What of this, that fruitful in the begetting of Caesars, happy in a progeny of heroes, you gave at once sons ruling as princes together with their father? For who shall pass over the expedition of Persia, or the victorious camps of the prince Carus, and Niphates traversed by the Roman legions — then, when the emperor, seized by a thunderbolt, ended a life like to the thunderbolts? Strong in these citizens, in city and country, O Consentius, you beget for me a nurturing father, that man to whom belonged shining wit and Roman rigour amid Attic charm.
Him Milesian Thales might have been astounded to hear, and at the same time he who is known at Lindos, Cleobulus among its citadels, and you, Periander, who are of Corinth, and you, whom Bias gave from Priene, and you, Lesbian sophist Pittacus, and you, Solon, who, mighty in law-giving Athens, surpass the Socratic wrestling-schools, and you, Chilon, salvation of Tyndarean Therapne, elder than law-giving Lycurgus. Not here, had he wished, his care being at leisure, to mark what the courses of the stars might be, did he run diverse ways inferior to Aratus. Not him, when he framed his mind to the geometric arts, was Euclid, that knower of the space of heaven, able to follow. Not him, had he wished to roll off rhythms, could Chrysippus with his heap in any wise stay from his purpose.
This man, when he pursued the Amphionian art with plectrum, thumb, voice, and pipe — the Thracian bard, the Arcadian god, and Phoebus were left behind in every song, and you would not think the very Muses so musical. Had he, adorned with the tragic train and the buskin, once entered the Attic theatre, Sophocles and Euripides would have given way. And had the comic actor wished to sound forth in the sock, to him, O Menander, with lifted finger you would have yielded the palm. This man, when he polished the six-foot stylus, learned after the manner of the Smyrnaean workshop, or when he gave himself to grave history, could scarcely let rushing Herodotus and thundering Homer keep the foremost places.
Not more powerful than he would once have been that tumultuous orator who by his art stirred the Pandionian hollow, whether he were carried off against one-eyed Philip, or were pleading the cause of Ctesiphon — a man ever growing by his popularity, and justly seated in the citadel of speech, who, begotten of a smith for a father, chose rather to polish the file of his own mouth. Why shall I sing to you of Latin eloquence — the man of Arpinum, of Padua, of Mantua? And you, Terence, who teach the comic art? And you, Plautus, sown in a stern age, who surpass Greek wit with your charm? And you, Varro, to be revered enough for the manifold multitude of your writings? And you, Crispus, who are strong in brevity? And who, for your flowing genius, Cornelius Tacitus, are to be kept silent by no mouth?
And you, Arbiter, tiller of the sacred stock through the gardens of the Massilians, equal to the Hellespontine Priapus? And you, tender Naso, known through your lascivious poems, and once sent to Tomi, subjoined under a feigned name to the too-Caesarean girl whom you called Corinna? Why shall I speak of the lofty Senecas, or of that Martial whom lofty Bilbilis gives, natives both of the Iberian lands? Why of the poets whom Polla Argentaria, joined by a double torch, gives? Why shall I unweave the many of varied style — the witty, the tender, the grave, the sharp? Had Consentius been present, they lay hidden. To this man of highest genius, and likewise of highest nobility and beauty, was joined a woman who, transferring to her husband's house the insignia of ancient Priscus Jovinus, filled the household of the sophist with robes of office.
Thus within your own household, O Consentius, proud glory of your fatherland, your grandsire lives in the annals, and your father in books. You, mighty enough through these lineages, but mightier in the summit of your character, I could not sound with deserved praise — not even if, singing to me in the Odrysian cave, where the crag through the Cicones re-echoes with trembling streams, and Hebrus, that prince of bards had trained me, when the sweet chords, having animated the rocks, bore them through Rhodope with their drawing song, and, the case reversed, with their fountains bound, compelled the panting lands to run; nor if Ismarus lay open to the suns, the eared woodland seeking the lyre, and the snows, dissoluble by no heat, curved, flowed down from Ossa, or the Bistones beheld Strymon standing still, when the rushing flood thirsted for song.
