Curate.—His address to his farm. Authors were happy in those days to have their landed estate. Horace always speaks of his with delight; so does Catullus, as we have seen, of his Sirmio. This farm was, it should seem, like Horace's, among the Sabine hills.
TO MY FARM.
My farm! which those who wish to please
Thy master's heart, Tiburtian call;
But they who call thee Sabine, these
Respect his feelings not at all:
And wishing more to tease and fret,
Will wager thou art Sabine yet—
How well it pleased me to retreat
To thy suburban country-seat;
Where I sent summarily off
That plaguy pulmonary cough;
Which, half-deserved, my stomach gave
Just for a hint no more to crave
Luxurious living. I had hoped
With a good dinner to have coped
At Sextius' table; when he read
A poisonous speech might strike one dead,
All gall and venom, to refute
One Attius in a certain suit.
Since when, a cold cough and catarrh
Against my battered frame made war;
Until I came in thee to settle,
And cured it with repose and nettle.
So, now I'm well, I thank thee, farm!
And that I got so little harm,
From such great fault. I may be pardon'd
If to this pitch my heart is harden'd:
To pray, when Sextius reads again
Things so abhorr'd of gods and men,
That that my cough and cold catarrh
Not mine but Sextius' health might mar—
Who never sends me invitation
But for such wretched recitation.
Gratian.—A charitable wish this of our good Catullus! But these heathens knew little of "do as you would be done by." One of the neatest wishes of this kind is in a Greek epigram. I can't remember word for word the Greek, so I give the translation:—"Castor and Pollux, who dwell in beauteous Lacedemon, by the sweet-flowing river Eurotas, if ever I wish evil to my friend, may it light upon me; but if ever he wishes evil to me, may he have twice as much."
Aquilius.—In a note on villæ, I see the derivation of that word given, quasi vehilla, because there the fruits of the farm were carried; so that the original idea of a villa was quite another thing from the modern suburban construction. Architects, when they call these suburban edifices villas, might as well remember how inappropriate is the term. But here you have my version of this address to his farm:—
AD FUNDUM.
My Farm, or Sabine or Tiburtian,
(What name I care not we confab in,
Though they who hold me in aversion,
Persist and wager you are Sabine,)
In your suburban sweet recesses
Of that vile cough I timely rid me,
Merited well, for those excesses
My stomach failed not to forbid me,
When I with Sextius was convivial,
Who feasting read me his invective,
Vilest, 'gainst Attius his rival,
All venom—and, alas! effective.
For surely 'twas that poison seized me,
A chill—a heat—a cough then shook me
E'en to my vitals—and so teazed me,
That to thy bosom I betook me.