us. We spend our lives in an ignoble struggle, and we come still unsatisfied to the end. 'Enough of sermonizing. I'm no Crispinus.' The subject of this introductory satire is the race for wealth. In the universal peace which followed the civil wars, the financial affairs of the world centered at Rome as an imperial clearing house, and great fortunes were rapidly made by men of the capitalist class. In general, the old nobility and the philosophers and writers kept aloof from business, which consequently fell into the hands of the equites, who had had only a slight part in public affairs, or of the freedmen, who were ill-fitted by character and experience to make a large-minded or even a rational use of their money. Some of them burst out into ridiculous display, and furnished easy material for the satirist; others, with less obvious folly, knew no better use of their acquired wealth than to make it the means of acquiring still more. It is to men of the latter class that this discourse is addressed. For this is not pure satire, holding up the peculiarities of certain men to the scorn of others; it is, in part, a discourse, a sermon, addressed directly to the over-eager man of business, and intended to show to him, for his possible betterment, the intrinsic littleness of the occupation to which he was so ardently devoting himself. Horace frequently employs in other places the thoughts and sometimes the figures and expressions of this satire. Compare especially the end of Epode 1, the main thought of Epode 2, and the whole of Epode 4. The similarity between the social structure of the Augustan Age and our own times could scarcely be made more vivid than it is by the fact that the satirist of that society chose for the theme of his opening satire the race for wealth. Qui fit, Maecenas, ut nemo, quam sibi sortem 5 contentus vivat, laudet diversa sequentis? 'O fortunati mercatores!' gravis annis miles ait, multo iam fractus membra labore. Contra mercator, navem iactantibus Austris, et me 'Militia est potior. Quid enim? Concurritur; horae mere chance. The same contrast is implied in Sat. 1, 6, 54, though ratio is not actually used. The two verbs, dederit, obiecerit, carry on the contrast between the deliberate and the accidental. 3. laudet: the full expression of the thought would seem to require sed unus quisque laudet, but the negative of nemo goes only with contentus, not with vivat, so that the thought is 'every one is discontented with his own life and envious of the lives of others.' Cf. vs. 109, where the phrases nemo se probet (= contentus vivat) and laudet are connected by ac potius. The meaning of laudare is not precisely to praise, but 'to speak of with admiration,' as in Plaut. Rud. 523, laudo fortunas tuas, and in combination with diversa sequentis it suggests the idea of envy. 4-12. The two pairs of contrasted examples soldier and sailor, lawyer and farmer — and indeed the whole scene which is half described, half suggested in vss. 15-22, come from the conventional popular philosophy, perhaps from some Greek burlesque drama. Horace uses them frequently with slight variations. 4-5. The first illustration is barely suggested, without specific details. gravis annis means, in ordinary usage, weighed down with years, not distinguishing between years of life and years of service, and the thought is repeated and amplified in the next phrase. fractus membra: broken in health. The soldier, feeling old and worn, says, 'I wish I had gone into business.' 6-8. mercator: a merchant who sails his own vessel on a business venture, as the merchants in the China trade did a hundred years ago. He is therefore called, indifferently, either mercator or nauta (vs. 29), and the following lines deal only with the hardships of the sailor's life. - iactantibus : the tense is important; he is in the midst of a gale. Austris: the southerly winds are heavy and squally in the Mediterranean, and Horace generally uses Auster with an implication of storm, as 'northeaster' is used in English. Quid enim? simply why? or why then? enim was originally a strengthening particle, and before it had acquired the meaning for, it formed compound phrases with conjunctions and particles (at enim, non 10 momento cita mors venit aut victoria laeta.' Agricolam laudat iuris legumque peritus, sub galli cantum consultor ubi ostia pulsat. Ille, datis vadibus qui rure extractus in urbem est, solos felices viventis clamat in urbe. enim, quia enim) in which the earlier meaning is preserved. There is no ellipsis here.—Concurritur impersonal, expressing the brevity of the crisis in a soldier's life. · horae momento: the Romans did not measure short spaces of time with precision, and there is no Latin word for minute' or 'second.' hora is therefore somewhat vague, like the English 'the hour of victory'; cf. puncto mobilis horae, Epist. 