Such haunts should know us constantly, Such should engage our energy. Now neither lives his life, but he Marks precious days that pass and flee. These days are lost, but their amount Is surely set to our account. Knowledge the clue to life can give; Then wherefore hesitate to live?
THE HAPPY LIFE
The things that make a life of ease, Dear Martial, are such things as these: Wealth furnished not by work but birth, A grateful farm, a blazing hearth, No lawsuit, seldom formal dress; But leisure, stalwart healthiness, A tactful candour, equal friends, Glad guests at board which naught pretends, No drunken nights, but sorrow free, A bed of joy yet chastity; Sleep that makes darkness fly apace, So well content with destined place, Unenvious so as not to fear Your final day, nor wish it near.
AT THE SEASIDE
Sweet strand of genial Formiæ, Apollinaris loves to flee From troublous thought in serious Rome, And finds thee better than a home. Here Thetis' face is ruffled by A gentle wind; the waters lie Not in dead calm, but o'er the main A peaceful liveliness doth reign, Bearing gay yachts before a breeze Cool as the air that floats with ease From purple fan of damozel Who would the summer heat dispel. The angler need not far away Seek in deep water for his prey— Your line from bed or sofa throw, And watch the captured fish below! How seldom, Rome, dost thou permit Us by such joys to benefit? How many days can one long year Credit with wealth of Formian cheer? We, round whom city worries swarm, Envy our lacqueys on a farm. Luck to you, happy slaves, affords The joys designed to please your lords!
THE POET'S FINAL RETREAT IN SPAIN
Mayhap, my Juvenal, your feet Stray down some noisy Roman street, While after many years of Rome I have regained my Spanish home. Bilbilis, rich in steel and gold, Makes me a rustic as of old. With easy-going toil at will Estates of uncouth name I till. Outrageous lengths of sleep I take, And oft refuse at nine to wake. I pay myself nor more nor less For thirty years of wakefulness! No fine clothes here—but battered dress, The first that comes, snatched from a press! I rise to find a hearth ablaze With oak the nearest wood purveys. This is a life of jollity: So shall I die contentedly.
FOOTNOTES:
[Y] Martial (Marcus Valerius Martialis) was born at Bilbilis, in Spain, about 40 a.d. He went to Rome when twenty-four, and by attaching himself to the influential family of his fellow Spaniards, Seneca and Lucan, won his first introduction to Roman society. The earliest of his books which we possess celebrates the games associated with the dedication of the Flavian amphitheatre, the Colosseum, by Titus, in 80 a.d. Most of his other books belong to the reign of Domitian, to whom he cringed with fulsome adulation. After a residence in Rome during thirty-four years, he returned to Spain. He died probably soon after 102 a.d. Martial's importance to literature rests chiefly on two facts. He made a permanent impress upon the epigram by his gift of concise and vigorous utterance, culminating in a characteristically sharp sting; and he left in his verses, even where they are coarsest, an extraordinarily graphic index to the pleasure-loving and often corrupt society of his day. Martial had no deep seriousness of outlook upon life; yet he had better things in him than flippancy. He wearied of his long career of attendance upon patrons who requited him but shabbily; and with considerable taste for rural scenery, he longed for a more open-air existence than was attainable in Rome. Where he best exhibited genuine feeling was in his laments for the dead and his affection for friends. With the exception of the introductory piece from Byron, the verse translations here are by Professor Wight Duff.