The Satires of Horace and Persius Read online

  HORACE PERSIUS

  Advisory Editor: Betty Radice

  QUINTUS HORATIUS FLACCUS was born in 65 BC at Venusia in Apulia. His father, though once a slave, had made enough money as an auctioneer to send his son to a well-known school in Rome and subsequently to university in Athens. There Horace joined Brutus’ army and served on his staff until the defeat at Philippi in 42 BC. On returning to Rome, he found that his father was dead and his property had been confiscated, but he succeeded in obtaining a secretarial post in the treasury, which gave him enough to live on. The poetry he wrote in the next few years impressed Virgil, who introduced him to the great patron Maecenas in 38 BC. This event marked the beginning of a life-long friendship. From now on Horace had no financial worries; he moved freely among the leading poets and statesmen of Rome; his work was admired by Augustus, and indeed after Virgil’s death in 19 BC he was virtually Poet Laureate. Horace died in 8 BC, only a few months after Maecenas.

  AULES PERSIUS FLACCUS was born in AD 34 in Etruria. Rich and well connected, he knew Lucan, Thrasea Paetus, and other members of the Stoic opposition to Nero’s rule. His friendship with the philosopher Cornutus began when he was sixteen and remained a strong influence until his death at the age of twenty-seven. Although the satires are concerned with moral questions – a fact which endeared Persius to the Church Fathers and won him admiration in the Middle Ages and Renaissance – their main interest for us lies in their condensed, allusive, and highly metaphorical style.

  NIALL RUDD is a graduate of Trinity college, Dublin. After lecturing in England during the fifties, he moved to Toronto where he wrote a book on Horace’s satires. Back in England, as professor of Latin at Bristol, he published translations (including Juvenal’s Satires), commentaries (Horace’s Epistles II and Ars Poetica) and literary studies (Lines of Enquiry and The Classical Tradition in Operation). Recently he has collaborated with R. G. M. Nisbet on a commentary on Horace, Odes III, and has prepared a text, translation and brief notes on Dr Johnson’s Latin poems. He is now attached to the Department of English at Liverpool University.

  HORACE

  Satires and Epistles

  PERSIUS

  Satires

  A verse translation with an Introduction and Notes by NIALL RUDD

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  PENGUIN CLASSICS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2

  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland

  (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

  Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre,

  Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), cnr Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany, Auckland 1310, New Zealand

  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  www.penguin.com

  This translation of The Satires of Horace and Persius first published 1973

  Revised edition, with Horace’s Epistles, published 1979

  Reprinted with revisions 1987

  Reprinted with revisions 1997

  Reprinted with revisions 2005

  1

  Copyright © Niall Rudd, 1973, 1979, 1997, 2005

  All rights reserved

  The moral right of the translator has been asserted

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  EISBN: 9781101491508

  Contents

  Foreword to the Second Edition

  Foreword to the 1997 Edition

  Foreword to the 2005 Edition

  Introduction

  Horace, Satires I

  Satire 1

  Satire 2

  Satire 3

  Satire 4

  Satire 5

  Satire 6

  Satire 7

  Satire 8

  Satire 9

  Satire 10

  Horace, Satires II

  Satire 1

  Satire 2

  Satire 3

  Satire 4

  Satire 5

  Satire 6

  Satire 7

  Satire 8

  Horace, Epistles I

  Epistle 1

  Epistle 2

  Epistle 3

  Epistle 4

  Epistle 5

  Epistle 6

  Epistle 7

  Epistle 8

  Epistle 9

  Epistle 10

  Epistle 11

  Epistle 12

  Epistle 13

  Epistle 14

  Epistle 15

  Epistle 16

  Epistle 17

  Epistle 18

  Epistle 19

  Epistle 20

  Horace, Epistles II

  Epistle 1

  Epistle 2

  Ars Poetica (Epistle 3)

  Persius

  Prologue

  Satire 1

  Satire 2

  Satire 3

  Satire 4

  Satire 5

  Satire 6

  Notes

  Select Bibliography

  Index

  Foreword to the Second Edition

  This volume contains a revised version of the Satires of Horace and Persius. Although the basic sense has been changed at only half a dozen points, the rhythm has been made more regular by a reduction in the number of unstressed syllables.

  For the sake of completeness a new translation of Horace’s Epistles has now been included, and there have been consequential additions to the introduction, notes, bibliography, and index.

  NR,

  Bristol, 1979

  Foreword to the 1997 Edition

  The chronology of Horace, Epistles II and Ars Poetica has been brought into line with the view adopted in my commentary (1989). The text employed is still eclectic. Some fifty changes have been made in the translation for reasons of sense or rhythm. The bibliography has been brought up to date.

  NR,

  Bristol, 1996

  Foreword to the 2005 Edition

  Extensive changes have been made to produce a smoother and lighter versification. A few mistakes have been corrected; other areas remain largely the same.