2, 2, 172. The second illustration is more detailed than the first, and the folly of the momentary desire to exchange occupations is more clearly suggested. The sailor's endurance is broken down by the long-continued storm, and he wishes for the short crisis of the soldier's life, forgetting alike the greater profits of a business career and the wearisome routine of garrison life. whom friends and clients came at the early morning salutatio to ask advice on business and legal matters. There is a personal touch in this illustration, for Horace did not like to get up early (ad quartam iaceo, Sat. 1, 6, 122). 11-12. Ille: the other, the farmer, of the class whose unembarrassed life the lawyer has just been praising. He is not quite identified with the consultor. - datis vadibus: not necessarily bail in a criminal action, but surety for his appearance as defendant in any legal case. In this second pair of illustrations Horace allows the absurdity of the discontent to appear plainly and comically. The lawyer, in his momentary annoyance at being called early in the morning, wishes he were a farmer, forgetting that the farmer is habitually an early riser. The lack of serious consideration on the part of the countryman is shown by the suddenness of his conversion; he has been dragged (extractus) against his will into the city, but once there he loudly proclaims (clamat) not only that the city is better than the country, but even that city people are the only persons who are happy. 15 20 Cetera de genere hoc, adeo sunt multa, loquacem delassare valent Fabium. Ne te morer, audi quo rem deducam. Si quis deus, 'En ego,' dicat, 'iam faciam quod voltis: eris tu, qui modo miles, mercator; tu, consultus modo, rusticus: hinc vos, vos hinc mutatis discedite partibus. - Heia! 13. Cetera de genere hoc: Horace was familiar with Lucretius (see notes on 23, 117–119) and uses this common Lucretian phrase to give to the passage a burlesque air of philosophizing. 14. Fabium: the scholiast says that he was a man in public life who had written some volumes on Stoic philosophy. It is characteristic of Horace to put his personal satire, which is not very frequent or very severe, into such light touches as this, given in passing and merely by way of illustration. Cf. the allusion to Crispinus below, vs. 120. And these humorous attentions are often bestowed upon the Stoics, whose formalism and austerity were repugnant to a man of Horace's temperament, and led him to overlook their good qualities. With all their superficial defects, they were the most serious religious teachers in Roman life. Ne te morer: not to delay you, 'not to be too long about it'; a parenthetic clause of purpose. Atqui licet esse beatis. quin illis Iuppiter ambas Just now dat. of Lisadvanta 15 f. quo rem deducam: what my point is going to be,' 'what conclusion I am going to reach.' - Si quis deus dicat: the apodosis is in nolint, 19. The god is at this point indefinite, but, as the scene becomes clearer, he is definitely named, vs. 20. — En ego: here I am; to be taken closely with faciam. Both ego and iam are emphatic; 'here I am, I will do your business for you on the spot.' 18. mutatis. . . partibus: exactly like the English parts in a drama; cf. partes of a political party. - Heia: a colloquial exclamation of surprise and dissatisfaction, as if the god was annoyed that his friendly offices were not acceptable. 19. beatis dat. after esse, as if eis had been expressed after licet. 20. causae : partitive gen. with a neut. pron.; very common in colloquial Latin, Plautus, Terence, Cicero's Letters, Catullus. 25 iratus buccas inflet, neque se fore posthac Praeterea, ne sic, ut qui iocularia, ridens 21. buccas inflet: cf. Plaut. Stichus, 767, age, iam infla buccas, addressed to a flute player. bucca is a Low Latin word (French bouche), and the phrase is an intentional vulgarism to depict the burlesque expression of anger.illis: dat. of disadvantage. The whole passage, 15-22, reads like a description of a mimus, in which a god suddenly appears upon the stage between the pairs of discontented men and, with bustling good nature, grants their wishes; then, as it appears at once from their looks that they do not really desire the change, his good nature changes to comic anger. From vss. 4 f., which are serious in expression and thought, to the final burlesque there is a gradual and skillful uncovering of the underlying absurdity of ascribing the discontent of men to their occupations or their lot in life. 24. quamquam: and yet; corrective, not subordinating. 25. The kindergarten method of teaching children their letters by turning the work into play is alluded to by Quintilian (1, 1, 26), and Jerome advises a father to reward his daughter's efforts to learn to read by giving her crustula, cookies, and mulsa, sweet drinks. olim: sometimes; a not uncommon meaning. The 27. sed tamen : not exactly correlative to quamquam. thought is twice reversed: "I will treat this matter seriously, not jokingly; and yet I might properly treat it jokingly, for a joke may sugar-coat a serious purpose, like the candies that teachers sometimes give to children; but, all the same (tamen), I prefer now to keep to my original plan and treat the matter seriously." 28. ille demonstrative, to pair with hic below. - gravem duro: by way of emphasizing the severity |