what ensued, let us hear from his own lips
(Satires, I. 9):--

THE BORE.

It chanced that I, the other day,
Was sauntering up the Sacred Way,
And musing, as my habit is,
Some trivial random fantasies,
That for the time absorbed me quite,
When there comes running up a wight,
Whom only by his name I knew;
"Ha! my dear fellow, how d'ye do?"
Grasping my hand, he shouted. "Why,
As times go, pretty well," said I;
"And you, I trust, can say the same."
But after me as still he came,
"Sir, is there anything," I cried,
"You want of me?" "Oh," he replied,
"I'm just the man you ought to know;--
A scholar, author!" "Is it so?
For this I'll like you all the more!"
Then, writhing to evade the bore,
I quicken now my pace, now stop,
And in my servant's ear let drop
Some words, and all the while I feel
Bathed in cold sweat from head to heel.
"Oh, for a touch," I moaned, in pain,
"Bolanus, of thy madcap vein,
To put this incubus to rout!"
As he went chattering on about
Whatever he descries or meets,
The crowds, the beauty of the streets,
The city's growth, its splendour, size,
"You're dying to be off," he cries;
For all the while I'd been stock dumb.
"I've seen it this half-hour. But come,
Let's clearly understand each other;
It's no use making all this pother.
My mind's made up, to stick by you;
So where you go, there I go, too."
"Don't put yourself," I answered, "pray,
So very far out of your way.
I'm on the road to see a friend,
Whom you don't know, that's near his end,
Away beyond the Tiber far,
Close by where Caesar's gardens are."
"I've nothing in the world to do,
And what's a paltry mile or two?
I like it, so I'll follow you!"
Down dropped my ears on hearing this,
Just like a vicious jackass's,
That's loaded heavier than he likes;
But off anew my torment strikes.
"If well I know myself, you'll end
With making of me more a friend
Than Viscus, ay, or Varius; for
Of verses who can run off more,
Or run them off at such a pace?
Who dance with such distinguished grace?
And as for singing, zounds!" said he,
"Hermogenes might envy me!"
Here was an opening to break in.
"Have you a mother, father, kin,
To whom your life is precious?" "None;--
I've closed the eyes of every one."
Oh, happy they, I inly groan.
Now I am left, and I alone.
Quick, quick, despatch me where I stand;
Now is the direful doom at hand,
Which erst the Sabine beldam old,
Shaking her magic urn, foretold
In days when I was yet a boy:
"Him shall no poisons fell destroy,
Nor hostile sword in shock of war,
Nor gout, nor colic, nor catarrh.
In fulness of the time his thread
Shall by a prate-apace be shred;
So let him, when he's twenty-one,
If he be wise, all babblers shun."
Now we were close to Vesta's fane,
'Twas hard on ten, and he, my bane,
Was bound to answer to his bail,
Or lose his cause if he should fail.
"Do, if you love me, step aside
One moment with me here!" he cried.
"Upon my life, indeed, I can't,
Of law I'm wholly ignorant;
And you know where I'm hurrying to."
"I'm fairly puzzled what to do.
Give you up, or my cause?" "Oh, me,
Me, by all means!" "I won't!" quoth he;
And stalks on, holding by me tight.
As with your conqueror to fight
Is hard, I follow. "How,"--anon
He rambles off,--"how get you on,
You and Maecenas? To so few
He keeps himself. So clever, too!
No man more dexterous to seize
And use his opportunities.
Just introduce me, and you'll see,
We'd pull together famously;
And, hang me then, if, with my backing,
You don't send all your rivals packing!"
"Things in that quarter, sir, proceed
In very different style, indeed.
No house more free from all that's base;
In none cabals more out of place.
It hurts me not if others be
More rich, or better read than me.
Each has his place!" "Amazing tact!
Scarce credible!" "But 'tis the fact."
"You quicken my desire to get
An introduction to his set."
"With merit such as yours, you need
But wish it, and you must succeed.
He's to be won, and that is why
Of strangers he's so very shy."
"I'll spare no pains, no arts, no shifts!
His servants I'll corrupt with gifts.
To-day though driven from his gate,
What matter? I will lie in wait,
To catch some lucky chance; I'll meet
Or overtake him in the street;
I'll haunt him like his shadow. Nought
In life without much toil is bought."
Just at this moment who but my
Dear friend Aristius should come by?
My rattlebrain right well he knew.
We stop. "Whence, friends, and whither to?"
He asks and answers. Whilst we ran
The usual courtesies, I began
To pluck him by the sleeve, to pinch
His arms, that feel but will not flinch,
By nods and winks most plain to see
Imploring him to rescue me.
He, wickedly obtuse the while,
Meets all my signals with a smile.
I, choked with rage, said, "Was there not
Some business, I've forgotten what,
You mentioned, that you wished with me
To talk about, and privately?"
"Oh, I remember! Never mind!
Some more convenient time I'll find.
The Thirtieth Sabbath this! Would you
Affront the circumcised Jew?"
"Religious scruples I have none."
"Ah, but I have. I am but one
Of the _canaille_--a feeble brother.
Your pardon. Some fine day or other
I'll tell you what it was." Oh, day
Of woeful doom to me! Away
The rascal bolted like an arrow,
And left me underneath the harrow;
When, by the rarest luck, we ran
At the next turn against the man,
Who had the lawsuit with my bore.
"Ha, knave!" he cried with loud uproar,
"Where are you off to? Will you here
Stand witness?" I present my ear.
To court he hustles him along;
High words are bandied, high and strong.
A mob collects, the fray to see:
So did Apollo rescue me.

