He knows his Horace by heart, and Horace has become a veritable obsession. He is not content with giving his characters Horatian names.[236] That might be convention, not plagiarism. But phrase after phrase calls up the Horatian original. He runs through the whole gamut of plagiarism. There is plagiarism, simple and direct.
O si sub rastro crepet argenti mihi seria, dextro Hercule! (2. 10)
O that I could hear a crock of silver chinking under my harrow, by the blessing of Hercules. CONINGTON.
is undisguisedly copied from Horace (Sat. ii. 6. 10).
O si urnam argenti fors quae mihi monstret, ut illi, thesauro invento, qui mercennarius agrum ilium ipsum mercatus aravit, dives amico Hercule!
But as a rule, since he cannot keep Horace out, he strives to disguise him. The familiar
si vis me flere, dolendum est primum ipsi tibi
of the Ars Poetica (102) reappears in the far less natural
verum nec nocte paratum plorabit, qui me volet incurvasse querela (Pers. i. 91).
A man's tears must come from his heart at the moment, not from his brains overnight, if he would have me bowed down beneath his piteous tale. CONINGTON.