Nor if, given over to the twin-bodied one of Pelion, I had stood by the Centaur's lyre, fearing the neigh of my double master; nor had that god taught me — the herdsman god, bidden to pasture his client's flock by the river Amphrysus — he who with his bow laid low the rust-hued Cyclopes beneath the Liparean furnaces, launching in his arrow a bolt heavier still. Even now, warm from your tender first dawn, the nine sisters received you in their bosom, and covered you, wailing from your mother, in the shallow of glassy Hippocrene. Then, plunged in this water of the babbling wave, you drank letters rather than the flood. Then, already a boy fitter than the master, whatever there is of rhetorical training, whatever of grammar or of the palaestra, even as, still tender, you had drawn it in, so you devoured it.
And now the court took you up, and the pious prince at once set you among the conspicuous — the tribunes whom the consistories hold; for even the emperor in his purple, in the citadel of the realm, was wont to preside over your duties, since your character deserved it by its nobility. So great a summit and so wondrous a glory the honours written in the annals declare. Hence, having followed an ample military service, though by just votes you ought to have enlarged your camp-fortune, yet, abstaining from the customary petty gain, you returned home richer in fame, deeming only what you had given away to be your own. Then if perchance there was aught the emperor wished to reach the eastern ears of his father-in-law by a faithful and skilled interpreter, he chose you at once, learned to loose the exchanges of a double tongue.
O prithee, how often did the Byzantine realms cry 'Bravo!' to you as you spoke? And you, whether sounding in Latin as though born in the Romulean suburb, or overflowing with the roundness of the Argive tongue as if created at Marathon — the applauding men of the Bosphorus were amazed, marvelling less at their own Attic nurslings. Hence, were the treaties of the world to be dissolved, the fierce Hun, the Sauromatian, the Getan, the Gelonian would grant peace with you as mediator. You would enter the Neckar and the Waal, the Weser, the Elbe, and the innermost marshes of the Franks, with the Sicambri revering you, safe amid arms by your character alone.
You would approach the Maeotis and the Caspian gates, you the Bactra ridden by the Parthians, so constant and undaunted, that, laying aside the arrogance of the swollen court, he who sits as tyrant above the satraps, belching forth his kinship with demigods, would bend to you his crescent tiara. You, did the public fates not forbid you to seek Byrsa or the Tanaitic rebel of the African land, straightway, the fury of Mars laid aside, after piratical losses the trader would dispatch keels full of merchandise; and through you, peace being well restored, wars would sail against me no more. And now, if perchance the solemn spectacles of the theatre had caught you as you presided, the whole company of actors turned pale, as though the Archer and the nine Muses sat as judges beside the stage.
Before you Caramallus or Phabaton, with closed throat and speaking gesture — by nod, by leg, by knee, by hand, by whirling — in his whole posture would even once be at a loss. Whether Aeetes' daughter and her Jason are brought on there, and the fierce Phasis, which feared the teeth flung over the Colchian fields, when in the sprouting battle the spear-points, mingled with the corn-ears, wavered. Or whether someone relates the banquet of Thyestes, or your laments, grim Philomela, and the boy torn apart and made a meal for the mother — now the more innocent wife of the two. Or the Tyrian rapes, and Jupiter turned bull, more to be feared in his brow, the thunderbolt scorned. Or the tower of Danae is shown there, when she was much drenched by the rainy wealth, giving golden thefts rather than metals.
Or whether someone plays Leda, and the Phrygian youth, fitting him to the wine-cups, makes him sweeter to the Thunderer than the juice of nectar. Or he counterfeits Mars, now sent into the Lemnian chains, now — the girl repulsed — Jupiter puts on the form of a boar, roughens the head with bristles, and the back, and with hairy cheeks curves the smooth ivory tusk, or feigns the beast shaggy on its back, ever sharpening its up-curved weapons in unremitting fashion. Or the Persean maiden, avenged there, is played with the conjugal falchion; or what famous war of song and of story he presents, shut up before the walls of Pergamum. Why should I tell how, before you, the female cithara-players, the flute-players, mimes, rope-dancers, jesters, the reeds, the plectra, the jests, the ball-play, the rope, trembling unfold their art?
