for if after a given age Nature should call upon us to traverse our past lives again, and to choose in keeping with our pride any other parents each might cravecontent with my own, I should decline to take those adorned with the rods and chairs of state." And though the world would deem me mad, you, I hope, would think me sane for declining to shoulder a burden of trouble to which I have never been accustomed. For at once I should have to enlarge my means, to welcome more callers, to take one or two in my company so as not to go abroad or into the country alone; I should have to keep more pages and ponies, and take a train of wagons. To-day, if I will, I may go on a bob-tailed mule even to Tarentum, the saddle-bag's weight galling his loins, and the rider his withers. No one will taunt me with meanness as he does you, praetor Tillius," when on the Tibur road five slaves follow you, carrying a commode and case of wine. In this and a thousand other ways I live in more comfort than you, illustrious senator. 111 Wherever the fancy leads, I saunter forth alone. I ask the price of greens and flour; often toward evening I stroll round the cheating Circus and the Forum. I listen to the fortune-tellers; then homeward betake me to my dish of leeks and peas and fritters. My supper is served by three boys, and a white stone-slab supports two cups with a ladle. By them stand a cheap salt-cellar, a jug and saucer of Campanian ware. Then I go off to sleep, untroubled with the thought that I must rise early on the morrow Apparently the man mentioned in 1. 24 above. The stalls in the outer wall of the Circus Maximus were used by fortune-tellers, confidence-men, and the like. surgendum sit mane, obeundus Marsya, qui se 120 voltum ferre negat Noviorum posse minoris. 125 ad quartam iaceo; post hanc vagor; aut ego, lecto aut scripto quod me tacitum iuvet, unguor olivo, non quo fraudatis immundus Natta lucernis. ast ubi me fessum sol acrior ire lavatum admonuit, fugio Campum lusumque trigonem.1 pransus non avide, quantum interpellet inani ventre diem durare, domesticus otior. Haec est 130 vita solutorum misera ambitione gravique ; his me consolor victurum2 suavius ac si quaestor avus pater atque meus patruusque3 fuissent. 1 fugio campum lusumque trigonem V1, Goth. (lusitque): fugio rabiosi tempora signi мss. Porph. Bannier (in Rh. M. lxxiii. neue Folge, pp. 65 ff.) makes the interesting claim that both readings are correct, the original passage having been such as the following: admonuit fugio campum lusumque trigonem 2 victurus Goth. For patruus Bücheler conjectured praetor. a A statue of the Satyr Marsyas stood in the Forum near the praetor's tribunal. The usurer Novius had his table and pass before Marsyas, who says he cannot stand the face of Novius Junior." I lie a-bed till ten; then I take a stroll, or after reading or writing something that will please me in quiet moments I anoint myself with oil—not such as filthy Natta steals from the lamps. But when I am weary and the fiercer sun has warned me to go to the baths, I shun the Campus and the game of ball. After a slight luncheon, just enough to save me from an all-day fast, I idle away time at home. 128 Such is the life of men set free from the burden of unhappy ambition. Thus I comfort myself with the thought that I shall live more happily than if my grandfather had been a quaestor, and my father and uncle likewise. near by and so gives the poet an opportunity to put his own interpretation on the attitude or facial expression of Marsyas, who, after defeat in a musical contest with Apollo, was flayed alive. Extant copies of Myron's Marsyas show him with right hand uplifted and a face expressive of pain. The trigo was a game of ball in which three players took part. The phrase lusum trigonem means properly "the playing of ball," and implies a transitive use of ludere (cf. "post decisa negotia," Ep. i. 7. 59; also Sat. ii. 3. 248). See Jefferson Elmore, A.P.A. xxxv. p. xcii. VII HO FOR A REGICIDE ! THE incident recorded here occurred, probably in 43 B.C., at Clazomenae in Asia Minor, when Brutus, as propraetor of the Province, was holding court, and Horace was serving as tribune in his army. The poem gives us a single scene, a battle of wit between two litigants, Rupilius Rex, of Praeneste, a man proscribed by Antony and Octavius, and Persius, a half-Greek, half-Roman merchant of Clazomenae. The main point of the story is found in Persius' pun on the name Rex (king), which he cleverly links up with the propraetor and the propraetor's most famous ancestor. the ancient Tarquin kings, and Brutus himself had slain Caesar. The latter had driven out of Rome This little poem, similar, perhaps, to the farcical and dramatic scenes of early Satura, is probably the first of Horace's Sermones, and must have been composed before the battle of Philippi (42 B.C), and the tragic death of Brutus. |