  NR,

  Liverpool, May 2004

  In memory of Betty Radice

  Introduction

  SATURA BEFORE HORACE

  First a point of semantics. When the critic Quintilian, writing at the end of the first century AD, said that satura was entirely Roman (satura quidem tota nostra est),1 he was referring to a specific genre of poetry, not to what we might call ‘the satiric spirit’. The latter, as one would expect, is found in many areas of Greek literature, for example, the Homeric parodies, the lampoons of Archilochus, Aesop’s fables, the comedies of Aristophanes, and Lucian’s dialogues. It also occurs in a number of Roman writers who are not ‘satirists’, notably Lucr
etius, Ovid, and Tacitus. Conversely, satura, though usually in some sense satirical, is not invariably so. With Horace’s description of his education (I. 6. 65–88), Persius’ acknowledgement of his debt to Cornutus (5. 26–51), and Juvenal’s passage on human sympathy (15. 131–58) we are given a respite from the ridicule of folly and vice.

  The derivation of satura is uncertain. Some scholars would connect it with the Etruscan satir, which is supposed to mean ‘speak’, but the common view, which was certainly held by the Romans themselves, sees it as the feminine singular of satur, meaning ‘full’. Satura, therefore, meant ‘a full’, and saturae ‘fulls’. There is nothing odd in talking about ‘fulls’. In the days before bottles became part of our national refuse everyone knew what was meant by taking back ‘the empties’. But the noun understood with satura was not a bottle. Originally it was a dish (lanx), the lanx satura being a dish full of first fruits offered to the gods.

  This, at any rate, is the most likely of the explanations offered by Diomedes, a grammarian of the fourth century AD.2 He also records three others: (1) that satura was the name given to a kind of stuffing consisting of various ingredients. This usage is attested by the scholar Varro (first century BC), who seems to have found it in Plautus (late third, early second century BC); yet this is hardly as old as the usage connected with religious ritual; (2) that satura was a kind of law containing a number of different provisions. But the combination lex satura is not found. What we do get, in connection with legal and political acts, is the phrase per saturam (literally ‘through a medley’), which presupposes that satura itself already meant ‘a medley’; (3) that satura is derived from satyri, the wild and lustful attendants of Bacchus who are still to be seen in museums, chasing nymphs around the rims of Greek vases. This is etymologically impossible, though later the two roots became intertwined.

  In the case of both the dish and the stuffing it is easy to see how the idea of variety was present from the very beginning. As time went on, this idea became predominant and saturae turned into mixtures or medleys.

  The next piece of evidence comes from Livy.3 In a brief account of the development of Roman drama, which is based on the work of Varro, he distinguishes five phases: (1) dignified dancing by Etruscans to the music of a pipe; (2) a burlesque of this by young Roman amateurs who exchanged raillery in improvised verses; (3) professional performances of saturae in which songs were now written out to go with the pipe; (4) plays with plots introduced by Livius Andronicus (i.e. comedies, which included music and dancing); (5) a return by young amateurs to improvised banter, which later became combined with Oscan farces.

  As history this account does not bear examination. It is a tendentious construction designed to show how a complex art form emerged from simple beginnings. As such it proposes a set of relationships which never existed. Hence many scholars reject the whole passage and maintain that Livy’s saturae were invented simply to explain the lyrical element in Roman comedy. Others, including myself, think that this is over-sceptical. The four other types of performance are all well authenticated; the saturae could be genuine too. Moreover Varro, whom Livy is copying, adds an etymological explanation of the term. He says that the saturae were ‘full of tunes’ (impletae modis). This could indicate that the old scholar knew of saturae being performed in the third century and felt called on to explain the term to his contemporaries, for whom satura was now a type of literature.

  Satura first occurs in literature as the title of a play by Naevius, who was writing from about 240 BC to the end of the century. Naevius was a major poet with original ideas and a strongly Roman personality. In addition to tragedies and comedies he wrote an epic on the struggle against Carthage which had a considerable influence on the Aeneid. But unfortunately only fragments of his poetry survive, and from his Satura we have no more than a single quotation: ‘Why, pray, have you beaten the people of Saturn?’ Therefore, although Satura was the title of a work by Naevius, we are not justified in assuming that the work itself was a mixture or medley.

  With Ennius (239–169 BC) we are on firmer ground. His Saturae were undoubtedly medleys. Written in various metres, including iambics, trochaics, and hexameters, they contained very diverse material, e.g. a dispute between Life and Death, a proverb aimed at the over-meticulous (‘to look for a knot in a bulrush’), ironical remarks about the writer himself (‘I never poetize unless I’ve got gout’), and a fable about a lark in a cornfield, ending with the motto ‘if you want something done do it yourself’. It is clear that these poems contained an element of criticism. There are attacks on a glutton, a slanderer, interfering nuisances, and (possibly) a parasite. But the victims are all types, without names or features. We do not even know who delivers the attack; in some cases it could be a character in a sketch. So it looks as if saturae had not yet become fully ‘satirical’. Certainly, Ennius is never mentioned as a satirist by Horace, Persius, or Juvenal. Nevertheless, his type of medley was continued by his nephew Pacuvius, and it influenced the work of Varro, who in the first century BC composed mixtures of prose and verse – a form subsequently developed by Petronius and Seneca.