For as to how great the deeds you yourself as victor performed in the Circus games, while Rome thundered applause, it was fitting to plough out a glad Muse. By chance two-faced Janus was bringing back his Kalends, Phoebus wheeling round the seasons of the year, to be taken up upon the curule chairs. It is Caesar's custom here, twice on one day (they call them Private games), to prepare the shows. Then a gathering of youths, but courtiers, exercises the grim images of the Elean field with chariots ranging over the spaces. And now the urn seeks you, and the hissing acclaim of the hoarse ring rouses you. Then where there is the gate and the seat of the consuls, which a wall of six encloses on either side, arched with crypts and starting-stalls, you, perchance chosen by lot on one of four axles, pressing the curved reins, enter. Your colleague, and likewise the opposing side against you, does the same:
the colours gleam — White, or Blue, green, and red: your team's badges the attendants hold, the mouths, and the reins the hands, and they compel the twisted manes to lurk in supple knots, and meanwhile they urge on, and of their own accord help with coaxing applause, and dictate a voluptuous frenzy to the four-footed steeds; those roar at the barriers, and lean upon the bolts together, and steam through the barred boards, and before the race the field is seized by their absent blasts. They push, tremble, drag, resist, blaze up, leap, fear and are feared, nor check their step, but with restless foot they scourge the post that will endure. At last, at the roar of the blaring trumpet, the trumpeter calling forth the held-back chariots pours the swift cars into the plain.
Not so the onrush of the three-forked thunderbolt, not the arrow sped from the Scythian string, not the furrow of the swiftly falling star, not the leaden storm of bullets ever whirled from Balearic slings, so cleft the liquid paths of the sky. The earth yields to the wheels, and the air is deafened by the dust of the whirling wheel-track. The drivers press on together with their lashes, and now, stretched forward, they are snatched from the war-car by their bending breasts, and strike the yoke-steeds across the shoulders, the back left empty; nor could you quickly discern whether the head-foremost drivers bear up the poles the more, or the axles. Now you, out of sight as if in flight — the more open space consumed — the field, narrowed by art, had shut in; through which the Euripus draws back for itself a long, low, and twofold engine with a wall.
When the further turning-post released them all, your colleague becomes first of the two who had passed you; so you yourself were then fourth, by the very condition of the circuit. It is a care in mid-course that the man who leads, hard-pressed by a driver bearing down on his right, if he lays open his left side and carries all the reins toward the barrier, may be overtaken by a chariot driven along the inner track. But you, redoubled by that very effort, hold your four horses in close and by supreme skill keep them well in reserve for the seventh lap. The others pressed on with hand and voice, and everywhere the sweat of drivers and swift-footed steeds ran down in falling drops upon the field. The hoarse din of the cheering strikes the heart, and alike in men and horses heat comes with the racing and cold with fear. So once around it goes, and a second time it goes; so comes the third circuit, and the fourth.
At the fifth circuit the leader, no longer able to bear the weight of those pursuing, wrenches back his axle, for, commanding swift teams, he had felt his yoke-beasts spent. Now, the sixth return being fully unrolled, and now with the crowd already clamouring for the prizes, the opposing side, fearing nothing of your power, was carelessly grinding along the earlier track; when suddenly, with reins drawn taut in the curve, with breasts strained forward and foot firmly planted, as far as that famous charioteer used to snatch his Oenomaus while Pisa trembled, so far did you sweep your swift yoke-beasts. Here, while one man alone hugs the winding short-cuts of the post, spurred on by you he could not, once his chariot was carried forward by its own impetus, wheel it in a joined turn. Him, because he was passing outside the rule, you overtook by holding back, standing firm by your art, while the other, delighting in the crowd's favour, ran too far to the right beneath the tiers.
