Si quis eum servum, patinam qui tollere iussus
semesos pisces tepidumque ligurrierit ius,
in cruce suffigat, Labeone insanior inter
sanos dicatur. quanto hoc furiosius atque
maius peccatum est: paulum deliquit amicus,
quod nisi concedas, habeare insuavis: acerbus
odisti et fugis ut Rusonem debitor aeris,
qui nisi, cum tristes misero venere Kalendae,
mercedem aut nummos unde unde extricat, amaras
porrecto iugulo historias captivus ut audit.
(Horace, Serm. 1.3.80-89)
If a man were to nail his slave to a cross for eating
Left-over fish and cold sauce from the dish he’d been told
To remove, sane men would call him madder than Labeo.
Well how much greater and more insane a fault is this:
When your friend has committed some slight offence,
That you’d be thought ungracious not to have pardoned,
You hate him savagely, and shun him as Ruso is shunned
By his debtor. When the unhappy Kalends come, if he can’t,
Poor wretch, rustle up principal or interest from somewhere,
He has to expose his throat, and listen to those sad Histories! (tr. Tony Kline)
Octavius Ruso acerbus faenerator fuisse traditur, idem scriptor historiarum, ad quas audiendas significat solitum fuisse cogere debitores suos, quibus scilicet talia audire poena gravissima erat. hoc enim significat ‘porrecto iugulo’.
(Porphyrius, Comm. in Hor. Serm. 1.3.86)
Octavius Ruso is said to have been a rigid moneylender and also a writer of histories. Horace means that he used to force his debtors to listen to these histories – and for them this was no doubt a very cruel punishment. That is what he means by ‘to expose his throat’. (tr. David Bauwens)
Of Earth the universal mother I will sing, the firmly grounded, the eldest who nourishes everything there is on the land, both all that moves on the holy land and in the sea and all that flies; they are nourished from your bounty from you they become fertile in children and crops, mistress, and it depends on you to give livelihood or take it away from mortal men. He is fortunate whom your heart favors and privileges, And everything is his in abundance. His plowland is weighed down with its vital produce, in the fields he is prosperous with livestock, and his house is filled with commodities. Such men are lords in communities where law and order prevail and the women are fair, and much fortune and wealth attend them; their sons exult in youthful vigor and good cheer, and their girls in flower-decked dances delight to frolic happily through the soft meadow flowers—so it is with those whom you privilege, august goddess, bounteous deity. I salute you, mother of the gods, consort of starry Heaven: be favorable, and grant comfortable livelihood in return for my singing. And I will take heed both for you and for other singing. (tr. Martin Litchfield West)
Xanthus says in his book entitled Magica “The mages have sex with their mothers,” and he says that it is customary for them to have sex with their daughters and sisters too, and that the women were held in common. Such unions were not forced or secret, but were readily consented to by both parties, whenever one man wanted to marry the woman of another. (tr. Daniel Ogden)
Hermippus gives another anecdote. Pythagoras, on coming to Italy, made a subterranean dwelling and enjoined on his mother to mark and record all that passed, and at what hour, and to send her notes down to him until he should ascend. She did so. Pythagoras some time afterwards came up withered and looking like a skeleton, then went into the assembly and declared he had been down to Hades, and even read out his experiences to them. They were so affected that they wept and wailed and looked upon him as divine, going so far as to send their wives to him in hopes that they would learn some of his doctrines; and so they were called Pythagorean women. Thus far Hermippus. (tr. Robert Drew Hicks)
Now who of all those who live beneath the bright daylight will open up his house to give a glad welcome to my Graces*, and will not send them away unrewarded? They come home then barefoot and glum, with many a complaint that their journey has been in vain; they stay cowering at the bottom of their box once more with their heads always drooping on their chilly knees, in the place where they are always to be found after they have come back with no success. But who is hospitable nowadays? Who will be generous in return for praise? I do not know; men are no longer eager, as they once were, to be praised for their glorious deeds, but instead they are obsessed by profit. Each person keeps his hand in his pocket and is on the lookout for a chance to make money; he would not even rub off the rust and give it to someone, but has a ready excuse: “Charity begins at home”**; “”If only I had some money myself!”; “It’s the gods who reward poets”***; “Who would wish to listen to anyone else? Homer’s enough for everyone”; “The best poet is the one who will get nothing from me.”
* I.e., the graceful poems I can compose for patrons.