  One more question before we leave Ennius: where did he get his title? No one really knows. If the stage saturae existed, it may have come from them. If we wish to stress the poet’s Hellenistic side we can point to roughly similar titles in third-century Greek literature, e.g. Atakta (‘Miscellanies’), used by Philetas and Euphorion, and Soros (‘A Heap of Winnowed Grain’) employed by Posidippus. Or perhaps Ennius himself thought of applying satura to poetry, just as a modern writer might publish a collection of essays under the title of ‘Mixed Grill’.

  The man acknowledged by Horace (I. 10. 48, II. 1. 63), Persius (I. 114 –15), and Juvenal (I. 20 and 165–7)as the founder of their tradition, and therefore in a strict sense the first European satirist, was Gaius Lucilius, a wealthy knight from Suessa Aurunca on the borders of Campania and Latium. Lucilius began his satires in about 133 BC after returning from the Spanish wars, and continued to write until his death in Naples in 102. Unlike Ennius, whose great reputation rested on his epic and tragedy and whose saturae were in the nature of a light-hearted diversion, Lucilius never wrote anything else. He was a satirist first and last. After experimenting with various metres in his early work he eventually settled on the hexameter as the most suitable vehicle for his purpose. This decision stabilized the form of the genre.

  In other respects, however, Lucilius maintained and indeed extended the range of Ennius’ miscellany. The 1,300 fragments include dramatic scenes, fables, sermons, dialogues, letters, anecdotes, epigrams, and learned disquisitions. The subject-matter is correspondingly diverse, covering sailing and horsemanship, phonetics and orthography, medicine, cookery, politics, literature, ethics, and sex. Here are a few fragments by way of illustration, based on the text of Warmington (see Bibliography):

  (1) The rat race:

  But as it is, from dawn to dusk on holidays and workdays the whole populace, and their rulers too, mill about in the city square and never leave it. They all devote themselves to one and the same occupation and craft – to cheat with the maximum cunning, to fight cleverly, struggle charmingly, pretending they’re good fellows and laying traps as if they were all mutual enemies. (W. 1145–51)

  (2) Insincerity:

  The chef doesn’t care whether the bird has a spectacular tail provided it’s plump. So friends are concerned with a man’s nature, parasites with his money and possessions. (W. 761–2)

  (3) Catering:

  If you’ve enough cash you should also get a hefty bakeress – a massive woman who knows all about crisp Syrian loaves. (W. 1055–6)

  (4) Deep-sea yarn:

  But I saved the gear – mast, sails, everything – by promptly cutting the rope and freeing the halyard. (W. 617–18)

  (5) An interrupted seduction:

  She had just decided to give it to me, and I had put my clothes down on the bed. (W. 898–9)

  (6) A trip south:
>
  There all this was child’s play and everything was free and easy; all free and easy, I say, and mere child’s play and fun. But when we reached the outskirts of Setia, that was a tough haul – goat-forsaken mountains, each one an Etna and a rugged Athos. (W. 102–5)

  (7) On the forthcoming fight:

  ‘I’ll just kill him and win, if that’s what you want,’ he said. ‘But I guess this is what’ll happen: first I’ll take it on the face; then I’ll leave my sword sticking in the stupid nut’s belly and lungs. I hate the guy; for me it’s a grudge fight. We won’t hang around – just long enough for one of us to grab his sword. That’s how mad I am; I hate the fellow’s guts and can’t wait to get at him.’ (W. 176–81)

  (8) Les dames du temps jadis:

  Surely you don’t think it impossible that any woman with ‘lovely tresses’ and ‘lovely ankles’ could have had breasts touching her womb and even her crotch; that Alcmena ‘the wife of Amphitryon’s bosom’ could have been knock-kneed or bandy; and that others too, even Helen herself, that – (I won’t say; think of it yourself and pick any two-syllable word you like) – that ‘daughter of a noble sire’, could have had some obvious blemish, a wart, a mole, a pock-mark, or one buck tooth? (W. 567–73)

  (9) Manliness:

  Manliness, Albinus, is the ability to pay what is actually due in our business dealings and social life. Manliness is the knowledge of what each issue involves for a man. Manliness is the knowledge of what is right, advantageous, and honourable for a man, what is good and likewise what is bad, what is disadvantageous, wrong, and dishonourable. Manliness is knowing the boundary and limit for acquiring riches. Manliness is the ability to pay wealth its due. Manliness is giving what is in fact owed to honour, being an enemy and an opponent of bad men and habits – a champion on the other hand of good men and habits, prizing the latter highly, wishing them well, and living on friendly terms with them; it means, furthermore, putting the interests of one’s country first, then one’s parents’, then thirdly and lastly one’s own. (W. 1196–1208)