The Satires appear to have been completed when Horace was about
thirty-five years old, and published collectively, B.C. 29. By this
time his position in society was well assured. He numbered among his
friends, as we have seen, the most eminent men in Rome,--

"Chiefs out of war, and statesmen out of place"--

men who were not merely ripe scholars, but who had borne and were
bearing a leading part in the great actions of that memorable epoch.
Among such men he would be most at home, for there his wit, his
shrewdness, his genial spirits, and high breeding would be best
appreciated. But his own keen relish of life, and his delight in
watching the lights and shades of human character, took him into that
wider circle where witty and notable men are always eagerly sought
after to grace the feasts or enliven the heavy splendour of the rich
and the unlettered. He was still young, and happy in the animal
spirits which make the exhausting life of a luxurious capital
endurable even in spite of its pleasures. What Victor Hugo calls

"Le banquet des amis, et quelquefois les soirs,
Le baiser jeune et frais d'une blanche aux yeux noirs,"

never quite lost their charm for him; but during this period they must
often have tempted him into the elaborate dinners, the late hours, and
the high-strung excitement, which made a retreat to the keen air and
plain diet of his Sabine home scarcely less necessary for his body's
than it was for his spirit's health. For, much as he prized moderation
in all things, and extolled "the mirth that after no repenting draws,"
good wine, good company, and fair and witty women would be sure to
work their spell on a temperament so bright and sympathetic, and to
quicken his spirits into a brilliancy and force, dazzling for the
hour, but to be paid for next day in headache and depression.

He was all the more likely to suffer in this way from the very fact
that, as a rule, he was simple and frugal in his tastes and habits. We
have seen him (p. 66), in the early days of his stay in Rome, at his
"plain meal of pancakes, pulse, and pease," served on homely
earthenware. At his farm, again, beans and bacon (p. 80) form his
staple dish. True to the old Roman taste, he was a great vegetarian,
and in his charming ode, written for the opening of the temple of
Apollo erected by Augustus on Mount Palatine (B.C. 28), he thinks it
not out of place to mingle with his prayer for poetic power an
entreaty that he may never be without wholesome vegetables and fruit.

"Let olives, endive, mallows light,
Be all my fare; and health
Give thou, Apollo, so I might
Enjoy my present wealth!
Give me but these, I ask no more,
These, and a mind entire--
An old age, not unhonoured, nor
Unsolaced by the lyre!"

Maecenas himself is promised (Odes, III. 28), if he will visit the
poet at the Sabine farm, "simple dinners neatly dressed;" and when
Horace invites down his friend Torquatus (Epistles, II. 5), he does it
on the footing that this wealthy lawyer shall be content to put up
with plain vegetables and homely crockery (_modica olus omne
patella_). The wine, he promises, shall be good, though not of any
of the crack growths. If Torquatus wants better, he must send it down
himself. The appointments of the table, too, though of the simplest
kind, shall be admirably kept--

"The coverlets of faultless sheen,
The napkins scrupulously clean,
Your cup and salver such that they
Unto yourself yourself display."

Table-service neat to a nicety was obviously a great point with
Horace. "What plate he had was made to look its best." "_Ridet
argento domus_"--"My plate, newly-burnished, enlivens my rooms"--is
one of the attractions held out in his invitation to the fair Phyllis
to grace his table on Maecenas's birthday (Odes, IV. 11). And we may
be very sure that his little dinners were served and waited on with
the studied care and quiet finish of a refined simplicity. His rule on
these matters is indicated by himself (Satires, II. 2):--

"The proper thing is to be cleanly and nice,
And yet so as not to be over precise;
To neither be constantly scolding your slaves,
Like that old prig Albutus, as losels and knaves,
Nor, like Naevius, in such things who's rather too easy,
To the guests at your board present water that's greasy."

