There are those who locate its formal principle in the serious or witty idea that forms the conclusion, and so insist on this that they deny anything is an epigram that lacks such a conclusion.[36] But this is an error. There are some epigrams, and highly cultivated ones, that have an equable elevation throughout and nothing of especial note in the conclusion, as in this of a contemporary writer:
That on insurgent serpents breathing peace,
On unplumed eagles trembling, on tame pards,
And lions whose low necks accept the yoke,
Louis looks out, sublime on a bronze horse,
Nor fingers shaped this nor the craftsman's forge
But worth and God's fortune accomplished it.
The armed venger of faith, trustee of peace,
Ordained, for all to reverence, this, and bade
Rise in the royal place the reverend bronze,
That, the long perils past of civil strife,
And enemies subdued by prosperous arms,
Louis should ever triumph in the master city.[37]
Again, in some epigrams there is a straightforward neatness and a gentle and dry humor that pleases, as may be seen in some of Catullus' epigrams which we have put in this anthology.
Some go to the contrary extreme and not only do not require such conclusions but even scorn them. These are for the most part the outrageous lovers of Catullus who, as long as they finish off some limp little dirge in hendecasyllabics, feel that they are marvellously charming and polished, although there is nothing more empty than such verses or nothing easier to do if a man has acquired a little practice in Latin.
How little effort, for instance, shall we imagine the conclusion of this epigram cost Borbonius, fashioned as it is according to the model of Catullus?
Wherefore come, O Roman muses,
Full of honey and of graces,
Learned verses of good Pino;
I embrace you, just Camenae,
All day long I read you gladly
In this mortifying season,
Time of tears and time of penance,
Harsh and troublesome, by Jupiter![38]
You can see where the perverse imitation of Catullus has conducted a Christian, in other respects devout, so that in discussing a Christian fast day he had no fear of using the profane name of Jove. But, leaving this aside, what is more inept than the verse Harsh and troublesome, by Jupiter!, however Catullan. Nevertheless, Borbonius thought his epigram concluded elegantly in that line because he found in Catullus a similar one.[39] But, leaving aside such spiritless imitators, one can truly affirm of those ideas that conclude epigrams that there is a good deal of elegance in them when they are themselves distinguished and nicely cohere with the preceding chain of thought. For, since nothing so sticks in the reader's mind as the conclusion, what is better than to put there what especially you want to fix in his soul. Consequently, those epigrams are rightly censured as faulty that go in the order of anti-climax or in which the conclusion is sort of added on or appended to the rest and does not neatly develop out of the preceding verses. This fault is discernible in the following epigram, though in other respects it is distinguished:
You that a stranger in mid-Rome seek Rome
And can find nothing in mid-Rome of Rome,
Behold this mass of walls, these abrupt rocks,
Where the vast theatre lies overwhelmed.
Here, here is Rome! Look how the very corpse
Of greatness still imperiously breathes threats!
The world she conquered, strove herself to conquer,
Conquered that nothing be unconquered by her.
Now conqueror Rome's interred in conquered Rome,
And the same Rome conquered and conqueror.
Still Tiber stays, witness of Roman fame,
Still Tiber flows on swift waves to the sea.
Learn hence what Fortune can: the unmoved falls,
And the ever-moving will remain forever.[40]
The last four verses are completely unnecessary and contain a frigid point by which the lustre of the preceding is dimmed.