** Lit., “the knee is closer than the shin.”
*** Allusion to an anecdote about Simonides, who was told by the tyrant Scopas to seek half his fee from the Dioscuri, whom he had praised in half of a poem commissioned as praise of Scopas. The palace collapsed and killed Scopas, but the poet escaped, having been summoned outside by “two men” (Cic. De or. 2.352, Callim. Fr. 64.11).
Quid tam sollicitis vitam consumimus annis
torquemurque metu caecaque cupidine rerum
aeternisque senes curis, dum quaerimus, aevum
perdimus et nullo votorum fine beati
victuros agimus semper nec vivimus umquam,
pauperiorque bonis quisque est, quia plura requirit
nec quod habet numerat, tantum quod non habet optat,
cumque sibi parvos usus natura reposcat
materiam struimus magnae per vota ruinae
luxuriamque lucris emimus luxuque rapinas,
et summum census pretium est effundere censum?
solvite, mortales, animos curasque levate
totque supervacuis vitam deplete querellis.
fata regunt orbem, certa stant omnia lege
longaque per certos signantur tempora casus.
nascentes morimur, finisque ab origine pendet.
hinc et opes et regna fluunt et, saepius orta,
paupertas, artesque datae moresque creatis
et vitia et laudes, damna et compendia rerum.
nemo carere dato poterit nec habere negatum
fortunamve suis invitam prendere votis
aut fugere instantem: sors est sua cuique ferenda.
(Manilius, Astr. 4.1-22)
Oh, why do we spend the years of our lives in worry, tormenting ourselves with fears and senseless desires; grown old before our time with anxieties which never end; forfeiting length of days by our very quest for it; setting no limit to our wishes, so that their fulfilment leaves us still unblest, but ever playing the part of men who mean to live but never do? Everyone is the poorer for his possessions because he looks for more: none counts his blessings, but only lusts for what he lacks. Though nature needs only modest requirements, we build higher and higher the peak from which to fall, and purchase luxury with our gains, and with love of luxury the fear of dispossession, until the greatest boon that wealth can confer is the squandering of itself. So set free your minds, o mortals, and rid your lives of all this vain complaint! Fate rules the world, all things stand fixed by its immutable laws, and the long ages are assigned a predestined course of events. At birth our death is sealed, and our end is consequent upon our beginning. Fate is the source of riches and kingdoms and the more frequent poverty; by fate are men at birth given their skills and characters, their merits and defects, their losses and gains. None can renounce what is bestowed or possess what is denied; no man by prayer may seize fortune if it demur, or escape if it draw nigh: each one must bear his appointed lot. (tr. George Patrick Goold)
While they were thus conversing with one another a hubbub was heard to proceed from the palace, of eunuchs and women shrieking all at once. And in fact an eunuch had been caught misbehaving with one of the royal concubines just as if he were an adulterer. The guards of the harem were now dragging him along by the hair in the way they do royal slaves. The senior of the eunuchs accordingly declared that he had long before noticed he had an affection for this particular lady, and had already forbidden him to talk to her or touch her neck or hand, or assist her toilette, though he was free to wait upon all the other members of the harem; yet he had now caught him behaving as if he were the lady’s lover. Apollonius thereupon glanced at Damis, as if to indicate that the argument they had conducted on the point that even eunuchs fall in love, was now demonstrated to be true; but the king remarked to the bystanders: “Nay, but it is disgraceful, gentlemen, that, in the presence of Apollonius, we should be enlarging on the subject of chastity rather than he. What then, O Apollonius, do you urge us to do with him?” “Why, to let him live, of course,” answered Apollonius to the surprise of them all. Whereon the king reddened, and said: “Then you do not think he deserves to die may times for thus trying to usurp my rights?” “Nay, but my answer, O king, was suggested not by any wish to condone his offense, but rather to mete out to him a punishment which will wear him out. For if he lives with this disease of impotence on him, and can never take pleasure in eating or drinking, nor in the spectacles which delight you and your companions, and if his heart will throb as he often leaps up in his sleep, as they say is particularly the case of people in love, – is there any form of consumption so wasting as this, any form of hunger so likely to enfeeble his bowels? Indeed, unless he be one of those who are ready to live at any price, he will entreat you, O king, before long even to slay him, or he will slay himself, deeply deploring that he was not put to death straight away this very day.” Such was the answer rendered on this occasion by Apollonius, one so wise and humane, that the king was moved by it to spare the life of his eunuch. (tr. Frederick Cornwallis Conybeare)