To a man of these simple tastes the elaborate banquets, borrowed from
the Asiatic Greeks, which were then in fashion, must have been
intolerable. He has introduced us to one of them in describing a
dinner-party of nine given by one Nasidienus, a wealthy snob, to
Maecenas and others of Horace's friends. The dinner breaks down in a
very amusing way, between the giver's love of display and his
parsimony, which prompted him, on the one hand, to present his guests
with, the fashionable dainties, but, on the other, would not let him
pay a price sufficient to secure their being good. The first course
consists of a Lucanian wild boar, served with a garnish of turnips,
radishes, and lettuce, in a sauce of anchovy-brine and wine-lees. Next
comes an incongruous medley of dishes, including one

"Of sparrows' gall and turbots' liver,
At the mere thought of which I shiver."

A lamprey succeeds, "floating vast and free, by shrimps surrounded in
a sea of sauce," and this is followed up by a crane soused in salt and
flour, the liver of a snow-white goose fattened on figs, leverets'
shoulders, and roasted blackbirds. This _menu_ is clearly meant
for a caricature, but it was a caricature of a prevailing folly, which
had probably cost the poet many an indigestion.

Against this folly, and the ruin to health and purse which it
entailed, some of his most vigorous satire is directed. It furnishes
the themes of the second and fourth Satires of the Second Book, both
of which, with slight modifications, might with equal truth be
addressed to the dinner-givers and diners-out of our own day. In the
former of these the speaker is the Apulian yeoman Ofellus, who
undertakes to show

"What the virtue consists in, and why it is great,
To live on a little, whatever your state."

Before entering on his task, however, he insists that his hearers
shall cut themselves adrift from their luxuries, and come to him
fasting, and with appetites whetted by a sharp run with the hounds, a
stiff bout at tennis, or some other vigorous gymnastics;--

"And when the hard work has your squeamishness routed,
When you're parched up with thirst, and your hunger's undoubted,
Then spurn simple food if you can, or plain wine,
Which no honied gums from Hymettus refine."

His homily then proceeds in terms which would not be out of place if
addressed to a _gourmet_ of modern London or Paris:--

"When your butler's away, and the weather's so bad
That there is not a morsel of fish to be had,
A crust with some salt will soothe not amiss
The ravening stomach. You ask, how is this?
Because for delight, at the best, you must look
To yourself, and not to your wealth or your cook [1]
Work till you perspire. Of all sauces 'tis best.
The man that's with over-indulgence oppressed,
White-livered and pursy, can relish no dish,
Be it ortolans, oysters, or finest of fish.
Still I scarcely can hope, if before you there were
A peacock and capon, you would not prefer
With the peacock to tickle your palate, you're so
Completely the dupes of mere semblance and show.
For to buy the rare bird only gold will avail,
And he makes a grand show with his fine painted tail.
As if this had to do with the matter the least!
Can you make of the feathers you prize so a feast?
And, when the bird's cooked, what becomes of its splendour?
Is his flesh than the capon's more juicy or tender?
Mere appearance, not substance, then, clearly it is,
Which bamboozles your judgment. So much, then, for this."

[1]
"Pour l'amour de Dieu, un sou pour acheter un petit pain. J'ai si
faim!" "Comment!" responded the cloyed sensualist, in search of an
appetite, who was thus accosted; "tu as faim, petit drôle! Tu es
bien heureux!" The readers of Pope will also remember his lines on
the man who
"Called 'happy dog' the beggar at his door,
And envied thirst and hunger to the poor."

Don't talk to me of taste, Ofellus continues--

"Will it give you a notion
If this pike in the Tiber was caught, or the ocean?
If it used 'twixt the bridges to glide and to quiver,
Or was tossed to and fro at the mouth of the river?"

Just as our epicures profess to distinguish, by flavour a salmon
fresh, run from the sea from one that has been degenerating for four-
and-twenty hours in the fresh water of the river--with this
difference, however, that, unlike the salmon with us, the above-bridge
pike was considered at Rome to be more delicate than his sea-bred and
leaner brother.

