The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry of Horace

by Horace

CUM TOT SUSTINEAS.

Since you, great Caesar, singly wield the charge
Of Rome's concerns, so manifold and large,
With sword and shield the commonwealth protect,
With morals grace it, and with laws correct,
The bard, methinks, would do a public wrong
Who, having gained your ear, should keep it long.

Quirinus, Bacchus, and the Jove-born pair,
Though now invoked with in cense, gifts, and prayer,
While yet on earth they civilized their kind,
Tilled lands, built cities, properties assigned,
Oft mourned for man's ingratitude, and found
The race they served less thankful than the ground.
The prince whose fated vassalage subdued
Fell Hydra's power and all the monster brood,
Soon found that envy, worse than all beside,
Could only be extinguished when he died.
He that outshines his age is like a torch,
Which, when it blazes high, is apt to scorch:
Men hate him while he lives: at last, no doubt,
He wins affection—when his light is out.

You, while in life, are honoured as divine,
And vows and oaths are taken at your shrine;
So Rome pays homage to her man of men,
Ne'er seen on earth before, ne'er to be seen again.
But this wise nation, which for once thinks true,
That nought in Greece or here can rival you,
To all things else a different test applies,
And looks on living worth with jaundiced eyes:
While, as for ancient models, take the code
Which to the ten wise men our fathers owed,
The treaties made 'twixt Gabii's kings and Home's,
The pontiffs' books, the bards' forgotten tomes,
They'll swear the Muses framed them every one
In close divan on Alba's Helicon.

But what's the argument? the bards of Greece
And those of Rome must needs be of a piece;
As there the oldest hold the foremost place,
So here, 'twould seem, the same will be the case.
Is this their reasoning? they may prove as well
An olive has no stone, a nut no shell.
Soon, flattered by such dexterous logic, we
Shall think we've gained the summit of the tree;
In art, in song our rivals we outdo,
And, spite of all their oil, in wrestling too.

Or is it said that poetry's like wine
Which age, we know, will mellow and refine?
Well, let me grant the parallel, and ask
How many years a work must be in cask.
A bard who died a hundred years ago,
With whom should he be reckoned, I would know?
The priceless early or the worthless late?
Come, draw a line which may preclude debate.
"The bard who makes his century up has stood
The test: we call him sterling, old, and good."
Well, here's a poet now, whose dying day
Fell one month later, or a twelvemonth, say:
Whom does he count with? with the old, or them
Whom we and future times alike contemn?
"Aye, call him old, by favour of the court,
Who falls a month, or e'en a twelvemonth short."
Thanks for the kind permission! I go on,
And pull out years, like horse-hairs, one by one,
While all forlorn the baffled critic stands,
Fumbling a naked stump between his hands,
Who looks for worth in registers, and knows
No inspiration but what death bestows.

Ennius, the stout and wise, in critic phrase
The analogue of Homer in these days,
Enjoys his ease, nor cares how he redeems
The gorgeous promise of his peacock dreams.
Who reads not Naevius? still he lives enshrined
A household god in every Roman mind.
So as we reckon o'er the heroic band
We call Pacuvius learned, Accius grand;
Afranius wears Menander's robe with grace;
Plautus moves on at Epicharmus' pace;
In force and weight Caecilius bears the palm;
While Terence—aye, refinement is his charm.
These are Rome's classics; these to see and hear
She throngs the bursting playhouse year by year:
'Tis these she musters, counts, reviews, displays,
From Livius' time to our degenerate days.

Sometimes the public sees like any lynx;
Sometimes, if 'tis not blind, at least it blinks.
If it extols the ancient sous of song
As though they were unrivalled, it goes wrong:
If it allows there's much that's obsolete,
Much hasty work, much rough and incomplete,
'Tis just my view; 'tis judging as one ought;
And Jove was present when that thought was thought.
Not that I'd act the zealot, and desire
To fling the works of Livius on the fire,
Which once Orbilius, old and not too mild,
Made me repeat by whipping when a child;
But when I find them deemed high art, and praised
As only not perfection, I'm amazed,
That here and there a thought not ill expressed,
A verse well turned, should carry off the rest;
Just as an unfair sample, set to catch
The heedless customer, will sell the batch.

I chafe to hear a poem called third-rate
Not as ill written, but as written late;
To hear your critics for their ancients claim
Not charity, but honour and high fame.
Suppose I doubt if Atta's humorous show
Moves o'er the boards with best leg first or no,
The fathers of the city all declare
That shame has fled from Rome, and gone elsewhere;
"What! show no reverence to his sacred shade
Whose scenes great Roscius and Aesopus played?"
Perhaps with selfish prejudice they deem
That nought but what they like deserves esteem,
Or, jealous of their juniors, won't allow
That what they learnt in youth is rubbish now.
As for the pedant whose preposterous whim
Finds poetry in Numa's Salian hymn,
Who would be thought to have explored alone
A land to him and me alike unknown,
'Tis not that buried genius he regards:
No; 'tis mere spleen and spite to living bards.
Had Greece but been as carping and as cold
To new productions, what would now be old?
What standard works would there have been, to come
Beneath the public eye, the public thumb?

When, having done with fighting, Greece began
To care for trifles that refine the man,
And, borne aloft on Fortune's full flood-tide,
Went drifting on to luxury and pride,
Of athletes and of steeds by turns she raved,
Loved ivory, bronze, and marble deftly graved,
Hung raptured on a painting, mind and eye,
Now leant to music, now to tragedy,
Like a young child that hankers for a toy,
Then throws it down when it begins to cloy.
With change of fortune nations change their minds:
So much for happy peace and prosperous winds.
At Rome erewhile men rose by day-break, saw
Their clients at their homes, laid down the law,
Put money at good interest out to loan
Secured by names responsible and known,
Explained to younger folk, or learned from old,
How wealth might be increased, expense controlled.
Now our good town has taken a new fit:
Each man you meet by poetry is bit;
Pert boys, prim fathers dine in, wreaths of bay,
And 'twixt the courses warble out their lay.
E'en I, who vow I never write a verse,
Am found as false as Parthia, maybe worse;
Before the dawn I rouse myself, and call
For pens and parchment, writing-desk and all.
None dares be pilot who ne'er steered a craft;
No untrained nurse administers a draught;
None but skilled workmen handle workmen's tools:
But verses all men scribble, wise or fools.