SUMMARY OF SATIRE VI

HAS winter taken you back, Caesius Bassus, to your Sabine home, with that manly lyre of yours that strikes every note so fitly, whether grave or gay? I am wintering in my own Luna, regardless of the multitude, without care of flocks, without envy of inferiors richer than myself (1-17). Others may think differently; there are some who meanly stint themselves on feast-days; others waste their substance in good living. Use what you have, say I; thrash out your harvest, and commit a new crop to the soil (18-26). O, but a friend needs help, you say, lying shipwrecked on the Bruttian shore: then break off a bit of your estate for him, that he may not want. "What? am I to incur the wrath of my heir, and tempt him to neglect my funeral rites?" Bestius does well in condemning all foreign notions (27-40). Come, my heir, let me have a quiet talk with you. Have you heard that there's grand news from the front? that the Germans have had a tremendous smashing, and that there are to be rejoicings on a grand scale? Woe to you if you don't join in! I am going to treat the multitude: do you dare stay my hand? (41-52). Well, if you refuse, and if I can find no legitimate heir of my own; if I can find no relation, male or female, sprung from ancestors of mine up to the fourth generation, I will go to Bovillae and find

one on the beggars' stand (52-60). Do you object to my spending on myself some part of what is my own? You will have the rest: take what I leave you and be thankful; don't force me to live scurvily for your benefit, and don't serve up to me wise sayings about living on one's income and keeping one's capital intact. Am I to be starved in order that some scape-grace heir of yours may grow a belly? Sell your life for gain; ransack the world in your quest for wealth; let it come back to you with a two-fold, a three-fold, ay a ten-fold increase: if you can tell me where to stop, Chrysippus, your fallacy of the Sorites will have been solved (61-80) !

SATVRA VI

ADMOVIT iam bruma foco te, Basse, Sabino? iamne lyra et tetrico vivunt tibi pectine chordae ? mire opifex numeris veterum primordia vocum atque marem strepitum fidis intendisse Latinae, mox iuvenes agitare iocos et pollice honesto egregius 1 lusisse senex.2 mihi nunc Ligus ora intepet hibernatque3 meum mare, qua latus ingens dant scopuli et multa litus se valle receptat. "Lunai portum, est operae, cognoscite, cives": cor iubet hoc Enni, postquam destertuit esse Maeonides, quintus pavone ex Pythagoreo.

1 aegregius a aegraecius P1: aegregios P2L.

2

senes P2L.

3 Housm. suggests mite tepet vernatque (l.c. pp. 26-7).

5

10

The phrase primordia vocum is from Lucretius, iv. 531, who uses it to mean the bodily "first beginnings of voices," i.e. the actual corporeal atoms of which he supposes voices and words to consist. Here it seems to refer to the beginnings of Latin, with an indication of the manly and archaic character of the style of Bassus.

2 The readings vary between egregius senex and egregios senes. Conington translates senex, but has senes in his text. Büch. reads egregius senex.

SATIRE VI

HAS winter yet brought thee, Bassus, to thy Sabine hearth? Are thy lyre and its strings still alive under thy sturdy quill? Thou that art so rare a craftsman in setting to numbers the beginnings of our ancient tongue,1 and bringing out the manly notes of the Latin lyre; then again a wonderful old man to ply the youthful jest, and sing in lighter but not indecorous strains. To me now the Ligurian coast, and my own winter sea,3 are giving all their warmth: here the cliffs form a mighty wall, with a deep valley running in from the shore. "'Tis worth your while, O citizens, to know the port of Luna": 4 so did Ennius speak his mind 5 when he had given up dreaming that he was Maeon's son, fifth in descent from the peacock of Pythagoras.

For the difficulties raised by the words intepet and hibernat, see Professor Housman (l.c. p. 65).

This line is a quotation from Ennius.

5 The Romans considered the heart, not the brain, to be the seat of intelligence. Cicero quotes from Ennius the phrase egregie cordatus homo = a clever man.

This is the explanation of the Scholiast, who imagines Ennius in his dream to have gone through five transformations, the stages being (1) Pythagoras, (2) a peacock, (3) Euphorbus, (4) Homer, (5) Ennius. But in his Annals Ennius only relates that he had seen Homer in a dream, who told him he had once been a peacock; and it seems simpler to take Quintus to refer to Ennius' own praenomen, "when he ceased to dream himself Homer, becoming Quintus, i.e. himself (Quintus being his own praenomen) out of the Pythagorean peacock."

Hic ego securus volgi et quid praeparet auster infelix pecori securus et angulus ille

vicini nostro quia pinguior; et si adeo omnes ditescant orti peioribus, usque recusem

curvus ob id minui senio aut cenare sine uncto et signum in vapida naso tetigisse lagoena. discrepet his alius. geminos, horoscope, varo producis genio: solis natalibus est qui

15

tinguat olus siccum muria vafer in calice empta, 20 ipse sacrum inrorans patinae piper; hic bona dente grandia magnanimus peragit puer. utar ego, utar, nec rhombos ideo libertis ponere lautus,

nec tenuis sollers turdarum 1 nosse salivas.

Messe tenus propria vive et granaria, fas est, emole. quid metuas? occa, et seges altera in herba est.

at vocat officium, trabe rupta Bruttia saxa prendit amicus inops remque omnem surdaque vota condidit Ionio, iacet ipse in litore et una ingentes de puppe dei iamque obvia mergis costa ratis lacerae: nunc et de caespite vivo frange aliquid, largire inopi, ne pictus oberret caerulea in tabula. sed cenam funeris heres negleget iratus, quod rem curtaveris; urnae ossa inodora dabit, seu spirent cinnama surdum

=

1 turdarum P1Sch.: turdorum aP2L.

25

30

35

1 Adeo here seems to be used in the old Plautine sense, Nay, more,' "" in addition to that."

2 Lit. " goes through an entire property with his teeth," i.e. spends it in gormandising.