Him, while he swerved his course aside and, long sluggish, too late urged his horn-hoofed steeds with the whip, you pass by keeping to the straight track. Here a rival, having too rashly followed you, and hoping he had already outstripped the leader, came shamelessly athwart your axle. His horses are bent double, the wild throng of their legs enters the wheels, and four times the three spokes are jammed, until, the gaps being filled, they crack, and the whirling rim shatters the feet: there this fifth man, flung headlong from his overturning chariot, makes a heap by his manifold crash, fouling with blood his forward-pitching brow. The renewed uproar mingles all things—more than the cypress-bearing Lycaeus, more than woody Ossa lifts up amid its restless, frequent storms:
as much as the Dorian and Trinacrian seas, rolled by the south wind, do not roar, nor does the Propontis that walls off the Bosphorus with its swirling brine. Here at once the fair-judging commander gives order that silken robes and crowns with torques be joined together, and that merit be rewarded, bidding shameful things be given to the vanquished—coverlets of coarse cloth and rugs of many-coloured fleece. But now, your youthful contests being over, what you showed yourself to be in the age that followed, when, sought within the court of my father-in-law, you managed the care of the palace, we shall tell in later pages, if there be more leisure for times to come. Now let obliging Thalia sound in a few verses that hospitality of which we spoke. O sweet house, O dutiful household gods! whom, though its estate be hard and at odds with itself, both liberty and modesty adorn together.
O the banquets, the tales, the little books, the laughter, the earnestness, the witty jests, the encounters, the company—all one and the same! Whether we must worship the shrines of God, or steps be climbed to the bishop, or to the heights of Marcius Myron, or the illustrious dwelling of Livius be seen: or to the halls of learned-tongued Leo, before whom, when he expounds the twelve tables of the law, Appius Claudius of his own accord would fall silent, more obscure than he in his renowned decemvirate. But if he should speak epic, and bend metre into short-clause rhythms, with his thundering quill, he would make biting Flaccus keep silence; though after his satires and his lyre Flaccus stretches to soar as the Pindaric swan. Or if, great Magnus, your favour held us, endowed with the many gifts of men—beauty, nobility, mind, and wealth. If through his varied deeds one were to run:
a hundred iron mouths would grow weary in his praise. Steadfast, ingenious, and effective, a prudent arbiter, the best of kinsmen, defrauding his own genius of nothing, nor any man's, mindful of persons, places, and time. Or if your halls held us, my Marcellinus, skilled in the laws; you who, being too truthful and too severe, are believed harsh by one who does not know you; yet if anyone has well proved you, he learns what you yourself would wish to judge. For you never fear to say what is just, though Sulla press you, or fierce Carbo; though the grim Marii and the savage Cinnae, and though perchance the triumvirs' swords should ring about your head and side. Or if the household of Limpidius held us, a magnificent citizen and a man of the highest rank, one who well follows the rule of brotherhood;
or if at the same time the obligingness of excellent Marinus held us, binding us to him, whose diligence and comradeship are to be cherished by me with eternal praise; or whatever other brothers it pleased both our hearts to see, in whom I reckon it a praiseworthy occupation to have spent my leisure. Though affection long to recount their names in verse, the metre refuses. Thence you would call us to your own house, when a new morning had come forth and the warming sun was giving the second hour. Here, bringing out smooth balls and hoops, here dice with their rattling dice-boxes, marshalling us to the strokes of the throws, like the son of Nauplius, inventor of the art, you delighted to stir up a merry brawl. Thence to the baths—not Nero's, nor those which Agrippa gave, nor his whose tomb Dalmatian Salona beholds:
yet it pleased us to go to the warm baths, well provided for private modesty. After these your cups and the couch amid your Muses held us in the middle: such statues and images as neither Mentor, nor Praxiteles, nor Scopas gave in bronze, or marble, or colours: as great as Polyclitus himself never moulded, nor is any figure fashioned by Phidian chisel. But now the five hundred hendecasyllables beg your pardon for their garrulity. Only—and if it please—the poem is long. Now, now it is enough; you yourself are hindered, reading much of your friend in the poem, dozing off, too much at leisure. CARMEN XXIV, A PROPEMPTICON TO HIS LITTLE BOOK. Going forth from my doors, little book, remember, I pray, to keep this road, which leads well to our comrades, whose names I have diligently noted.
