O shore, O sea, that I love more than life! Happy is he that may straightway visit the lands ye border. O fairest day! 'Twas here that once I was wont to swim and vex the sea-nymphs with my hands' alternate strokes. Here is a stream's deep pool, there the bay casts up its seaweed: here is a spot that can faithfully guard the secret of one's love. I have lived my life to the full; nor can grudging fortune ever rob me of that which her favouring breeze once gave me.
But Petronius can attain to equal success in other veins. Now we have a fragment in the epic style containing a simile at once original and beautiful:
haec ait et tremulo deduxit vertice canos consecuitque genas; oculis nec defuit imber, sed qualis rapitur per vallis improbus amnis, cum gelidae periere nives et languidus auster non patitur glaciem resoluta vivere terra, gurgite sic pleno facies manavit et alto insonuit gemitu turbato murmure pectus.[337]
He spake, and rent the white hair on his trembling head and tore his cheeks, and his eyes streamed with a flood of tears. As when a resistless river sweeps down the valley when the chill snows have melted and the languid south wind thaws the earth and suffers not the ice to remain, even so his face streamed with a torrent of weeping and his breast groaned loud with a confused murmur of sorrow.
Elsewhere we find him writing in satirical vein of the origin of religion,[338] on the decay of virtue,[339] on the hardship of the married state[340]:
'uxor legis onus, debet quasi census amari.'
nec censum vellem semper amare meum.
'One should love one's wife as one loves one's fortune.'
Nay, I desire not always to love even my fortune.
But it is in a love-poem that he reaches his highest achievement:
lecto compositus vix prima silentia noctis
carpebam et somno lumina victa dabam:
cum me saevus Amor prensat sursumque capillis
excitat et lacerum pervigilare iubet.
'tu famulus meus,' inquit, 'ames cum mille puellas,
solus, io, solus, dure, iacere potes?'
exsilio et pedibus nudis tunicaque soluta
omne iter incipio, nullum iter expedio.
nunc propero, nunc ire piget, rursumque redire
paenitet et pudor est stare via media.
ecce tacent voces hominum strepitusque viarum
et volucrum cantus turbaque fida canum:
solus ego ex cunctis paveo somnumque torumque
et sequor imperium, magne Cupido, tuum.[341]
I lay on my bed and began to enjoy the silence of the night scarce yet begun, and was yielding my wearied eyes to sleep, when fierce Love laid hold of me, and, seizing me by the hair, aroused me, tore me, and bade me wake. 'Canst thou, my servant,' he cried, 'the lover of a thousand girls, lie thus alone, alone, hard-hearted?' I leapt from my couch, and barefoot, with dishevelled robe, started on my errand, yet never accomplished it. Now I hurry forward, now am loth to go; now repent me that I have returned, and feel shame to stand thus aimless in mid-street. So the voices of men, the murmur of the streets, the song of birds, and the trusty watchdogs all are silent; and I alone dread the slumbers of my couch and follow thy behest, great god of love.