Ofellus next proceeds to ridicule the taste which prizes what is set
before it for mere size or rarity or cost. It is this, he contends,
and not any excellence in the things themselves, which makes people
load their tables with the sturgeon or the stork. Fashion, not
flavour, prescribes the rule; indeed, the more perverted her ways, the
more sure they are to be followed.

"So were any one now to assure us a treat
In cormorants roasted, as tender and sweet,
The young men of Rome are so prone to what's wrong,
They'd eat cormorants all to a man, before long."

But, continues Ofellus, though I would have you frugal, I would not
have you mean--

"One vicious extreme it is idle to shun,
If into its opposite straightway you run;"

illustrating his proposition by one of those graphic sketches which
give a distinctive life to Horace's Satires.

"There is Avidienus, to whom, like a burr,
Sticks the name he was righteously dubbed by, of 'Cur,'
Eats beechmast and olives five years old, at least,
And even when he's robed all in white for a feast
On his marriage or birth day, or some other very
High festival day, when one likes to be merry,
What wine from the chill of his cellar emerges--
'Tis a drop at the best--has the flavour of verjuice;
While from a huge cruet his own sparing hand
On his coleworts drops oil which no mortal can stand,
So utterly loathsome and rancid in smell, it
Defies his stale vinegar even to quell it."

Let what you have he simple, the best of its kind, whatever that may
be, and served in the best style. And now learn, continues the rustic
sage,

"In what way and how greatly you'll gain
By using a diet both sparing and plain.
First, your health will be good; for you readily can
Believe how much mischief is done to a man
By a great mass of dishes,--remembering that
Plain fare of old times, and how lightly it sat.
But the moment you mingle up boiled with roast meat,
And shellfish with thrushes, what tasted so sweet
Will be turned into bile, and ferment, not digest, in
Your stomach exciting a tumult intestine.
Mark, from a bewildering dinner how pale
Every man rises up! Nor is this all they ail,
For the body, weighed down by its last night's excesses,
To its own wretched level the mind, too, depresses,
And to earth chains that spark of the essence divine;
While he, that's content on plain viands to dine,
Sleeps off his fatigues without effort, then gay
As a lark rises up to the tasks of the day.
Yet he on occasion will find himself able
To enjoy without hurt a more liberal table,
Say, on festival days, that come round with the year,
Or when his strength's low, and cries out for good cheer,
Or when, as years gather, his age must be nursed
With more delicate care than he wanted at first.
But for you, when ill health or old age shall befall,
Where's the luxury left, the relief within call,
Which has not been forestalled in the days of your prime,
When you scoffed, in your strength, at the inroads of time?
"'Keep your boar till it's rank!' said our sires; which arose,
I am confident, not from their having no nose,
But more from the notion that some of their best
Should be kept in reserve for the chance of a guest:
And though, ere he came, it grew stale on the shelf,
This was better than eating all up by one's self.
Oh, would I had only on earth found a place
In the days of that noble heroic old race!"

So much as a question of mere health and good feeling. But now our
moralist appeals to higher considerations:--

"Do you set any store by good name, which we find
Is more welcome than song to the ears of mankind?
Magnificent turbot, plate richly embossed,
Will bring infinite shame with an infinite cost.
Add kinsmen and neighbours all furious, your own
Disgust with yourself, when you find yourself groan
For death, which has shut itself off from your hope,
With not even a sou left to buy you a rope.
"'Most excellent doctrine!' you answer, 'and would,
For people like Trausius, be all very good;
But I have great wealth, and an income that brings
In enough to provide for the wants of three kings.'
But is this any reason you should not apply
Your superfluous wealth to ends nobler, more high?
You so rich, why should any good honest man lack?
Our temples, why should they be tumbling to wrack?
Wretch, of all this great heap have you nothing to spare
For our dear native land? Or why should you dare
To think that misfortune will never o'ertake you?
Oh, then, what a butt would your enemies make you!
Who will best meet reverses? The man who, you find,
Has by luxuries pampered both body and mind?
Or he who, contented with little, and still
Looking on to the future, and fearful of ill,
Long, long ere a murmur is heard from afar,
In peace has laid up the munitions of war?"

Alas for the wisdom, of Ofellus the sage! Nineteen centuries have come
and gone, and the spectacle is still before us of the same
selfishness, extravagance, and folly, which he rebuked so well and so
vainly, but pushed to even greater excess, and more widely diffused,
enervating the frames and ruining the fortunes of one great section of
society, and helping to inspire another section, and that a dangerous
one, with angry disgust at the hideous contrast between the opposite
extremes of wretchedness and luxury which everywhere meets the eye in
the great cities of the civilised world.

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