But obviously man is a political animal in a sense in which a bee is not, or any other gregarious animal. Nature, as we say, does nothing without some purpose; and she has endowed man alone among the animals with the power of speech. Speech is something different from voice, which is possessed by other animals also and used by them to express pain or pleasure; for their nature does indeed enable them not only to feel pleasure and pain but to communicate these feelings to each other. Speech, on the other hand serves to indicate what is useful and what is harmful, and so also what is just and what is unjust. For the real difference between man and other animals is that humans alone have perception of good and evil, just and unjust, etc. It is the sharing of a common view in these matters that makes a household and a state. Furthermore, the state has a natural priority over the household and over any individual among us. For the whole must be prior to the part. Separate hand or foot from the whole body, and they will no longer be hand or foot except in name, as one might speak of a ‘hand’ or ‘foot’ sculptured in stone. That will be the condition of the spoilt hand, which no longer has the capacity and the function which define it. So, though we may say they have the same names, we cannot say that they are, in that condition, the same things. It is clear then that the state is both natural and prior to the individual. For if an individual is not fully self-sufficient after separation, he will stand in the same relationship to the whole as the parts in the other case do. Whatever is incapable of participating in the association which we call the state, a dumb animal for example, and equally whatever is perfectly self-sufficient and has no need to (e.g. a god), is not a part of the state at all. (tr. Thomas Alan Sinclair, revised by Trevor J. Saunders)
If anyone’s ever grown attached to a courtesan—
could you name a more criminal bunch?
Because what fearsome dragon, or fire-breathing Chimaera,
or Charybdis, or three-headed Scylla, or shark,
Sphinx, Hydra, lion, poisonous snake, or winged flock of Harpies
outdoes this revolting group?
It’s impossible; they’re worse than the worst!
You can think about it systematically, starting with Plangon,
who reduces the barbarians to cinders, like the Chimaera.
But one solitary horseman* stripped her of her livelihood;
when he left her house, he took all the furniture with him!
As for the people who sleep with Sinope—aren’t they sleeping with a Hydra now?
She’s an old woman, but Gnathaena’s appeared next door;
so if they escape the first, the other one’s twice as bad.
What difference can you see today between Nannion and Scylla?
After she strangled two boyfriends, isn’t she angling now
to catch a third? But †fell out† a ship with a fir-wood oar.
And isn’t Phryne behaving just like Charybdis,
by grabbing the ship-owner and gulping him down, boat and all?
Isn’t Theano a siren with no feathers?
She looks and sounds like a woman—but she’s got the legs of a blackbird!
You could call any whore a Theban Sphinx,
because they never talk straight, but speak in riddles,
claiming to love you, and be sweet on you, and enjoy sleeping with you.
Then she says: “I’d like a [corrupt] or a chair with four feet!”
Then: “or a table with three feet!” And then she says: “or a slave-girl with two feet!”
Then anyone who can solve these riddles leaves immediately, like Oedipus,
pretending he doesn’t see her; and he’s the only one to get away, even if she doesn’t want to.
But the others, who think she loves them, are immediately grabbed
and carried off high into the air. To sum up, however many wild beasts
there are, nothing’s more dangerous than a courtesan!
* Recalling Bellerophon, who rode Pegasus when he killed the Chimaera.
For divinity, indeed, the father and fabricator of all things, is more ancient than the sun and the heavens, more excellent than time and eternity, and every flowing nature, and is a legislator without law, ineffable by voice, and invisible by the eyes. Not being able, however, to comprehend his essence, we apply for assistance to words and names, to animals and figures of gold, and ivory and silver, to plants and rivers, to the summits of mountains, and to streams of water; desiring, indeed, to understand his nature, but through imbecility calling him by the names of such things as appear to us to be beautiful. And in thus acting we are affected in the same manner as lovers, who are delighted with surveying the images of the objects of their love, and with recollecting the lyre, the dart, and the seat of these, the circus in which they ran, and every thing, in short, which excites the memory of the beloved object. What then remains for me to investigate and determine respecting statues? Only to admit the subsistence of deity. But if the art of Phidias excites the Greeks to the recollection of divinity, honour to animals the Egyptians, a river others, and fire others, I do not condemn the dissonance: let them only know, let them only love, let them only be mindful of the object they adore. (tr. Thomas Taylor)
Crambe Repetita 