Let not the ancient causeway be worn by you, along whose length the Caesarean name flourishes green on columns old enough. But go step by step, that you may renew for our friends the old affection they should keep. And first you shall enter the home of stern Domitius, with your trembling Muses; not even that man was so much a censor whom, they say, they bear but once in an age. Yet you may rejoice in his learned strictness: here, if he approves you, you will please all men. Hence let kindly Brioude receive you, where lie the very bones of holy Julian: bones which are deemed dead among the dead, yet a living power shines forth from the tomb. Hence now you make for the lands to the right, and, the Juglae once traversed in a single day, tomorrow you look upon the tawny Triobris.
Then you shall see the land of the Gabali, snowy enough, and, as far as the natives wish it to be reckoned, a city set high upon a well. Hence to the Laconians of my own time you shall hurry—Justinus and his brother Sabinus, whose famed love, throughout the mouths of the world, treads down Pirithous and Theseus, and the trusty companion of raging Orestes. When you have been received into their bosom, you shall go to Trevidon, and to the ridge, alas, too near the slanderous Ruteni. Here you shall find the father of learned Tonantius, ruler and pillar of the Gauls, Ferreolus, the peer of Priscus Syagrius: whom his wife Papianilla, sharing his cares with chaste labour, gladdens—such as neither Tanaquil was, nor she whom you, Tricipitinus, begot, nor such as she consecrated to Phrygian Vesta, who, against the swelling Tiber, drew the ship by her maiden hair.
Hence Lesora, surpassing the Caucasus of the Scythians, shall behold you, and swiftly for the fields it shall bear a muddy fish, pressed into solid savour, wearing it in its clear water. Here add to yourself the wings of Zetes and Calais, and, fleeing, beware the cloudy ridge, for it is constant, teeming with storm; but though you be borne on a swift course, weary shall Voroangus detain you. Here you shall find our Apollinaris, who, whether against the raging lion's heat he clothes himself in the coolness of marble halls: or walks in secluded gardens, such as bloom green in honey-bearing Hybla, such as, blessing the old man of Corycus, the pitchy stream of Galaesus used to darken.
Or whether among violets, thyme, privet, wild thyme, cassia, saffron, and catmint, narcissus and hyacinthine flowers, he scorns the clod which, seeking a high price, the incense-bearing Sabaean brings. Or whether he rather rests in a feigned grotto, where, on the hill's edge, a bending stone, striving to give a native portico, makes not a grove with trees, but a cavern. Who now could compare with these the ancient orchards of King Julus there, and the golden vines, their tendrils gilded with green amber, when Porus laid out, with clinking treasure, a vineyard of tawny metal from the branch, with grape-clusters of flowing gems? Hence you shall go to Cottion, and to our Avitus say a greeting; thereafter you owe perpetual service to the man Verus: for I ask leave here of my kinsman—no cloud of birth stands prior to a friend.
Hence now Fidulus, the glory of good men, and, not much second to Tetradius in the gifts of character or in the tenor of rectitude, receives you with holy hospitality. Then bend your step onward, and at Tres Villae I seek out Thaumastus, either of the two you please: of whom the younger is my comrade and colleague together, and by rank my brother. But if by chance the elder is found by you, salute him, bowing low, almost as an uncle. Hence to the ample house of Magnus the consul, and to your own Felix come, little book. And the library which is his father's, such as neither was that of gloomy Philagrius, Probus, well-approved, shall cause the approved one to be admitted. Here you shall often be read by my Eulalia, whose ways are equal to Cecropian Minerva's, and whom the stern old men, and even her once purple-clad father-in-law, held in awe.